More than 40 nonprofits press GHG Protocol, SBTi and ISO on conflict-of-interest rules

More than 40 nonprofits, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists, called on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the Science Based Targets initiative and the International Organization for Standardization to do more to manage conflicts of interest, packaging the request as the Principles for Good Governance in Corporate Standards—10 statements covering transparency, representation of different interests and related topics—unveiled last month. The call follows unresolved disputes over corporate influence on the protocol's forest and hourly electricity accounting work.

"The rules that decide whether corporate climate claims can be trusted are being rewritten right now and the companies those rules are meant to hold to account are seeking a hand in writing them," said Brice Böhmer, climate and environment lead at Transparency International, one of the signatories. "No credible system lets the regulated pick the referee."

A spokesperson for the GHG Protocol told Trellis that the organization already has procedures in place that address many of the principles, is reviewing them, and looks forward to engaging with the coordinators in due course.

The electricity dispute shows what is at stake: a GHG Protocol proposal would have companies match their electricity consumption with renewables on an hourly basis to claim emissions reductions, and while some academics and nonprofits support it as a way to accelerate power-sector decarbonization, many companies argue the added complexity would do the opposite. A parallel fight over forest accounting reached a wider audience this summer, after integrity concerns prompted two academics to sever ties with the protocol and experts described the disagreement as pitting researchers against industry representatives.

Sustainability practitioners often push the other way, arguing that standard-setters working without business input would produce rules many companies could not follow.

The principles are the coalition's bid to settle in public how much say companies get, and the signatories hold no enforcement lever—the list is reputational pressure. Rules on how emissions are counted and what counts as a reduction sit upstream of anything marketed on those numbers, which gives the governance argument its weight. ISO, also named in the principles, released 53001, a management standard for corporate SDG commitments, on Sept. 28. Whether the protocol's review changes anything measurable, and how the forest and electricity rules finally read, are the two places to look.