A long-awaited convergence in product carbon accounting
On April 9, 2026, the GHG Protocol and ISO confirmed the formal establishment of a Joint Working Group (JWG) to develop a harmonized product-level greenhouse gas accounting standard. Over 450 applications arrived from more than 50 countries and 410 organizations before the working group seats were filled, an unmistakable signal of how urgently the business community wants this problem solved.
The fragmentation the JWG is addressing has been a persistent headache for sustainability teams. Companies calculating product carbon footprints currently navigate a landscape with two dominant but distinct methodologies: ISO 14067 (the international standard for product carbon footprints) and the GHG Protocol Product Standard. Both are credible, both are widely used, and yet they produce results that are not always directly comparable. For companies operating across multiple jurisdictions or managing complex supply chains, this means running parallel calculations, explaining methodological differences to auditors and regulators, and accepting an underlying ambiguity in the numbers they report.
The JWG’s mandate is to end that fragmentation. The single harmonized standard it will develop is expected to become the global reference for product-level emissions accounting, with direct implications for trade policy, procurement standards, and regulatory compliance.
Why CBAM makes this urgent
The timing of the JWG announcement is not coincidental. The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is now in its transitional phase, and its full enforcement from 2026 onward requires importers to report the embedded carbon content of covered goods: cement, steel, aluminum, fertilizers, hydrogen, and electricity. The calculation methodology for that embedded carbon matters enormously, both for compliance accuracy and for competitive fairness between importers.
Currently, CBAM’s implementing regulations reference specific calculation methods that draw on existing standards. But as the mechanism expands and enforcement tightens, regulators and importers alike will benefit from a single authoritative reference. The ISO-GHG Protocol standard is positioned to become exactly that.
For companies in the steel, cement, or chemical sectors, the JWG’s work is not an abstract standards development exercise. It is the process that will determine how their products are valued, taxed, and compared at European borders for the foreseeable future. The organizations that shaped the standard through the JWG’s development process will have an inherent advantage in understanding and applying it.
What the standard will likely address
The JWG builds on the existing bodies of work from both ISO and the GHG Protocol. ISO 14067 provides a rigorous life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology for product carbon footprints. The GHG Protocol Product Standard offers a complementary framework that connects product-level accounting to corporate-level GHG inventories.
A harmonized standard will need to reconcile the methodological choices that currently distinguish them: how to handle allocation across co-products, how to treat biogenic carbon, what system boundaries apply to different product types, and how consequential versus attributional LCA approaches should be used in different contexts.
The GHG Protocol’s announcement specifically highlighted the standard’s role in enabling CBAM implementation, signaling that trade and regulatory applications will be front-of-mind in the JWG’s design choices. Expect the standard to prioritize: traceability of upstream emissions data, verification requirements that are practical at scale, and interoperability with CBAM’s reporting infrastructure.
The supply chain data challenge this creates
A harmonized product carbon accounting standard is only as useful as the data that feeds it. And here lies the most significant operational challenge for most companies: the data required for credible product-level emissions accounting typically resides in multiple supplier systems, is collected at different frequencies and granularities, and is rarely structured for carbon accounting purposes.
For companies that supply goods subject to CBAM, the standard will eventually require them to provide auditable product-level emissions data to their customers. For companies that purchase those goods, they will need to be able to ingest, validate, and consolidate that data into their own footprint calculations. This is not a small lift: it requires supply chain data infrastructure that most organizations do not yet have in place.
The 450+ organizations that applied to join the JWG include companies from across the value chain. Many of them will be designing their internal data systems now, in anticipation of requirements that will arrive when the standard is finalized around 2027-2028. Companies that wait for the standard to be published before building their data infrastructure will face a compressed implementation timeline.
How Dcycle supports product-level carbon accounting
At Dcycle, the transition from company-level to product-level carbon accounting is a challenge we are actively working on with our customers. The core infrastructure is the same: automated data collection from suppliers and operations, structured to support emissions calculations at whatever level of granularity the reporting framework requires. The difference is that product-level accounting demands more from the data upstream, and more from the organizational processes that govern data quality.
Our customers include companies that are already navigating early CBAM reporting requirements. The ISO-GHG Protocol JWG announcement reinforces what we have been telling them: the methodology question is being resolved, and the data question is the one that will determine compliance readiness. Getting supply chain data flows right now, before the standard is finalized, is the smart play.
If you are trying to understand what product-level carbon accounting means for your supply chain or your CBAM obligations, request a demo to see how Dcycle approaches this problem in practice. You can also explore our Carbon Footprint Collection for more context on how product and corporate footprint accounting connect.
The broader harmonization picture
The ISO-GHG Protocol JWG is one of several concurrent harmonization efforts that will collectively reshape the carbon accounting landscape over the next three to five years. The GHG Protocol’s AMI initiative (addressing market instruments and beyond-value-chain investments), the Scope 2 and electricity sector consultations, and now the product-level standard development are all part of the same underlying project: building a globally coherent system for measuring and communicating corporate and product-level climate performance.
For sustainability teams, the key strategic question is not which standard will “win.” All of these workstreams are advancing, and the standards they produce will be complementary rather than competitive. The question is how to build internal data and reporting infrastructure that can adapt as these frameworks evolve, rather than being rebuilt from scratch each time a new requirement arrives.
The organizations that approach this as a data architecture problem, rather than a compliance checkbox problem, will be the ones that navigate the next generation of standards most effectively.
What to watch for
The JWG will work over the next one to two years to develop the harmonized standard, with input from the 450+ member organizations. Key milestones to monitor:
- Draft standard release: Expected 2027. This is when the methodological choices become concrete and companies can assess their compliance readiness.
- CBAM expansion scope: The EU is evaluating which sectors to add to CBAM in subsequent phases. The product-level standard’s development timeline aligns with the CBAM expansion calendar.
- National adoption: Major economies outside the EU (UK, Canada, Australia) are developing their own border carbon mechanisms. The ISO-GHG Protocol standard’s legitimacy as an ISO standard will accelerate its adoption in these jurisdictions.
For now, the most productive action for most companies is to assess their current product carbon footprint capabilities against what a rigorous, harmonized standard will likely require. The gap between current practice and future requirements is rarely as large as it feels, but it is almost always larger than what can be closed in the final months before a deadline.