GHG Protocol
Greenhouse Gas Protocol - corporate accounting and reporting standards (WRI and WBCSD) · World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development
The GHG Protocol is the measurement rulebook underneath almost every corporate emissions number you will see. Its Corporate Standard defines organisational boundaries and the Scope 1, 2 and 3 split; the 2015 Scope 2 Guidance governs electricity emissions; and the 2011 Corporate Value Chain Standard defines the 15 Scope 3 categories. Singapore points at it by name: SGX Practice Note 7.6 paragraph 4.21 requires emissions to be measured in accordance with the Corporate Standard (2004).
What this means in Singapore
The chain of authority for a Singapore listed issuer runs: SGX Mainboard Rule 711B requires the climate component of the sustainability report to comply with Practice Note 7.6; that Practice Note requires issuers to apply IFRS S2 and the climate-relevant provisions of IFRS S1; paragraph 4.21 requires emissions to be measured per the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard (2004); and IFRS S2 paragraph 29(a)(ii) says the same, unless a jurisdictional authority or the exchange requires a different method.
A crucial limit. IFRS S2 paragraph B23 applies the GHG Protocol only to measurement, and only where it does not conflict with IFRS S2. Where they differ, IFRS S2 wins: Scope 2 must be location-based; the measurement approach and reason must be disclosed; Scope 1 and 2 must be split between the consolidated group and other investees; and Scope 3 uses the 2011 Corporate Value Chain Standard.
Scope 2 in Singapore is the hard part. Singapore generated about 94 per cent of its electricity from natural gas in 2024. The Energy Market Authority's Grid Emission Factor, average operating margin basis, was 0.402 kgCO2/kWh for 2024, down from 0.409 in 2019 after peaking at 0.417 in 2022. Three things follow:
- The factor is CO2 only, not CO2e. IFRS S2 requires seven gases converted to CO2e, and there is no published Singapore adder for methane and nitrous oxide from grid generation, so a reporter cannot produce a complete CO2e Scope 2 figure from official sources. Label outputs tCO2 and disclose the exclusion, as the Scope 2 Guidance directs.
- Use the average operating margin, not the build margin. The build margin is a project-accounting construct for additionality analysis, not a consumption-average factor, and neither the GHG Protocol nor IFRS S2 uses it for a corporate inventory.
- It is a generation-side factor. Transmission and distribution losses, and the upstream emissions of the gas burned to make the electricity, belong in Scope 3 category 3.
Because the grid is overwhelmingly gas and improving slowly, a location-based Scope 2 target is effectively an energy-efficiency target, which pushes reporters towards market-based instruments. Two cautions. First, an energy attribute certificate does not automatically carry a zero factor: Quality Criterion 1 requires the instrument to convey the direct emission rate of the underlying generation, so zero applies only where that generation is zero-combustion. Second, no residual mix has been identified for Singapore, so Quality Criterion 8 requires the reporter to disclose that an adjusted factor is unavailable and that this may cause double counting - the most commonly omitted disclosure in Singapore Scope 2 reporting. This hub could not confirm which body issues Singapore certificates, so check the registry directly.
First-year relief. Practice Note 7.6 paragraph 4.20 gives first-year reporters relief from Scope 3, from adopting the Corporate Standard (2004) if they previously used a different method, and from comparatives - the last is easy to miss. It is a one-year bridge, useful for manufacturers previously on ISO 14064-1.
Two numbers, one company. A facility caught by the Carbon Pricing Act also reports to NEA on a facility basis, under NEA's guidelines and Monitoring Plan. That number is not reconcilable with a corporate inventory, and is not meant to be. Expect both.
A methodology note that will pass assurance should name: the consolidation approach; the Corporate Standard (2004), Scope 2 Guidance (2015) and Scope 3 Standard (2011) explicitly; the location-based Scope 2 figure with the grid factor year; any market-based figure with the residual-mix absence disclosure; gases included and excluded; the global warming potential source; the base year and significance threshold; and the consolidated-group versus other-investee split.
How the framework works
Why this one matters most
IFRS S2, GRI 102, CDP and SBTi all defer to the GHG Protocol for measurement. SGX Practice Note 7.6 paragraph 4.21 states that emissions must be measured in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (2004). So whatever framework a Singapore company reports under, this is where the arithmetic comes from.
The operative suite today is: the Corporate Standard (2004 revised edition), its 2013 amendment on required gases, the Scope 2 Guidance (2015), the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard (2011) and the Scope 3 Technical Guidance (2013). GHG Protocol also publishes a Land Sector and Removals Standard and Guidance, listed alongside the rest in its July 2026 Standard Development Plan.
Step one: the organisational boundary
Before any emission is counted, a company chooses how to consolidate. The Corporate Standard offers two approaches, and the control approach splits in two:
- Equity share - account for emissions in proportion to economic interest. The standard is explicit that "the economic substance of the relationship the company has with the operation always overrides the legal ownership form", a principle it notes is consistent with international financial reporting standards.
- Financial control - the company can direct the financial and operating policies of the operation with a view to gaining economic benefits. This can exist with less than 50 per cent ownership. Joint ventures under joint financial control are then accounted for on an equity-share basis.
- Operational control - the company or a subsidiary has full authority to introduce and implement operating policies. One hundred per cent of the emissions of operations it runs are consolidated.
The chosen policy must be applied at all levels of the organisation. For a typical Singapore issuer with wholly owned subsidiaries, all three give the same answer. The choice bites on joint ventures and associates - very common in Singapore real estate, shipping, petrochemicals and infrastructure - on operated-but-minority-owned assets, and on manager and trust structures. An asset excluded from the boundary does not disappear; it usually reappears in Scope 3 as a leased asset or an investment.
Step two: the operational boundary
Scope 1 is direct emissions from sources the company owns or controls: fuel combustion in boilers and owned vehicles, process emissions, and fugitive losses of refrigerants and other gases. Scope 2 is indirect emissions from purchased or acquired electricity, steam, heat and cooling. Scope 3 is every other indirect emission in the value chain.
Scope 1 and Scope 2 reporting are required for conformance. Scope 3 is optional under the 2004 Corporate Standard - although that is being reversed in the revision, and it is already overridden in Singapore for STI constituents from FY2026.
On the gases, get the attribution right. The 2004 text refers to "the six greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol" and requires emissions data for all six separately: CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs and SF6. Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) was added by a separate amendment in February 2013, Required Greenhouse Gases in Inventories. So the correct phrasing is: six gases in the 2004 edition, seven including NF3 as amended in 2013. NF3 matters in Singapore because of its semiconductor and display fabrication industry.
Singapore Scope 1 sources that are routinely missed: refrigerant top-ups in chillers and split units, which in a tropical climate are often the second largest Scope 1 source for a services firm and hide in facilities-maintenance invoices rather than utility bills; diesel for standby generators including monthly test runs; town gas or natural gas for commercial kitchens; and LPG forklifts. A taxi or ride-hailing trip is not Scope 1 at all - it is Scope 3 category 6.
Step three: base year and recalculation
The Corporate Standard requires a company to choose and report a base year for which verifiable data exist and to say why. It also requires a documented base year emissions recalculation policy stating any significance threshold used. Three trigger classes require retroactive recalculation: structural changes such as mergers, acquisitions, divestments and outsourcing or insourcing; changes in calculation methodology or improvements in the accuracy of factors or activity data; and discovery of significant errors, including cumulative ones. Base year emissions are not recalculated for organic growth or decline, and recalculation must be symmetrical - for increases as well as decreases.
The standard sets no number for the threshold; the company chooses and discloses it, and the verifier confirms adherence to it. In Singapore there is a specific trap: the national grid emission factor is revised annually and back-series values can be restated, which is a change in emission factor accuracy and can cross the threshold. Lock the factor vintage used for each reporting year and document it.
Where it is all heading
GHG Protocol is revising its entire corporate suite through four technical working groups - Corporate Standard, Scope 2, Scope 3, and Actions and Market Instruments - governed by an Independent Standards Board with Steering Committee ratification. On 29 July 2026 it announced that these will be consolidated with ISO 14064-1 into a single co-branded standard. The Standard Development Plan of the same date targets a consolidated draft for public consultation in Q2 2027 and publication in Q4 2028, delivered as Corporate Standard Version 3.0 in parts.
Nothing changes for FY2025 and FY2026 reporting. But the data architecture decisions made now - interval electricity data, supplier primary data, a complete 15-category screen - are what will make the 2028 standard survivable.
Standards in this family
10 documents.
The foundation document. It sets the consolidation approaches, defines Scopes 1, 2 and 3, and establishes base year and recalculation requirements. It is the standard SGX Practice Note 7.6 and IFRS S2 name explicitly.
Organisational boundaries. "Companies shall account for and report their consolidated GHG data according to either the equity share or control approach." Equity share follows economic interest, with economic substance overriding legal form. Financial control means the ability to direct financial and operating policies with a view to economic benefit. Operational control means full authority to introduce and implement operating policies. The policy must be applied at all levels, and the same rules apply to state-owned and mixed public-private joint operations.
Operational boundaries. Scope 1 is direct emissions from owned or controlled sources. Scope 2 is indirect emissions from purchased or acquired electricity, steam, heat and cooling. Scope 3 is everything else in the value chain. Scope 1 and 2 are required; "Scope 3 is an optional reporting category" under this edition.
Gases. The 2004 text covers the six Kyoto Protocol gases - CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs and SF6 - and requires data for all six separately. NF3 came later, via the 2013 amendment.
Base year. Companies shall choose and report a base year for which verifiable data are available and specify why, shall develop a recalculation policy, and shall state any significance threshold used. A multi-year average is permitted to smooth an atypical year.
Other supporting documents on the same page and frequently overlooked: Base Year Adjustments, and Categorizing GHG Emissions from Leased Assets - the latter matters enormously in Singapore, where most corporate occupancy is leased office space and the leased-asset classification decides whether electricity lands in Scope 2 or in Scope 3 category 8.
The February 2013 amendment to the Corporate Standard that added nitrogen trifluoride to the required gases and set out global warming potential requirements. It is the reason the seven-gas list exists.
GHG Protocol's own Standard Development Plan describes it plainly: an amendment to the Corporate Standard was published in 2013 to provide updated requirements regarding the greenhouse gases to include in inventories. It is downloadable from the Corporate Standard page as Required gases and GWP values.
Why it is worth knowing about. A great deal of published commentary attributes the seven-gas list to the 2004 Corporate Standard. It does not appear there: the 2004 text refers to the six Kyoto Protocol gases and its reporting requirement names CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs and SF6. NF3 appears in the 2004 text only incidentally, in a semiconductor sector table. If you are citing a requirement to include NF3, cite the 2013 amendment, not the 2004 standard.
Singapore relevance. NF3 and SF6 are used in semiconductor and display fabrication, both significant Singapore industries, and they are Scope 1 process emissions, not Scope 3. They also carry very high global warming potentials, so omitting them can outweigh every refinement made elsewhere in an inventory.
On global warming potential values generally. IFRS S2 does not name a specific IPCC report; it requires 100-year values from the latest assessment available at the reporting date, which currently resolves to AR6 but will roll forward. GRI 102 uses the same formulation. A system that hard-codes a particular assessment report will silently become non-compliant when the next one lands.
An amendment to the Corporate Standard covering purchased electricity. It requires companies with any operations in markets offering contractual instruments to report two Scope 2 figures - one location-based, one market-based - each labelled by method.
Conformance with the Scope 2 Guidance is required to prepare a Corporate Standard-conformant inventory.
The dual reporting rule. Companies operating only in markets with no product or supplier-specific data or contractual instruments report a single location-based result. Companies with any operations in markets that do provide them "shall account and report scope 2 emissions in two ways and label each result according to the method", covering all operations under both methods. Operations in markets that do not support a market-based approach are calculated location-based, which makes their two results identical.
Location-based hierarchy (Table 6.2). Regional or subnational grid factors that approximate the actual distribution and use area and adjust for physical imports and exports rank above national production factors that do not. Factors should convey combustion-only emission rates in tonnes per MWh or kWh.
Market-based data hierarchy (Table 6.3), most to least precise: energy attribute certificates or equivalent instruments; contracts for electricity such as power purchase agreements; supplier or utility emission rates; residual mix; other grid-average factors. Note the table is titled examples, and the body text warns it does not represent a preferred hierarchy of specific instruments and that instruments listed are not guaranteed to meet the quality criteria. Do not treat it as a rigid decision tree.
The eight Quality Criteria (Table 7.1) must all be met by any instrument used. In outline: convey the direct emission rate attribute; be the only instruments carrying that claim for that generation; be tracked and retired by or for the reporting entity; be issued and retired as close as possible to the consumption period; be sourced from the same market as the consuming operations; utility-specific factors must be based on delivered electricity with certificates accounted for; direct purchasers must ensure no other instruments convey the claim; and a residual mix must be available for consumers, or its absence must be disclosed.
Goal setting. If a company sets a reduction goal it shall clarify whether it is based on the location-based or market-based total, and if it reports a single Scope 1 plus 2 total it shall disclose which method was used.
Defines the 15 Scope 3 categories, eight upstream and seven downstream, with a minimum boundary for each. The minimum boundary is generally the value chain partner's Scope 1 and 2 emissions; categories 1 and 2 are the exceptions.
Upstream
- Purchased goods and services - extraction, production and transport of goods and services bought in the reporting year that are not in categories 2 to 8. Minimum boundary: all cradle-to-gate emissions.
- Capital goods - extraction, production and transport of capital goods bought in the reporting year. Minimum boundary: all cradle-to-gate emissions, accounted for in full in the year of acquisition rather than depreciated.
- Fuel- and energy-related activities not in Scope 1 or 2 - upstream emissions of purchased fuels, upstream emissions of purchased electricity, transmission and distribution losses, and for utilities the generation of electricity sold on.
- Upstream transportation and distribution - transport of purchased products between tier 1 suppliers and the company, plus purchased logistics services, in vehicles the company does not own or control.
- Waste generated in operations - disposal and treatment of waste from the company's operations in facilities it does not own or control.
- Business travel - transport of employees for business in vehicles not owned or operated by the company.
- Employee commuting - transport of employees between home and worksite in vehicles not owned or operated by the company.
- Upstream leased assets - operation of assets the company leases as lessee that are not already in Scope 1 and 2.
Downstream
- Downstream transportation and distribution - transport of sold products from the company's operations to the end consumer where the company does not pay for it, including retail and storage.
- Processing of sold products - processing of intermediate products by downstream companies.
- Use of sold products - end use of goods and services sold in the reporting year. Minimum boundary: direct use-phase emissions over expected lifetime, covering products that consume fuel or electricity, sold fuels and feedstocks, and greenhouse gases contained in or formed by products.
- End-of-life treatment of sold products - waste disposal and treatment of sold products at end of life.
- Downstream leased assets - operation of assets the company owns and leases to others that are not already in Scope 1 and 2.
- Franchises - operation of franchises, reported by the franchisor. Minimum boundary: franchisees' Scope 1 and 2.
- Investments - operation of equity and debt investments and project finance, allocated by the company's proportional share of investment.
Singapore texture. Category 11 dominates for refiners, petrochemical exporters and marine bunker suppliers. Category 15 dominates for banks, insurers and asset managers. Category 6 is amplified by Singapore's regional hub role. Category 8 is the classic tenant case - leased floors on landlord-supplied chilled water without separate metering.
The companion document that explains how to actually calculate each category. It sets out four methods - supplier-specific, hybrid, average-data and spend-based - and expects companies to combine them.
Supplier-specific method - collect product-level cradle-to-gate inventory data from suppliers and multiply by quantity purchased. Best where the supply base is concentrated.
Hybrid method - combine supplier-specific activity data where available with secondary data to fill gaps. This usually means collecting allocated Scope 1 and 2 data from suppliers plus their activity data on materials, fuel, electricity, distance and waste. It is the realistic target state for a manufacturer engaging tier 1 suppliers, and it is the method that makes supplier engagement visible in the numbers.
Average-data method - multiply physical quantities such as mass by industry-average factors from a life cycle inventory database. Best for commodity inputs where tonnage is known.
Spend-based method - multiply procurement spend by environmentally extended input-output factors, with inflation adjustment where the factor's base year differs from the activity year. To be used where the other methods are not feasible.
An important caveat the guidance itself makes: more specific is not automatically more accurate. The guidance warns that even though the supplier-specific and hybrid methods are more specific to the individual supplier, they may not produce a more accurate reflection of the product's contribution.
Singapore caution on spend-based data. There is no published Singapore input-output emission factor set, so Singapore reporters apply United States, European or global factors to Singapore dollar spend. That requires an explicit currency conversion and an inflation adjustment, both of which must be disclosed, and it imports the source economy's production structure - a US factor applied to Singapore-procured services embeds the US grid, not Singapore's. Spend-based results then move with prices and exchange rates rather than with decarbonisation, and a supplier that genuinely cuts emissions shows no improvement at all. Treat spend-based figures as a screening tool for prioritisation, not as a basis for tracking targets.
Methods may be mixed within and across categories, but the choice must be disclosed and applied consistently year to year - otherwise you have created a methodology change that can trigger base-year recalculation.
GHG Protocol is revising its entire corporate suite and consolidating it with ISO 14064-1 into a single co-branded standard. The Standard Development Plan of 29 July 2026 targets public consultation in Q2 2027 and publication in Q4 2028.
Governance. Four technical working groups - Corporate Standard, Scope 2, Scope 3, and Actions and Market Instruments - develop the content. An Independent Standards Board reviews and decides; a Steering Committee ratifies publication.
What has already been delivered: the Scope 2 public consultation (October 2025), the Corporate Standard Phase 1 Progress Update (December 2025), the Scope 3 Phase 1 Progress Update (March 2026) and the Actions and Market Instruments Request for Information (March 2026).
Forward milestones, verbatim from the Standard Development Plan (Version 2.0, 29 July 2026, superseding four separate plans of 20 December 2024): "Consolidated draft standard for public consultation (estimated Q2 2027)" and "Published revised standard (estimated Q4 2028)". The target document is explicitly the Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard Version 3.0, delivered in parts. The plan notes the timeline shifted mainly because of the ISO partnership, and that adding a pilot testing phase would extend it further.
The ISO merger. On 29 July 2026 GHG Protocol announced that its Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 and Actions and Market Instruments standards will be combined with ISO 14064-1 into a single harmonised standard, following the ISO partnership announced in September 2025 and a COP30 Presidency mandate in November 2025 for the two bodies to lead harmonisation. ISO technical community members joined the working groups in Q1 2026; ISO/TC 207/SC 7 will review the consultation draft through its committee draft stage; and adopted standards will be published under a dual logo.
Why Singapore should care. Local reporters currently navigate two regimes - GHG Protocol for IFRS S2, SGX, GRI, CDP and SBTi, and ISO 14064-1 for manufacturers and certification-body-verified inventories. The merger removes genuinely duplicated effort, but only from roughly 2029. Do not re-platform in anticipation; keep the two mapped side by side and watch the Q2 2027 consultation, which is the first sight of actual merged text.
Note on superseded statements. The December 2025 Corporate Standard update said a complete draft would appear in mid-2026, and the August 2025 Scope 2 blog said final text was anticipated by mid-2026. Both are superseded by the July 2026 plan.
Draft proposals published in December 2025 would require consolidation based on control and eliminate equity share as an option, recommending financial control as the default. All of it is draft and unapproved.
Status caveat, in GHG Protocol's own words: "This is not a GHG Protocol Standard; all content is draft and subject to change", and the proposed text has not yet been approved by the Independent Standards Board. The document also states its contents are not subject to public consultation at this time.
The five proposed changes:
1. Require consolidation based on control, eliminating the equity share approach as an option.
2. Recommend financial control, with a definition aligned to financial accounting consolidation in a principles-based, GAAP-agnostic way.
3. Recommend separately reporting emissions under operational control that are not under financial control, where financial control alone gives an incomplete picture.
4. Maintain operational control as a standalone option.
5. Expand disclosure requirements where a company departs from recommendations 2 or 3.
The draft text still carries GHG Protocol's own square brackets around unsettled wording, which is a useful reminder of how provisional this is.
The rationale given is that only a small minority - 2 per cent - of companies publicly disclosing emissions to CDP in 2023 chose the equity share approach. Equity in entities not under financial control would move to Scope 3 category 15 based on percentage equity owned.
Also proposed: adopting a Scope 3 requirement in the Corporate Standard itself, harmonised with the Scope 3 Standard and defined with a quantitative exclusion threshold - in other words, Scope 3 moving from optional to required.
Who this hits in Singapore. Companies currently on equity share, common among listed holding companies with large associate portfolios and among joint operations in the energy and chemicals cluster, would have to re-baseline onto a control basis. That is exactly the kind of methodology change that triggers base-year recalculation. Modelling the control-basis boundary in parallel now turns the eventual transition into a disclosure rather than a surprise.
On 14 July 2025 the Independent Standards Board voted 10 to 1 on both location-based and market-based proposals to advance them to consultation. The consultation ran 20 October 2025 to 31 January 2026 and drew about 1,100 responses from 56 countries.
What is proposed. A clarified definition of Scope 2 and of both methods, with the market-based method retaining its existing basis while specifying temporal correlation and deliverability when matching instruments to consumption. Explicit hierarchies across three dimensions: boundary (local, then operational grid, then grid-wide or national), temporal granularity (hourly preferred) and emission factor type. Dual reporting is retained.
Hourly accounting is not forced where data does not exist. If a company has hourly emission factors but only annual activity data, the proposal is that it is not required to calculate location-based emissions hourly. Load profiles may be used to estimate hourly activity data, in a defined hierarchy from hourly metered consumption down to supplier-derived profiles, but should not replace hourly accounting based on actual data. Detailed data is only required where it is free and publicly accessible, to avoid forcing purchases of proprietary datasets.
Hourly matching is required only when companies make voluntary clean energy claims. Feasibility measures in the draft include exemptions for smaller organisations and a legacy clause for long-term contracts.
An outcome often missed: the same Independent Standards Board vote rejected advancing the Marginal Impact Method, by 7 against to 4 in favour.
Why this is the most consequential revision for Singapore.
1. Hourly matching against a solar-backed certificate supply is structurally hard. Solar generates in daylight hours; a 24-hour data centre or hospital cannot hourly-match its night load with solar certificates. Annual-matched claims that look clean today would show large unmatched night-time hours.
2. Geographic deliverability would formalise what Quality Criterion 5 already implies - certificates from neighbouring countries would be explicitly non-deliverable to a Singapore load absent a physical import pathway. Singapore's low-carbon electricity import programme therefore becomes a Scope 2 accounting story, not only an energy policy one.
3. Start capturing interval consumption data now. A company with three years of interval data when the revised standard lands can restate; one with only monthly bills will be relying on load profiles.
Next steps. Per the July 2026 Standard Development Plan, the working group processes consultation and ISO feedback in Q3 and Q4 2026, revised text enters the consolidated draft in Q2 2027, and the Board decides whether any topics need a second consultation round.
The Scope 3 Phase 1 Progress Update of 31 March 2026 describes draft revisions in three series covering data quality, boundary setting and investments. All draft, none approved.
Status caveat. "This is not a GHG Protocol Standard; all content is draft and subject to change", and the contents are not subject to public consultation at this time.
Series A - data quality. Revision A1 would require reported Scope 3 emissions to be disaggregated into tiers by data type, to incentivise primary data collection - which would expose on the face of the disclosure how much of an inventory is spend-based. Revision A2 would require companies that verify some or all of Scope 3 to state whether it is "fully verified", "partially verified" or "not verified". Further proposals cover high-completeness emission factors, regional factor expectations and data quality improvement targets.
Series B - boundary setting. Revision B1 would require companies to report at least 95 per cent of total required Scope 3 emissions. Revision B2 would require all required Scope 3 emissions to be quantified in order to validate that exclusions total less than 5 per cent - any method may be used, including hotspot analysis (B3), and de minimis exclusions count within the 5 per cent (B5). Revision B7 would require required and optional emissions to be reported separately. Revision B11 would add a new category 16, other value chain activities, covering facilitated emissions - emissions from third-party activities from which the company earns direct transactional income but never buys, sells or owns - including a licensing subcategory. Importantly, the majority of subcategories within category 16 are proposed to be optional, to keep it feasible.
Series C - investments. These narrow category 15, moving insurance-associated activities, underwriting and issuance, and other financial services to category 16; make all listed investments required; require the boundary to include investee Scope 3; apply the 5 per cent threshold to category 15; add a percentage-carrying-value disclosure; and include debt in proportional equity calculations.
What it means in Singapore. Banks and insurers should read Series C closely - the migration of underwriting and facilitated activity into a new category, and the inclusion of investee Scope 3, are very large changes for a regional corporate book. Everyone else should note that B1 and B2 together make a full 15-category quantification effectively mandatory: a services firm that today discloses four categories and calls the rest immaterial would have to quantify all of them, even crudely, to prove the excluded set is under 5 per cent. STI constituents were already scheduled for mandatory Scope 3 from FY2026, so this would land on companies only just building the capability.
A Request for Information issued in March 2026 proposing that market instruments and the climate impact of actions be reported in separate statements that supplement, rather than replace, the physical inventory. The comment period closed 31 May 2026.
The document is the Actions and Market Instruments Phase 1 Progress Update White Paper, Version 3 - Request for Information, dated March 2026, with a comment period stated as running until 31 May 2026.
The problem it addresses. How should a company account for the real-world climate impact of actions that sit outside its physical Scope 1, 2 and 3 inventory - carbon credits, energy attribute certificates, avoided-emissions claims, and interventions in supply chains the buyer does not own?
The proposed architecture. Keep the physical inventory, and add separate statements. Four are under consideration: Statement 1, the physical inventory; Statement 2, a market-based inventory; Statement 3, the greenhouse gas impacts of actions assessed against baseline scenarios; and Statement 4, selected non-greenhouse-gas indicators.
This is a significant conceptual move. It would pull market-based Scope 2 out of the physical inventory presentation and into a separate market-instruments statement. SBTi has already moved in the same direction by basing Scope 2 emissions targets only on the physical, location-based inventory.
Singapore relevance. Singapore corporates lean heavily on instruments: energy attribute certificates for Scope 2, and - because taxable facilities under the Carbon Pricing Act may surrender eligible international carbon credits against a portion of taxable emissions - carbon credits on the Scope 1 side. This workstream will determine whether and how such credits may appear anywhere near a corporate inventory, and the direction of travel is firmly that they appear separately and are never netted against the physical inventory. The 2015 Scope 2 Guidance already says something similar about avoided emissions: such estimates are not necessarily equivalent to global emission reductions and should not be used to reduce a company's footprint.
Timing. Actions and Market Instruments is one of the four workstreams folded into the consolidated GHG Protocol and ISO standard, so its output lands in the Q2 2027 consultation draft and the Q4 2028 publication.