Carbon Footprint to ISO 14064 in Morocco: Scopes 1, 2, 3, Verification

What is a carbon footprint to ISO 14064?

It is an organisation’s inventory of greenhouse gas emissions and removals over a year, quantified and reported under ISO 14064-1:2018. It says how much the company emits, where, and how reliable the figures are, and it is designed to be verified by a third party.

The standard’s full title is “ISO 14064-1:2018 — Greenhouse gases — Part 1: Specification with guidance at the organization level for quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals”. Published in December 2018, it replaced ISO 14064-1:2006 and was confirmed by ISO in 2024. According to iso.org, it sets requirements for the design, development, management, reporting and verification of an organisation’s GHG inventory.

Revision under way. On 11 November 2026, iso.org shows ISO 14064-1:2018 at stage 90.92 (“to be revised”), with a draft ISO/WD 14064-1.2 at stage 20.60. The 2018 edition is the one that applies. The content of the next edition is not known: do not build it into today’s inventory.

Buyers and lenders use “carbon footprint”, “GHG inventory” and “GHG emissions report” for this same corporate exercise. A product carbon footprint is a different one, covered below.

ISO 14064-1, GHG Protocol, ISO 14067 or a simplified estimate: which one answers your question?

Each answers a different question: ISO 14064-1 and the GHG Protocol measure the organisation, ISO 14067 measures a product, and a simplified estimate gives an order of magnitude without claiming to be verifiable. The right choice depends on the question and on who is asking.

The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard (revised edition, 2004) is complemented by the Scope 3 Standard (2011) and the Scope 2 Guidance (2015). All three are under revision. On 29 July 2026 the GHG Protocol and ISO announced that they will merge them, together with ISO 14064-1, into a single co-branded corporate standard (“Corporate Standard Version 3.0” in the development plan): public consultation planned for Q2 2027, publication estimated in Q4 2028. Nothing has been published yet.

ISO 14067:2018 dates from August 2018; it is also under revision, with a draft ISO/WD 14067.2 at stage 20.60 on 11 November 2026.

Who asks a Moroccan supplier for a carbon footprint, and in what form?

European customers, banks and development lenders, and some importers. Each expects a different format: knowing who asks for what avoids producing three incompatible numbers.

Since Directive (EU) 2026/470, the CSRD only covers companies with more than 1,000 employees and more than EUR 450 million net turnover, so most Moroccan companies are affected indirectly, through their customers. Under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1560, from financial years starting on 1 January 2027, a supplier with up to 1,000 employees may decline to provide, for its customer’s sustainability report, more than the voluntary standard provides for. See CSRD, VSME and ESG questionnaires.

For CBAM, whose definitive period has applied since 1 January 2026 (cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity, hydrogen), your corporate footprint feeds installation-level data but does not replace it.

How do you set boundaries and the consolidation approach?

By writing down first which entities and sites are in the inventory, then which emission sources are counted for each. The organisational boundary says “who”; the operational boundary says “what”.

The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard requires companies to consolidate emissions under one of two approaches: equity share, where the company accounts for each operation’s emissions in proportion to its ownership, or control, where it accounts for all emissions of the operations it controls. Under the control approach, it must choose between financial and operational control. For a company that wholly owns all its sites, the result is the same; differences appear with joint ventures, shared subsidiaries or leased sites.

The operational boundary then classifies sources:

• Scope 1, direct emissions: combustion in boilers, furnaces, generators and vehicles you own or control, process emissions, refrigerant leaks.
• Scope 2, purchased energy: electricity, steam, heat and cooling bought for your own use.
• Scope 3, other indirect emissions: your value chain, upstream and downstream, in 15 categories.

The Corporate Standard requires scopes 1 and 2 to be accounted for and reported separately, at a minimum, for the seven Kyoto Protocol gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride. Direct CO2 from biomass combustion is not included in scope 1 but reported separately.

ISO 14064-1:2018 follows the same inventory logic but presents the inventory in six categories rather than scopes (Annex B of the standard): 1 — direct GHG emissions and removals; 2 — indirect GHG emissions from imported energy; 3 — indirect GHG emissions from transportation; 4 — indirect GHG emissions from products used by an organization; 5 — indirect GHG emissions associated with the use of products from the organization; 6 — indirect GHG emissions from other sources. The full mapping to scopes is in our ISO 14064-1 requirements guide. A well-built inventory provides both presentations from the same data.

How do you choose the base year and the recalculation policy?

Choose a year for which verifiable data exist, explain why, and write down in advance when you will recalculate it. That is what makes your figures comparable over time.

The Corporate Standard requires companies to choose and report a base year with verifiable emissions data and to state the reasons for the choice; an average of several consecutive years is allowed. It also requires a recalculation policy stating the significance threshold that triggers a recalculation. Recalculation is triggered by:

• structural changes with a significant impact: mergers, acquisitions, divestments, outsourcing or insourcing of emitting activities;
• changes in calculation methodology, or better emission factors or activity data, that significantly change base year emissions;
• the discovery of significant errors, or of cumulative errors that become significant.

The Scope 3 Standard adds changes in the categories or activities included, and gives as an example a threshold of 10% of base year emissions. The Corporate Standard is explicit that organic growth or decline (higher output, a new product mix, opening or closing a site you own or control) does not trigger recalculation. A plant that adds a line keeps its base year; a group that buys a plant, if the effect is significant, recalculates it.

How do you screen the 15 scope 3 categories?

Go through the 15 categories one by one against written criteria, then calculate first those that weigh most or that you can act on. A missing category is reported as “not applicable” or excluded with a justification.

The Scope 3 Standard requires companies to account for all scope 3 emissions and to disclose and justify any exclusion. Its relevance criteria are size, influence (can you reduce them?), risk, stakeholder expectations, outsourcing of activities once done in-house, and sector guidance. The categories do not overlap.

Examples for a Moroccan industrial site exporting to the EU (generic site, no figures):

Categories 4 and 9 split according to who pays for transport: your Incoterms decide.

Which emission factors should you use, and how do you document them?

Factors from official or recognised sources, with their source, year and licence cited, kept from one year to the next unless a written reason applies. A factor without a source makes the inventory unverifiable.

For each source, the factor register records the activity data (kWh, litres, tonnes, tonne-kilometres), the factor, its unit, its exact source, its year, its geography, the global warming potential values used and the date it was consulted. Possible sources include Morocco’s national inventory submitted to the UNFCCC, the IPCC guidelines, supplier data and public factor databases, whose licence must be checked.

Electricity needs separate treatment. The 2015 Scope 2 Guidance requires companies operating in markets with contractual instruments (energy attribute certificates, power purchase agreements) to report scope 2 in two ways:

• location-based: the average emission intensity of the grid where the electricity is consumed;
• market-based: factors derived from the contracts and instruments the company has chosen, or the lack of them.

The company then chooses which result it uses for its targets. The Scope 2 Guidance is under revision: public consultation from 20 October 2025 to 31 January 2026, results published on 29 July 2026 (nearly 1,100 responses), no new edition yet. If you generate solar power on site or buy renewable electricity, document the contract and how it is counted.

This page deliberately gives no numerical factor.

How do you handle data quality and uncertainty?

Score each data point against explicit criteria, estimate the uncertainty of the main sources, and have the calculation reviewed by someone who did not do it. Higher uncertainty is acceptable in scope 3 as long as it is known and disclosed.

The Scope 3 Standard proposes five data quality indicators: technological, temporal and geographical representativeness, completeness and reliability. It requires a description of the quality of reported data, recommends a data management plan with internal quality controls, and accepts higher uncertainty in scope 3 if data quality is sufficient for the company’s goals.

In practice: measured data for scopes 1 and 2 (invoices, meters, delivery notes, refrigerant log); for scope 3, the share of emissions calculated with data from your suppliers; for every estimate (missing month, faulty meter), a written rule applied the same way each year.

What goes into the inventory report?

Everything a reader or verifier needs to redo the calculation: boundaries, base year, methods, factors, exclusions, results and limits. The report is not a brochure; it is the core of the evidence file.

The report we draft describes the organisation and consolidation approach, the period, the base year and recalculation policy; gives results by gas, by scope and by scope 3 category, scope 2 under both methods where they apply, and biogenic emissions separately; lists justified exclusions, the factor register, the quality and uncertainty assessment and year-on-year changes; and states whether it was verified, by whom and at what level of assurance. A standard answer sheet for customer questionnaires is drawn from it: same figures, same method, every time.

How do you move from the footprint to a reduction plan?

Rank emission sources by weight and by what you can act on, then size the levers on the same data. A footprint that leads to no plan does not answer what customers and banks ask next.

On an industrial site, common levers involve utilities (compressed air, refrigeration, steam), renewable electricity, fuels, refrigerants, procurement and logistics. The plan, the trajectory and readiness for an SBTi target (Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0, published on 11 June 2026) are covered in our decarbonisation strategy page; to hold energy gains over time, see ISO 50001 and energy audits, and if you are ISO 14001 certified, your energy indicators are already a base.

A footprint alone does not support a “carbon neutral” claim. Neutrality falls under ISO 14068:2026 (formerly ISO 14068-1:2023, withdrawn in September 2026; according to iso.org, only the number and title changed), which requires a reduction plan first. For products sold in the EU, Directive (EU) 2024/825 bans, from 27 September 2026, claims based on greenhouse gas offsetting that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment in terms of GHG emissions (point 4c added to Annex I of Directive 2005/29/EC). Our position: reduce first, claim only what can be proven. See carbon neutrality ISO 14068.

How do you prepare for third-party verification?

Build, from the first inventory, an evidence file that lets a verifier trace every figure back to its source document. Verification is the job of an independent, accredited body, never of whoever prepared the inventory.

Three standards frame this work:

• ISO 14064-3:2019, “Greenhouse gases — Part 3: Specification with guidance for the verification and validation of greenhouse gas statements”. According to iso.org it applies to organisation, project and product GHG statements. It replaced ISO 14064-3:2006 and was confirmed in 2024.
• ISO 14065:2020, principles and requirements for bodies validating and verifying environmental information; according to iso.org, a sector application of ISO/IEC 17029:2019. It is the standard against which a verification body is accredited.
• ISO 14066:2023, competence requirements for validation and verification teams, including technical experts and independent reviewers.

In practice, ask the verifier for its accreditation certificate and check that its scope covers organisation-level GHG statements. Agree with it, and with whoever will receive the report, on the expected level of assurance and the materiality threshold. ACG runs the mock review and prepares the file; the accredited body verifies.

Is your carbon footprint verifiable?

Go through these points before sending your inventory to a customer, a bank or a verifier.

• The organisational boundary and consolidation approach are written down and justified.
  
• Every site and scope 1 source is listed, refrigerants and generators included.
  
• Scope 2 is calculated location-based, and market-based where you have energy contracts.
  
• All 15 scope 3 categories have been screened; every exclusion is justified in writing.
  
• The base year is chosen and justified; the recalculation policy sets a significance threshold.
  
• Every activity data point traces back to a document: invoice, meter reading, delivery note, log.
  
• Every emission factor has its source, year, geography and licence in a register.
  
• The global warming potential values used are stated.
  
• Estimates follow a written rule applied the same way each year.
  
• Data quality and the uncertainty of the main sources are assessed.
  
• Someone who did not do the calculation has reviewed it.
  
• The inventory report describes methods, exclusions, results and year-on-year changes.
  
• The figures sent to customers match the report.
  

Why not confuse a corporate footprint with a product footprint?

Because they answer different questions and are calculated differently. A corporate footprint adds up an organisation’s emissions over a year; a product footprint allocates emissions to a unit of product over all or part of its life cycle.

Dividing your corporate footprint by your output gives an intensity ratio, not a product footprint under ISO 14067:2018: allocation rules, life cycle stages and data differ. The corporate inventory is still the best starting dataset for both. See product carbon footprint ISO 14067.

What ACG does for your carbon footprint

ACG scopes, calculates, structures and trains; an accredited body verifies. The firm reports 502 projects, 10 in-house consultants and more than 100 qualified external experts, and more than 120,000 people trained. We work with manufacturers and exporters in Morocco and Africa, notably in industry and energy, agri-food and packaging.

We train your team during the project so it can redo the inventory on its own: see our training. For your ESG requests as a whole, see ESG and CSR and EBRD and IFC ESG requirements. To start, describe your request.