Carbon Measures aims to accelerate emissions reductions by turning carbon data into economic incentives that reward the production, purchase, and investment in lower-carbon products. Its approach advocates for mandatory product-level carbon intensity regulations, supported by granular, comparable, and verifiable data, to create lasting market demand for lower-carbon solutions in hard-to-abate sectors.

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Misconception: Critics have also raised concerns that the approach could provide a mechanism for emissions-intensive industries to avoid accountability or greenwash their efforts.

FACT CHECK ✓ The architecture Carbon Measures is pursuing should make greenwashing harder, not easier. Better product-level data cannot eliminate greenwashing completely on its own, but more precise, verifiable and comparable information makes unsupported claims harder to make.

Everything starts with greater confidence in the underlying data and the ability to pinpoint where emissions occur across the value chain. A ledger-based system aims to preserve carbon information as products move through that value chain, creating a traceable record of emissions at each stage of a product’s lifecycle rather than relying on estimates when primary data is available. The goal is to improve the precision and traceability while enabling better decision-making.

The same focus on data integrity is reflected in the Guiding Principles for Carbon Accounting that guide the work of the Technical Expert Panel. These include accuracy, verifiability, comparability, representational faithfulness, fungibility, conservation across entities and completeness of scope — all aimed at ensuring carbon accounts reflect underlying emissions, can be independently verified and compared, and maintain the integrity of emissions information as it moves through the value chain.

The result is greater visibility into the actual carbon intensity of products and a stronger basis for distinguishing credible carbon claims from those that are disconnected from actual performance.

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