Why Corporate Carbon Accounting Is Failing the Climate

Corporate climate strategy currently relies on supply chain estimates that can be off by a factor of ten. According to Dr. Spencer Brennan, founder of the Cambridge-based firm Neutreeno, this discrepancy is equivalent to misreporting revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars. While financial markets demand precision, carbon reporting often settles for industry averages that satisfy compliance checklists while failing to drive actual decarbonization. This lack of transparency provides a convenient shield for companies that remain off-track for their climate commitments.

The timing for this failure is particularly precarious. European regulators are easing emissions rules for thousands of industrial sites, and in the United States, the EPA has moved to reverse findings that greenhouse gases endanger public health. As government oversight recedes, the burden of accountability shifts entirely to private data. To bridge this gap, researchers have introduced the CSA Principles, a framework requiring emissions data to be credible, scalable, and actionable. By moving beyond mere estimation, these principles aim to force companies to identify specific manufacturing changes that reduce carbon output, rather than simply massaging figures to satisfy reporting standards.