ISO 14068 - Greenhouse Gas Management and Related Activities

28 March 2022

It’s no secret that global warming is widely regarded as one of the world’s most pressing issues, with everyone from the United Nations through to local government rolling out measures to help mitigate climate change and ensure that we are doing all we can to play our part.

We each have a role to play when it comes to environmental responsibility, and the ISO are working to provide a method of being accountable for this. ISO is a non-governmental international organisation which, through its members, develops international standards to provide guidance and solutions to many challenges people and organisations face. It has a membership of 167 national standards bodies who contribute their knowledge and experience to ensure these international standards are relevant and appropriate.

What is ISO 14068?

Here’s what we know so far. ISO 14068 is the specification relating to greenhouse gas management and related activities, namely carbon neutrality. The new project was approved back in February 2020 and is currently under development at the ‘preparatory’ stage. The project will continue to go through each key stage of an ISO under development, this includes committee, enquiry, approval, publication, and review. You can keep updated by checking out the page here.

It is likely that we can expect to see some alignment between the current carbon neutrality specification PAS 2060 and the future standard ISO 14068. It is likely that the core principles such as carbon footprint calculations, carbon management plans and offsetting will remain, but will be updated to sit closer with current circumstances, drivers, and regulations.

It is no secret that with the growing pressure around climate change, the need for reporting and accountability is becoming more apparent. We envision that this will continue in motion, and standards such as PAS 2060 and ISO 14068 will be an important tool in meeting these expectations.

How to be prepared

There are a number of options organisations may wish to explore to kickstart their sustainability journey, and which will help to prepare for ISO 14068. Whether this is in the form of a management system such as ISO 14001 or ISO 50001, or through verifications of carbon neutrality and GHG inventories.

To date, PAS 2060 is the only recognised specification relating to the demonstration of achieving carbon neutrality. You will find more information on each of these, as well as useful training, tools and resources, by visiting our sustainability microsite here.