GHG Protocol and ISO Will Merge Into a Single Corporate Carbon Standard by 2028 — And SLFRS S2 Points at the Old One
On 29 July 2026, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol announced that its corporate standards and ISO 14064-1 will be consolidated into one joint global standard, to be published in the fourth quarter of 2028. Sri Lanka’s first mandatory SLFRS S2 filers are building their inventories on the standard being replaced. What follows is what changes, what does not, and what a preparer should do about it now.
By the ESGNexus Editorial Team · August 2026 · Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
KEY TAKEAWAYS
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The measurement rulebook underneath almost every corporate emissions disclosure in the world is being rewritten, and a publication date has now been set. On 29 July 2026, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol — convened by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development — announced that it will consolidate its corporate accounting standards with ISO’s into a single harmonised global corporate standard, scheduled for publication in the fourth quarter of 2028.
For Sri Lanka, the timing is awkward in a specific and useful way. The country’s first mandatory sustainability reporting cycle is running right now, under SLFRS S1 and S2. And SLFRS S2 does not invent its own way of counting emissions. It points at a document — the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, 2004 — which is one of the standards being absorbed into the new one.
What Was Actually Announced
Three things, of unequal weight.
The first is the structural change. GHG Protocol and ISO will merge their corporate-level carbon accounting standards into one. On the GHG Protocol side, that means the Corporate Standard (2004), the Scope 2 Guidance (2015), the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard (2011), and the Actions and Market Instruments workstream. On the ISO side, it means ISO 14064-1. The stated aim is to reduce duplication and improve consistency for companies, investors and policymakers working across more than one framework.
| The stated goal is to “reduce fragmentation, increase interoperability, and provide organisations worldwide with a single trusted foundation” for climate reporting and decision-making.— Greenhouse Gas Protocol, 29 July 2026 |
The second is a revised timeline. The governance bodies of both organisations have approved a single consolidated public consultation in Q2 2027, with publication of the joint standard in Q4 2028. The standard is expected in a two-part structure, accompanied by separate implementation guidance.
The third is a set of workstream updates that are less headline-friendly but more immediately relevant to preparers: the published results of the Scope 2 public consultation, and preliminary feedback from the Request for Information on Actions and Market Instruments.
Why This Reaches Colombo: the SLFRS S2 Measurement Chain
The link is not rhetorical. It is mechanical, and it is worth setting out precisely, because this is the part most local commentary will miss.
SLFRS S2 is Sri Lanka’s adoption of IFRS S2, the ISSB’s climate-related disclosures standard. IFRS S2 requires an entity to measure its greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard (2004) — unless a jurisdictional authority or an exchange on which the entity is listed requires a different method. That jurisdictional carve-out is real and has since been clarified and extended by the ISSB, but the default remains the 2004 document.
So the chain runs: a Sri Lankan first-wave filer applies SLFRS S2; SLFRS S2 sends it to the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard (2004); and that standard is now scheduled to be consolidated into a jointly-owned GHG Protocol–ISO standard in 2028. The ruler embedded in a mandatory Sri Lankan reporting requirement has an announced replacement date.
There is a second, quieter consequence for companies here. ISO 14064-1 has long been the alternative route — the standard many organisations use when they want their inventory verified rather than merely prepared. Sri Lankan companies have therefore been able to sit on either side of a genuine methodological fork, or straddle both. That fork is being closed. Whichever side a company currently stands on, it is walking toward the same destination.
Scope 2: the Question That Did Not Get Answered
The Scope 2 consultation is where the honest reading matters most, because the announcement resolves less than it appears to.
GHG Protocol reports that stakeholders held materially different views on how corporate electricity procurement should be reflected in emissions accounting — and, more fundamentally, that different stakeholders want Scope 2 reporting to do different jobs. The consultation surfaced strong interest in improving transparency and in making sure that reported outcomes and the claims built on them actually line up. It did not produce consensus on method.
The response is telling. Rather than picking a winner, GHG Protocol says its Independent Standards Board and Technical Working Group will explore whether offering multiple reporting approaches — reflecting different theories of how procurement drives decarbonisation — is the better answer. That is a signal preparers should read carefully. A standard that permits more than one approach is a standard that shifts the burden onto the reporting entity to explain which approach it chose and why.
For any Sri Lankan company with renewable procurement, rooftop solar, net metering arrangements or certificate-based claims sitting inside its Scope 2 number, that is the disclosure risk worth watching. Not the arithmetic — the justification.
Actions and Market Instruments: the Multi-Statement Turn
The third update is the one with something a preparer can use this quarter.
The Actions and Market Instruments workstream, launched in 2024, asks how organisations should report the effects of the things they do — projects, investments, contractual instruments — alongside their physical emissions inventory. Preliminary feedback from the Request for Information shows significant support for three related ideas: a multi-statement reporting structure, a market-based inventory approach, and a dedicated statement for the greenhouse gas impacts of actions. A fuller summary is still to come, and a public consultation on the draft standard is due in Q2 2027.
A multi-statement structure means separating things that are currently often blended: physical inventory emissions, market-based or contractual inventory emissions, and the emissions impacts of actions a company has taken. The point is to make clear what has been measured, how, and what claim it is meant to support.
Pending the final standard, GHG Protocol has issued interim guidance: organisations that wish to begin adopting a multi-statement approach should report those three categories separately and transparently, and should not net between them. That is a specific, adoptable practice available today, and it is the single most useful sentence in the announcement for a Sri Lankan sustainability team.
The Timeline
| Date | What happens |
| 29 July 2026 | GHG Protocol announces the ISO partnership, publishes Scope 2 public consultation results (full summary, executive summary and raw survey data), and releases preliminary Actions and Market Instruments feedback. |
| Q2 2027 | Consolidated public consultation on the joint GHG Protocol–ISO corporate standard. A separate public consultation on the draft Actions and Market Instruments standard runs in the same quarter. |
| Q4 2028 | Publication of the consolidated joint corporate standard, in a two-part structure with supporting implementation guidance. |
Source: Greenhouse Gas Protocol, “GHG Protocol Announces Key Standard Development Updates: FAQ Resource”, 29 July 2026 — ghgprotocol.org
What This Does Not Mean
Three clarifications, because standard-setting announcements are routinely over-read.
It does not require any company to restate anything. Inventories prepared for FY2025/26 under the current GHG Protocol standards remain prepared under the standards that were in force. There is no retrospective obligation here and no reason to reopen a closed reporting cycle.
It does not tell us what the ISSB will do. GHG Protocol’s announcement does not state whether, or when, the ISSB will update IFRS S2’s reference from the 2004 Corporate Standard to the consolidated standard. That is a decision for the ISSB, and it has not been made publicly. GHG Protocol notes only that target-setting bodies, disclosure programmes and regulators will continue to make their own determinations about which reporting elements are relevant for their purposes, and that it is engaging with them on alignment. Anyone telling you the transition date for SLFRS S2 preparers is currently guessing.
And it does not settle Scope 2. The consultation closed; the method did not. Treat any vendor claim of a settled 2028 Scope 2 methodology with suspicion for at least the next twelve months.
What to Do Now
Four steps, in order of return on effort.
1. Document your method, not just your number. If your GHG inventory is prepared under GHG Protocol, under ISO 14064-1, or under both, write down which, for which boundary, and why. When two standards merge, the organisations that suffer are the ones that cannot reconstruct what they did. This is a half-day of work now and a very expensive archaeology project in 2029.
2. Adopt the no-netting discipline early. Report physical inventory emissions, market-based emissions, and the impacts of climate actions as separate figures. Even if you present them together, do not blend them into a single net number. This is where the standard is heading, it costs nothing to start, and it materially improves the credibility of any decarbonisation claim you make in the meantime.
3. Check your assurance and vendor contracts for standard-version language. Multi-year engagements written against “the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard” without a version reference will need attention. Contracts signed in 2027 should anticipate a 2028 publication.
4. Put Q2 2027 in the calendar as a participation window, not a reading window. A consolidated public consultation is the one point at which a Sri Lankan preparer, chamber or professional body can put a South Asian implementation reality on the record. Sri Lankan participation in global standard-setting consultations has historically been thin. This one is worth the submission.
The Broader Point
Sri Lanka has spent the past two years arguing about whether to report. That argument is over; SLFRS S1 and S2 are in force for the first-wave cohort. The next argument — the one that determines whether any of this disclosure is comparable — is about how emissions are counted, by whose rules, and with what version stamped on them.
A company that can answer “under which standard, which version, which boundary, and where is that written down?” will survive the 2028 transition as an administrative exercise. A company that cannot will discover in 2029 that it never really had an inventory. It had a number.
ESGNexus will track the consolidated standard through its Q2 2027 consultation and Q4 2028 publication, and will report on any ISSB decision to re-point SLFRS S2’s measurement basis. Our company disclosure profiles grade what Sri Lankan companies actually disclose against SLFRS S1 and S2, page reference by page reference. To follow the first mandatory reporting cycle as it happens, subscribe to The ESGNexus Weekly.
Sources & Further Reading
Greenhouse Gas Protocol, “GHG Protocol Announces Key Standard Development Updates: FAQ Resource”, 29 July 2026 — ghgprotocol.org
Greenhouse Gas Protocol, “GHG Protocol Announces Key Standard Development Updates”, 29 July 2026 — ghgprotocol.org
Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Consolidated Standard Development Plan, 29 July 2026 (PDF) — ghgprotocol.org
Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Scope 2 Public Consultation — Summary of Feedback, executive summary and raw survey data, 29 July 2026 — ghgprotocol.org
Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Consequential Electricity-Sector Emissions Impacts — Summary of Feedback, 29 July 2026 — ghgprotocol.org
IFRS Foundation, IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures, June 2023, and Amendments to Greenhouse Gas Emissions Disclosures — ifrs.org
International Organization for Standardization, ISO 14064-1:2018, Greenhouse gases — Part 1 — iso.org
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Data disclaimer: Information in this article is sourced from publicly available documents. ESGNexus does not independently verify company disclosures. Errors and omissions excepted.