What is the difference between ISO 14064-1 and ISO 14064-2?

ISO 14064-1 is for a company's annual GHG inventory: all emissions and removals inside its boundary. ISO 14064-2 is for a single project: the reductions or removals it achieves against a baseline scenario. Use part 1 to report your footprint and part 2 to claim what one project saved.

What each part measures

• ISO 14064-1:2018: absolute emissions and removals of an organisation over a period, usually a year, split into direct and indirect categories.
• ISO 14064-2:2019: the difference between a project and its baseline scenario, the emissions that would have happened without it. The result is tonnes reduced or removed, not a footprint.
• ISO 14064-3:2019: how a verifier checks either one. It covers verification of past figures and validation of a project plan.

Where the work differs

• Boundary: part 1 uses organisational and reporting boundaries. Part 2 sets a project boundary and lists the sources, sinks and reservoirs it controls, relates to or affects.
• Baseline: part 1 has a base year for tracking change over time. Part 2 needs a baseline scenario, justified and kept conservative.
• Monitoring: part 2 asks for a monitoring plan written before the project runs. Part 1 relies on the records you already keep.
• Credits: part 2 is a framework only. Carbon programmes such as Verra, Gold Standard or India's CCTS add their own methodologies and additionality tests, and only they issue credits.

Do not add a project's savings to your inventory

If the project sits inside your own boundary, such as rooftop solar or a boiler fuel switch, the saving already shows up as lower emissions in your part 1 inventory. Subtracting the part 2 figure as well counts it twice. If you sell credits from that project, say so in your inventory report, because a buyer may then claim the same tonnes.

Which one you need

• A buyer or lender asks for your footprint: ISO 14064-1, or the GHG Protocol.
• You want carbon credits or a verified saving from one investment: ISO 14064-2 with the programme's methodology.
• Both: keep one set of meter readings and bills, and use it for each report with its own boundary.

Illustrative example: 500,000 kWh of rooftop solar used on site

• Grid purchase before solar: 2,000,000 kWh; after: 1,500,000 kWh
• ISO 14064-1 view: Scope 2 falls from 2,000,000 x 0.710 = 1,420,000 kg to 1,500,000 x 0.710 = 1,065,000 kg CO2
• ISO 14064-2 view: reduction = 500,000 kWh x the baseline factor the methodology sets
• At 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh that is 355,000 kg, about 355 t, the same tonnes already visible in the inventory

Project methodologies often require the CEA combined margin rather than the weighted average used here; the 0.710 figure is for illustration.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads electricity bills and fuel invoices and applies the CEA grid factor and IPCC 2006 fuel factors, which gives the activity data behind an ISO 14064-1 inventory and a dated, bill-backed record of before and after for a project.

• ISO 14064 vs the GHG Protocol
• What goes in an ISO 14064-1 report
• How to choose a VVB
• Measuring savings from an efficiency project

Sources: ISO 14064-1:2018, GHG inventories at organisation level (iso.org), ISO 14064-2:2019, GHG projects: quantification, monitoring and reporting of reductions and removals (iso.org), ISO 14064-3:2019, Verification and validation of GHG statements (iso.org)

Last reviewed 2026-10-18.