Making Carbon Accounting Speak the Same Language as Finance

Financial statements are built around time — they tell us what happened in the past, what’s happening now, and what’s expected in the future. But greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting doesn’t work that way. Current methods add up emissions from across a product’s entire life cycle, blurring the lines between past, present, and future. That makes it hard for investors and decision-makers to see when emissions actually occur or to link them to financial performance and risk.

This talk will introduce Jimmy Jia, PhD, General-Purpose Life Cycle Assessment (GP-LCA) — a new way to align environmental reporting with financial reporting. GP-LCA treats carbon and energy data the way financial statements treat money: with a carbon balance sheet for past emissions, carbon releases and withdrawals for the present, and a carbon pro forma for the future.

By borrowing the data structure of financial accounting, this framework lets us synchronize environmental data across time — and across disciplines. The result is a clearer picture of how today’s business and engineering choices shape tomorrow’s climate outcomes. GP-LCA offers a foundation for more coordinated action between finance, sustainability, and technology — and opens exciting new directions for climate research and reporting.

This event is hybrid. To access the Zoom link, please rsvp here: https://specialevents.asu.edu/862686