Corporate carbon accounting: balance sheets and flow statements

Stefan Reichelstein ()
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Stefan Reichelstein: University of Mannheim ZEW-Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Review of Accounting Studies, 2024, vol. 29, issue 3, No 3, 2125-2156

Abstract: Abstract Current corporate disclosures regarding carbon emissions lack generally accepted accounting rules. The transactional carbon accounting system described here takes the rules of historical cost accounting for operating assets as a template for generating carbon emissions (CE) statements comprising a balance sheet and a flow statement. The asset side of the CE balance sheet reports the carbon emissions embodied in operating assets. The liability side conveys the firm’s cumulative direct emissions into the atmosphere as well as the cumulative emissions embodied in goods acquired from suppliers less those sold to customers. Flow statements report the company’s annual corporate carbon footprint calculated as the cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of goods sold during the current period. Taken together, balance sheets and flow statements generate key performance indicators of a company’s past, current, and future performance in the domain of carbon emissions.

Keywords: Net-zero pledges; Carbon emissions; Carbon accounting; Carbon reporting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M41 M48 Q53 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11142-024-09830-y

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