ISO 14064-1:2018
ISO 14064 Greenhouse Gas Inventories & Verification
Carbon numbers rigorous enough to publish, procure with and verify.
Direct emissions
Scope 1 · fuel and fleet
Energy indirect
Scope 2 · purchased power
Value chain
Scope 3 · goods and travel
Boundaries
Consolidation approach
GHG inventory
Categories 1 to 6
GHG report
Verification
Accredited verifier
Assured
Remediate returns to GHG inventory
Credible claims
Verification statement
SYS/11 · Carbon flow
Source emissions across scopes converge into a quantified inventory, clear verification and become credible claims.
What ISO 14064 is
ISO 14064-1 specifies how an organization quantifies and reports its greenhouse gas emissions and removals: boundaries, direct and indirect emission categories, data quality and the documentation a verifier examines. It is the standard behind credible corporate carbon figures.
CORE verifies GHG statements prepared to ISO 14064-1 against the criteria in ISO 14064-3, and examines 14064-1 evidence where it falls inside an ISO 14001 or ISO 50001 audit. Your verifier tests the consolidation approach against the entities and sites it claims to cover, samples activity data back to meter readings, invoices, refrigerant logs and travel records, checks that emission factors are the referenced version applied to the right activity, and reproduces the calculation for the categories that carry the most tonnes. The evidence that carries weight is traceable: a figure that can be rebuilt from a source document, a significance test written down before the exclusion was made, a base year with its recalculation trigger recorded. The findings raised most often concern significant indirect emissions excluded without a documented significance process, factors carried forward after the publisher revised them, and a reporting boundary that does not match the boundary in the accounts.
Who it is for
- Organizations whose customers, investors or regulators require a GHG statement verified by an independent body
- Suppliers answering procurement carbon-disclosure requirements that ask for third-party assurance rather than a self-declaration
- Companies fixing a base year before setting reduction targets or making an ISO 14068 neutrality claim
- Organizations moving an existing verified inventory to another body, or adding GHG verification alongside an ISO 14001 or ISO 50001 certificate
Business outcomes
What leadership should expect the system to change, in operational terms.
Verification-ready reporting
An inventory and report prepared so an accredited verifier can efficiently assure it.
Procurement compliance
Disclosure requests answered with methodical, referenced figures.
A defensible baseline
Reduction targets and neutrality pathways anchored to a documented base year.
Data pipeline
Repeatable collection and calculation that survives staff changes and audit questions.
Benefits beyond the certificate
Category clarity
Direct and indirect emissions organized in the 14064-1 categories with documented inclusion decisions.
Uncertainty managed
Data quality and uncertainty assessed rather than ignored.
Framework alignment
Mappable to GHG Protocol scopes for stakeholders who ask in that language.
Cost visibility
Energy and travel hotspots exposed by the inventory usually carry direct savings.
Anti-greenwash protection
Claims built on standard-conformant numbers withstand scrutiny.
The main requirements
The themes your auditor will examine, in plain language. The full clause detail is worked through at Stage 2.
01
Organizational boundaries
Consolidation approach across entities, sites and shared operations.
02
Reporting boundaries
Direct emissions plus the significant indirect categories, with justified exclusions.
03
Quantification
Methodologies, activity data and emission factors selected and referenced per category.
04
Base year and recalculation
A documented base year with triggers and method for recalculation.
05
Data quality and uncertainty
Quality management of data flows and assessment of uncertainty.
06
GHG report
An inventory report with the content ISO 14064-1 requires, ready for verification.
What each requirement buys you
Select a requirement theme to see the business outcomes it chiefly drives. The mapping reflects where audit sampling concentrates, not a normative ISO table.
Requirement themes
Organizational boundaries chiefly drives 2 of 4 ISO 14064 outcomes.
Outcomes it drives
Verification-ready reporting
An inventory and report prepared so an accredited verifier can efficiently assure it.
Procurement compliance
Disclosure requests answered with methodical, referenced figures.
A defensible baseline
Reduction targets and neutrality pathways anchored to a documented base year.
Data pipeline
Repeatable collection and calculation that survives staff changes and audit questions.
How CORE audits ISO 14064
Step 1
Planning fixes the boundary, the period and the level of assurance
Before fieldwork your verifier agrees what is being verified — the organizational boundary, the reporting period, the categories included and whether the engagement is to a limited or a reasonable level of assurance — and sets a materiality threshold. The inventory report, the consolidation approach and the significance process behind any excluded indirect category are read at this point, in the way a Stage 1 audit reads a documented system. Questions raised here are raised as clarifications, not findings.
Step 2
The verification examines the data behind the figures
The equivalent of a Stage 2 audit. Sampled figures are traced from the report back to the source record — meter reading, fuel invoice, refrigerant log, mileage claim, supplier statement — and the calculation is reproduced for the categories that dominate the total. Emission factors are checked against the version and publisher claimed for them, exclusions are tested against the significance process as it was written at the time, and the uncertainty and data-quality statements are compared with how the data was actually collected.
Step 3
The statement is issued by someone who did not do the fieldwork
Findings are put to you as errors, omissions and misstatements against the criteria, and material items must be corrected before an opinion can be given. As with a certification decision, the conclusion is reviewed independently of the team that gathered the evidence. What issues is a verification statement covering the stated boundary and period, not a certificate to ISO 14064-1, because organizations are not certified to that standard.
Step 4
Each reporting year is verified again
A GHG statement is verified for one period, so the exercise repeats annually rather than running a three-year cycle. Later years take less time where the boundary, the data sources and the calculation model are unchanged, and more where operations have been acquired or disposed of, the methodology has changed or a base-year recalculation has been triggered. Findings from the previous year are checked as part of the next engagement.
What your auditor expects to see
Before Stage 2 can proceed, the system needs to have run long enough to have produced its own evidence.
01Inventory report complete
A GHG report containing the content ISO 14064-1 requires for the stated period — boundary, categories, methodology, factors and base year — finished before fieldwork rather than assembled during it.
02Figures traceable to source
Every material figure supported by a record a third party can inspect: meter data, utility and fuel invoices, refrigerant and fleet logs, travel and supplier statements, held for the whole reporting period and reachable without the person who compiled the inventory.
03Method and factors documented
A written calculation methodology, the emission factors used with their publisher and version, and the significance process behind any excluded indirect category, each recorded at the time the decision was made rather than reconstructed afterwards.
04Internal check completed and boundary defined
Your own review of the inventory finished with corrections applied, a data-quality and uncertainty assessment recorded, and the organizational boundary set out in writing and reconciled to the entities in your financial consolidation.
Certification decision
With that evidence in place, Stage 1 and Stage 2 can run. The decision that follows is taken by a reviewer who was not on your audit team.
CORE is the certification body. We assess and certify management systems. We do not build them — that separation is what makes the certificate worth holding. We do not design, document or implement the systems we audit, and we do not run your internal audits. If you need that work done, our directory of independent consultants is a starting point, and engaging one has no bearing on the decision. More on how we keep the audit and the decision separate.
The optional pre-assessment
Before a verification engagement you can ask for an optional pre-assessment: an audit-style review of an existing inventory against ISO 14064-1 that samples figures the way a verifier would and reports where the evidence would not yet support an opinion — boundary and consolidation, category coverage, factor selection, traceability and the required content of the report.
A pre-assessment reports findings; it does not set your boundary, build your calculation model, choose your factors or write your inventory report. Producing that work would make CORE the author of a statement it must later verify, which the impartiality rules for verification bodies prohibit for the same reason ISO/IEC 17021-1 prohibits it for certification. Organizations that want help acting on the report can use the directory of independent consultants at /resources/find-a-consultant, and engaging one has no bearing on the verification opinion.
What you receive
- Findings against each clause of the standard
- Where the evidence is missing or incomplete
- Whether Stage 2 could proceed on today's records
- The same sampling method a certification audit uses
Training for ISO 14064
Courses that teach how the standard is written and how it is audited.
ISO 14064 questions, answered straight
Related standards
Ready to certify to ISO 14064?
Tell us your standards, scope, effective headcount and sites. You will get a scope statement and a fixed quotation, with audit duration calculated from the accreditation body's mandatory formula.