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ISO 14064 Greenhouse Gas Verification carbon figures that survive scrutiny
Someone has asked for your emissions figures: a customer building its scope 3 inventory, a registry, a lender, an importer filling in a border carbon declaration. ISO 14064 sets out how a greenhouse gas inventory is quantified, documented and then independently verified, so the number you publish is defensible rather than self-declared.
You need ISO 14064 if…
- !A customer’s procurement team wants verified scope 1 and scope 2 figures before it renews the supply contract.
- !You are selling carbon credits or renewable attributes and the registry will not list unverified reductions.
- !A lender or investor questionnaire asks who verified the emissions numbers in your annual disclosure.
- !Border carbon paperwork requires installation-level emissions data that an importer can rely on and defend.
- !The inventory was built in one spreadsheet by one person, and that person has since left.
- !A sustainability claim in your marketing has been challenged and nobody can produce the calculation behind it.
ISO 14064 is a three-part series for greenhouse gas work. Part 1 covers organisational inventories, Part 2 covers emission reduction projects, and Part 3 sets out how a third party validates or verifies the claims made under either.
This is verification, not certification. An accredited validation and verification body issues a signed statement and opinion on the inventory. There is no management-system certificate here.
A verification statement covers one reporting period, normally a financial year. Each new inventory has to be verified again; no three-year cycle applies.
Manufacturers, utilities and energy companies, project developers selling credits, and any supplier whose customers are assembling a scope 3 inventory.
Where this certification is demanded
ISO 14064 is applicable across 4 of the 25 industries SIS covers. The pages below set out the specific reason it comes up in each one.
What ISO 14064 Actually Requires
The backbone an implementer has to build, in the order it usually gets built.
Decide whether emissions are consolidated by operational control, financial control or equity share, then list every site and legal entity that falls inside the boundary.
Sort sources into direct emissions, indirect emissions from imported energy, transport, purchased products, use of sold products and other indirect categories, with every exclusion justified in writing.
Document the calculation approach source by source: activity data, emission factors, global warming potentials, and the published version of each factor set used.
Meter readings, fuel invoices and production records must be traceable, with named responsibility for collection and checking, and an honest assessment of uncertainty.
Fix the base year against which reductions are measured, and write the policy that says when acquisitions, disposals or method changes force a recalculation.
Produce a report a verifier can follow end to end: boundaries, methods, results by category, exclusions, uncertainties, and the person accountable for the figures.
How ISO 14064 Verification Works
No black box. A defined, time-bound route from first call to verification statement.
Engagement & Assurance Level
We agree the reporting period, the organisational boundary, which categories are in scope, and whether you need limited or reasonable assurance. Materiality is set here.
2–5 daysInventory Review & Strategic Analysis
The verifier risk-rates each source, and the trouble is usually one purchased-electricity figure carried forward from last year because the meter data never arrived. Everything downstream waits on it.
1–3 weeksVerification Fieldwork
Site visits, sampling of meters and invoices, recalculation of selected sources, interviews with the people who key in the data. Findings are raised and cleared before any opinion is drafted.
3–10 audit daysVerification Statement Issued
The signed opinion states the assurance level and any qualification. Registries read it before listing a reduction; customers file it against their own scope 3 return. Verification repeats each period.
Covers one reporting periodIndustries That Need ISO 14064
Commonly taken alongside
Not Sure Which Certification You Need?
Three questions. The selector reads the same industry-to-standard mapping this whole site is built on, then shortlists what applies to you.
Which sector best describes your organisation?
Your disclosure date is fixed. The verification window is not.
Verification opinions get qualified for one reason more than any other: activity data that cannot be traced back to a meter reading or an invoice. Show us that trail first.
Get My Free Quote →What ISO 14064 Changes for Your Business
Certification is not a certificate on the wall. It is a working system that pays for itself.
Numbers buyers accept
A verified inventory answers a customer’s scope 3 request with a document instead of a spreadsheet. Supplier questionnaires get shorter, and approved vendor status stops being reopened every year.
Access to carbon markets
Registries and offtakers will not pay for reductions nobody has checked. Verification is the gate between a claimed tonne and a tradable one.
Filings that hold up
Where emissions reports go to a regulator or an exchange, verified data cuts the risk of restatement, rejected filings and penalties calculated on tonnage.
Fewer awkward restatements
Base year rules, documented factors and a traceable audit trail mean last year’s figures still stand when finance is asked to reproduce them.
Confidence in due diligence
Climate questions in diligence and covenant reporting get answered with an independent opinion rather than an internal estimate nobody outside the company has tested.
Targets that mean something
Once quantification is fixed, energy and process projects can be measured against a stable baseline, so claimed savings survive the following year’s verification.
Knowledge Base - Downloads
Practical documents prepared by our auditors. Fill the short form once and every download on the page unlocks.
Evidence a GHG verifier will ask for
The invoices, meter logs, factor sources and calculation files to have ready before fieldwork, listed by emission category.
Setting organisational and operational boundaries
Operational control against equity share, and what moves in the reported total when an entity shifts from one to the other.
How to structure a GHG inventory report
A report layout following the ISO 14064-1 headings, including the exclusion and uncertainty statements a verifier will always look for.
Limited versus reasonable assurance explained
What each assurance level costs you in sampling and evidence, and which reporting regimes are moving from one to the other.
Frequently Asked Questions
Straight answers to what buyers ask before they commit to ISO 14064.
Is ISO 14064 a certification?
How often does verification have to be repeated?
What is the difference between limited and reasonable assurance?
Which part of the series applies to us?
Do we need ISO 14001 as well?
What usually goes wrong the first time?
Talk to a greenhouse gas verifier
One conversation settles the boundary and the assurance level. What follows is a fee and a fieldwork window your reporting calendar can absorb.
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