The Greenhouse Gas Protocol

World Resources Institute & World Business Council for Sustainable Development · 2001

Also known as GHG Protocol, Scope 1, 2 and 3

Measure an organisation’s emissions by sorting them into its own, those from the energy it buys, and those in its value chain.

Its place in the frameworkData Core›KPI management

What it does

The protocol is mostly a set of boundary rules. It says which emissions an organisation counts as its own, how bought energy is counted, and how the far larger and harder emissions upstream and downstream in the value chain are estimated. It is the common language behind most carbon reporting, which is why a figure that does not say which scopes it covers can be compared with nothing.

Reach for it when: When emissions are going to be measured, reported or asked for, and before any reduction target is set against a number.
Where it stops: It standardises the accounting, not the data. Value-chain figures rest largely on averages and estimates, and they can move a long way when the method changes while nothing real has changed at all.

World Resources Institute & WBCSD, The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, 2001, revised 2004; Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard, 2011.

Why it sits at KPI management

Choosing the few measures the organisation is actually run on, defining them so two people would agree, setting what good looks like, and reviewing them honestly.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

Choosing what to measureKaplan & Norton’s balanced scorecard, and the leading-against-lagging distinction that determines whether a measure permits a response.
DefinitionsMeasurement-system practice on operational definitions, and the reproducibility requirement that separates a measure from an impression.
Targets and thresholdsGoal-setting research on specific and demanding targets, and statistical process control on reacting to signal rather than noise.
The reviewManagement-control research on review as the point where measurement becomes management rather than reporting.

All of KPI management

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at KPI management lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Goal CoreA KPI without a goal behind it is a number; a goal without a measure is an intention.
Data CollectionA measure that cannot be collected reliably is not a measure, whatever the definition says.
Business CoreMost operational KPIs are process measures, and they belong to whoever owns the process.
Time CoreThe review rhythm has to sit inside the organisation’s existing cycle rather than beside it.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at KPI management too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

The balanced scorecardMeasure across four perspectives at once, so financial results are read alongside what produces them.
Goodhart’s lawWhen a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.

Elsewhere in Data Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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