Integrated Product- and Entity-Level Carbon Accounting: Putting Concepts into Practice (October 2025) presents the EFI Foundation’s (EFIF) concise synthesis of a ledger-based accounting framework that integrates product- and entity-level carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions accounting within a single, verifiable system. Based on financial accounting principles and engineering fundamentals of carbon mass and energy balances, the framework demonstrates how rigorous, transactions-based carbon accounting can work in practice through a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) case study.
The United States currently lacks a comprehensive national framework for CO₂ emissions accounting, leaving energy-intensive industries to navigate a patchwork of international rules. Existing approaches remain fragmented and fail to provide a unified, reconcilable system that covers all carbon sources and products.
Meanwhile, international policy developments are accelerating. The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will enter full implementation in 2026, setting global benchmarks for measuring product carbon intensity. Trading partners, including China, are developing comparable product carbon footprint (PCF) standards to retain access to EU markets. These shifts underscore the urgency for a consistent, accounting-based system that ensures fair competition for carbon-differentiated products.
EFIF’s framework is policy-agnostic, technology-neutral, and ledger-based, tracking carbon stocks and flows through the supply chain to provide complete, auditable coverage of emissions at both product and entity levels. The design enables transparent, comparable, and verifiable accounting that can support a range of reporting frameworks and policy applications.
By aligning carbon accounting with the structure of financial accounting, EFIF’s model offers a practical foundation for harmonizing global standards and unlocking investment in low-carbon products and processes.
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