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Accounting for Carbon

Authors: Stephen Penman;

Accounting for Carbon

Abstract

The paper designs an accounting for carbon that reports an entity’s net carbon contribution to society. The accounting is in the same form as financial accounting, reporting a balance sheet and an income statement. In the balance sheet, assets in reducing carbon are compared to liabilities for carbon admissions, reporting an entity’s net position in carbon, with the accumulated difference reporting its progress over time in reaching goals such as a net-zero carbon promise. With a balance sheet, the accounting provides more information than the standard flow number, the current period’s net emissions. By recognizing assets, an entity gets credit for current efforts to reduce carbon that are realized only later, thus dealing with the timing problem between investing in carbon removal and its effect. The accounting is a responsibility accounting that has many attractive reporting and incentive features and enables a pro forma analysis for evaluating carbon strategies. Like financial accounting, it facilitates consolidation accounting across groups such as industries or divisions within firms. It leads to an analysis like financial statement analysis that gets to the drivers of net emissions. Being in the form of financial accounting, it facilitates comparisons with financial metrics to evaluate trade-offs and “sustainability" more generally.

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Found an issue? Give us feedback
selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
10
Top 10%
Top 10%
Top 10%
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