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: Another concern raised in this debate is that the approach could allow companies to shift responsibility for emissions down the value chain away from producers — potentially all the way to consumers.

FACT CHECK ✓

There is an important distinction between information and responsibility. The role of carbon accounting is to provide accurate, verifiable and comparable information; companies should remain accountable for accurately reporting their emissions; and policymakers determine how that information is used and should have the flexibility to decide where responsibility and incentives are placed to achieve the desired outcome.

Using a ledger-based system, when one company sells a product to another, the carbon information is passed through the accounting system with the transaction and incorporated as the product is transformed. The objective is to preserve and trace emissions information across the value chain, creating a consistent record of how emissions accumulate from one stage of production to the next — the information travels down the value chain, not the responsibility. Importantly, each company remains accountable for the accuracy of the carbon information it reports and for the reconciliation of that information as products are transformed and passed along the value chain. Think of it like information about a product’s ingredients: it travels from raw materials through production to the final product on the supermarket shelf, providing visibility into what went into it and where it came from, while each actor remains accountable for the information they provide.

Policy then determines where responsibility and incentives are placed. California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), for example, uses lifecycle carbon intensity, accounting for emissions across the production and use of transportation fuels. The EU’s CBAM, by contrast, applies a carbon price to embedded emissions generated during the production of covered imported goods. Different policies can therefore use carbon information differently depending on the outcome they are designed to achieve.

In other words, accounting tells us what and where the emissions are; companies are accountable for reporting their emissions accurately; policy determines where and how to act on them. Our approach is not about transferring responsibility — it is about changing behaviors and creating the conditions to reduce emissions at scale.

That’s why Carbon Measures advocates for mandatory product-level carbon intensity policies that use data to align market incentives with emissions performance and reward lower-carbon production. These policies will encourage actors throughout the supply chain to source more responsibly and to invest in low-carbon technology and products.

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