Corporate GHG accounting holds firm despite North American ESG pullback, panellists say

Companies are continuing to use GHG accounting to guide investment, procurement, and emissions reduction decisions despite a more uncertain North American disclosure landscape, according to panellists speaking on Thursday. The persistence of carbon accounting practice, even as some regulatory mandates have softened or stalled, reflects the fact that the drivers are not solely regulatory. Climate risk, financing conditions, customer demands, and supply chain pressure are all independently keeping emissions data on the corporate agenda.

Brazil's decision to drop mandatory ISSB disclosure requirements, reported this week, illustrates how the global picture is fragmenting. While the EU presses ahead with CSRD and ESRS, and the UK advances its seventh carbon budget, other major economies are stepping back from hard mandates. For multinational companies, that divergence creates a compliance planning challenge: the data infrastructure built to satisfy one regime may not translate cleanly to another, and a retreat in one market does not reduce requirements in others.

The supply chain dimension is particularly important for procurement leads. Panellists noted that customer demands and supply chain pressure are among the primary forces sustaining corporate carbon accounting, which means the discipline is being driven from multiple directions simultaneously. A company that relaxes its internal GHG tracking because a specific regulatory deadline has moved may quickly find that its major customers or financiers still require the data. The GHG Protocol Scope 3 methodology remains the reference framework for most of these commercial relationships.

JPMorgan's carbon removal and financing deal with Charm Industrial, announced this week, is a concrete example of how capital markets are embedding carbon accounting into transaction structures rather than treating it as a reporting afterthought. Carbon offtake agreements require precise accounting of removal units, additionality, and permanence, all of which demand the same underlying data discipline as mainstream GHG reporting. The deal signals that major financial institutions are building carbon accounting requirements directly into their financing frameworks.

For ESG managers advising boards on whether to sustain investment in carbon accounting infrastructure during a period of regulatory uncertainty, the panellists' analysis provides useful framing. The case for maintaining rigorous GHG data collection rests not on any single regulation but on the convergence of multiple commercial, financial, and supply chain pressures that are operating independently of the political cycle. That convergence is unlikely to reverse even if specific disclosure mandates are delayed or withdrawn.