Skip to content
Brief 2023

Accounting for Impact

By Charles Cannon, Wenjuan Liu, Nicole Labutong, and Lachlan Wright

Jump to Section

The climate clock is ticking fast. Increasing temperatures have called for more ambitious emissions reduction goals. The latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calls for more ambitious near-term 1.5°C goals and reduction actions.

Yet corporate carbon accounting practices still focus largely on assignment of emissions and less so on assessing the impact of climate action. As focus increasingly shifts from making ambitious targets to implementing them, companies have turned to novel business models for emissions reduction, some of which critics doubt have much real-world impact.

This insight brief details the importance of consequential accounting methods in evaluating and incentivizing a company’s emissions reduction efforts and demonstrating progress toward climate targets.

About the Authors

Nicole Labutong

Lachlan Wright

Help build the clean energy future. Donate today.

Independent research. Real-world solutions. Supported by donors.

RMI can pursue the highest-impact climate and energy solutions because we’re supported by people who believe change is possible. Every gift helps advance the work needed to make clean energy the default choice worldwide.

For other ways to give to RMI, including checks or gifts of stock, please visit Other Ways to Give.