ISO 14068-1:2023
ISO 14068 Climate Change Management & Carbon Neutrality
Make carbon-neutrality claims that survive scrutiny, or do not make them at all.
Baseline footprint
Quantified to ISO 14064
Avoid
Design out emissions
Reduce
Efficiency and energy
Substitute
Low-carbon inputs
Neutrality plan
Managed pathway
Removals
Quality credits only
Carbon neutrality
A claim that survives scrutiny
Re-baseline returns to Baseline footprint
SYS/12 · Net-zero pathway
The footprint steps down through avoid, reduce and substitute; only the residual is balanced by quality removals.
What ISO 14068 is
ISO 14068-1 defines the requirements for achieving and claiming carbon neutrality: a quantified footprint, a management plan that prioritizes actual reductions, strict conditions for offsetting the residual, and transparent claims. It exists because unsubstantiated neutrality claims now carry regulatory and reputational risk.
CORE assesses carbon-neutrality claims against ISO 14068-1 rather than producing them. Your assessor starts with the subject of the claim and tests whether it matches what the public wording actually says, checks that the footprint behind it is quantified consistently with the ISO 14064 standards and covers that subject completely, and reads the carbon-neutrality management plan for targets, timescales and accountability that exist beyond the slide. Reduction and removal evidence inside the value chain is examined before offsetting is considered at all, because the hierarchy is a requirement and not a preference; credits are then traced to registry entry, project, vintage and retirement record in the claimant's name. The findings raised most often concern a claim whose subject is wider than the footprint supporting it, offsetting used in place of a reduction plan rather than for a residual, and retirement records that cannot be produced for credits already named in public communications.
Who it is for
- Organizations preparing to claim carbon neutrality for the entity, a site, a product or a service and needing that claim examined independently
- Brands whose green-claims wording is exposed to advertising regulators and competition authorities
- Companies with net-zero commitments that need a standardized interim milestone a third party has assessed
- Procurement and investor teams requiring a supplier's neutrality claim to be substantiated against a recognized standard rather than self-declared
Business outcomes
What leadership should expect the system to change, in operational terms.
Claims that hold
Neutrality statements structured to the standard, with the substantiation file behind them.
Reduction before offset
A pathway that demonstrably prioritizes reductions, as the hierarchy requires.
Offset quality control
Credit selection criteria covering additionality, permanence and double-counting risk.
Stakeholder trust
A published pathway replaces slogans with a plan and dated milestones.
Benefits beyond the certificate
Regulatory resilience
Alignment with the direction of green-claims legislation across major markets.
Investor-grade documentation
A carbon-neutrality management plan auditors and investors can interrogate.
Cost-effective sequencing
Reductions planned where the cost per tonne is lowest before purchasing offsets.
Brand protection
Due diligence records for every credit retired in your name.
Continuity
Builds directly on ISO 14064-1 inventories and ISO 14001 governance.
The main requirements
The themes your auditor will examine, in plain language. The full clause detail is worked through at Stage 2.
01
Subject and boundary
Define precisely what the neutrality claim covers: organization, site, product or service.
02
GHG quantification
A footprint consistent with ISO 14064 standards for the chosen subject.
03
Carbon-neutrality management plan
Targets, reduction actions, timescales and accountability, maintained over time.
04
The hierarchy
Reduce and remove within the value chain before counterbalancing the residual with offsets.
05
Offsetting conditions
Credits of specified quality, correctly vintaged, retired and not double counted.
06
Claims and reporting
Transparent claims with a supporting report; independent verification strengthens standing.
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
Subject and boundary chiefly drives 2 of 4 ISO 14068 outcomes.
Outcomes it drives
Claims that hold
Neutrality statements structured to the standard, with the substantiation file behind them.
Reduction before offset
A pathway that demonstrably prioritizes reductions, as the hierarchy requires.
Offset quality control
Credit selection criteria covering additionality, permanence and double-counting risk.
Stakeholder trust
A published pathway replaces slogans with a plan and dated milestones.
How CORE audits ISO 14068
Step 1
Planning fixes the subject, the period and the criteria
Before fieldwork the subject of the claim is pinned down — entity, site, product or service — together with the period it covers, the GHG quantification standard the footprint follows and the version of ISO 14068-1 being assessed against. The carbon-neutrality management plan, the footprint report and the proposed public wording 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 assessment examines the hierarchy before the offsets
The equivalent of a Stage 2 audit. Your assessor tests whether the footprint covers the whole subject of the claim and is quantified consistently with ISO 14064, then examines what has actually been reduced or removed inside the value chain against what the management plan said would be, and only then looks at counterbalancing. Credits are traced to registry, project, vintage, quantity and retirement record, and the public wording is compared with what the evidence in front of the assessor supports.
Step 3
The conclusion is separated from the fieldwork
Findings are put to you as nonconformities against the requirements of ISO 14068-1, and material ones must be corrected before a conclusion can be given. As with a certification decision, the conclusion is reviewed by someone who was not part of the assessment team. What issues is a statement about the claim for a stated subject and period; ISO 14068-1 claims are assessed rather than certified, so no three-year certificate arises from this work.
Step 4
Each claim period is assessed again
Neutrality is claimed for a period rather than held indefinitely, so the assessment repeats on the cycle the claim is made on, commonly annually. Repeat assessments look at whether the footprint has been maintained against how the organization now operates, whether the reductions promised in the plan were delivered or quietly replaced by more offsetting, whether new credits meet the same conditions, and whether the published wording still matches the evidence.
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.
01Footprint complete for the subject of the claim
A GHG quantification consistent with the ISO 14064 standards covering the whole subject and the whole period being claimed, finished before the assessment rather than during it, with every exclusion documented and justified.
02Management plan in force
A carbon-neutrality management plan with targets, dated reduction and removal actions, named accountability and a record of what has been delivered against it — approved and operating, not drafted for the assessment.
03Offset records producible
For every credit counted, the registry entry, project, vintage, quantity and retirement record in the name of the claimant, together with the criteria applied at purchase covering additionality, permanence and double-counting risk.
04Claim wording and internal review recorded
The exact public wording you intend to use, the substantiation file behind it, and evidence that your own review of the claim has been completed with any corrections applied before the assessor sees it.
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 an assessment you can ask for an optional pre-assessment: an audit-style review of an existing or intended neutrality claim against ISO 14068-1 — subject and boundary, footprint validity, hierarchy evidence, offset quality and the wording itself — sampling in the same way the assessment would and returning a written report of findings.
The report states where the evidence would not support the claim. It does not build your footprint, write your management plan, select your credits or draft your public wording; producing that work would make CORE the author of a claim it must later assess, which the impartiality rules governing certification and verification bodies alike prohibit. 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 outcome.
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 14068
Courses that teach how the standard is written and how it is audited.
ISO 14068 questions, answered straight
Related standards
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