Corporate Decarbonization: why rely on analytical carbon accounting?

For the past fifteen years, carbon accounting has established itself as a structuring practice for companies engaged in climate strategies. While early regulatory requirements acted as a trigger - particularly the BEGES decree in France and the growing expectations around non-financial reporting - most companies today no longer settle for a simple compliance exercise. Conducting a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory has become a prerequisite for building a credible reduction strategy, assessing transition risks, and responding to stakeholder expectations.

However, despite increasing maturity on the subject, many companies still struggle to turn this diagnosis into a truly operational tool. Traditional methodologies (Bilan Carbone®, GHG Protocol) provide robust frameworks but often produce results that are difficult for operational teams to interpret and challenging to use in driving change.

It is in this context that analytical carbon accounting becomes particularly relevant: by aligning climate issues with the economic and organizational realities of the company, carbon accounting makes it possible to shift from a static exercise to dynamic management of GHG emissions.

What is Analytical Carbon Accounting?

Analytical carbon accounting consists of breaking down GHG emissions in a detailed and structured way according to action-relevant dimensions: by site, department, production unit, product, customer, process, or geographic area. Its purpose is to make the carbon signal readable, understandable, and most importantly actionable at the level of internal decision-makers⁽¹⁾.

It is directly inspired by the principles of cost accounting in financial management, seeking to link emission flows to identifiable management objects. It is no longer only about measuring how much the company emits, but where and how it emits, in order to precisely identify available reduction levers.

This approach is based on a fundamental principle: the right level of granularity is the one that enables the measurement of the impact of actions implemented. In other words, the objective is not to achieve maximum precision but to focus data collection where it is most relevant. For the most significant emission sources, a high level of detail is required; for others, rough estimates are sufficient.

In this way, analytical carbon accounting breaks with a “totemic” view of the carbon footprint - often seen as a number to be produced once a year - and turns it into a continuous decision-making tool

Analytical Carbon Accounting: a strategic lever for decarbonization

The purpose of carbon accounting is not limited to measurement; it also aims to :  

• transform behaviours;
• guide decisions;
• align resources with a reduction trajectory.

Analytical carbon accounting acts as a catalyst for this transformation.

By translating emissions into units that are meaningful for operational teams (e.g.: emissions per tonne produced, per kilometre travelled, per client, or per project), it helps stakeholders who can take action to understand and adopt the approach. It becomes a common language across environmental, procurement, logistics, production, and finance functions.

It also enables better targeting of actions:

• prioritizing the most carbon-intensive emission sources;
• identifying optimization opportunities;
• measuring the effectiveness of actions implemented.
   

For example:
- in an industrial company, analysing emissions by production line may reveal unsuspected areas for improvement;
 - in a service company, breaking down emissions by type of assignment or client can guide strategic choices

Finally, it strengthens team engagement. While a global carbon footprint often remains abstract, analytical accounting allows each department and each team to understand its contribution and manage its efforts within a shared responsibility framework.

Financial and Carbon Accounting: toward integrated management

Building robust and useful carbon accounting cannot overlook the contributions of financial accounting. Like the latter, carbon accounting requires shared rules, clear conventions, a reliable data collection system, and audit and verification processes. It relies on the same qualities: rigor, traceability, and comparability.

The long-established experience of financial accounting, shaped by the development of standards (such as the French General Accounting Plan or IFRS), can offer a valuable methodological foundation for structuring carbon accounting. Many parallels can be drawn:

• structuring of line items;
• boundary selection;
• treatment of uncertainties;
• management of aggregations.
   

Finance and accounting professionals therefore have a major role to play in this dynamic. Their expertise in data, information systems, and reporting processes makes them natural allies to sustainability and climate teams. Provided they are trained in environmental issues, they can help secure and institutionalize this emerging form of accounting.

Some initiatives - particularly within accounting firms - are already integrating carbon modules into their advisory services. This paves the way for a hybridisation of skills, essential for scaling and professionalising carbon accounting in the coming years⁽²⁾.

Why should companies adopt analytical carbon accounting Now?  Because it represents a major step forward in companies’ ability to manage their climate transition. By moving beyond a single reporting mindset, it enables the design of a true decarbonization strategy, embedded within business processes and economic decision-making.

Still emerging, this approach requires investments in skills, tools, and governance. But companies that adopt it now gain a clear competitive advantage: they build credible, measurable, and manageable climate performance.

As regulatory pressures and societal expectations intensify, measurement alone is no longer enough. Analytical carbon accounting is becoming an essential standard for effectively managing corporate decarbonization trajectories.