Companies trading carbon allowances and credits are largely making up their own accounting rules as they go, according to a new joint study from ACCA and the University of Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School. The research reviewed the annual reports of 300 companies in high-emitting sectors, airlines, materials, oil and gas, and utilities, across 48 countries, and found that even in industries built around carbon exposure, formal engagement with carbon markets is still far from universal: just 28 per cent of companies disclosed participating in a carbon market at all.
The bigger issue is what happens once companies do engage. There’s no dedicated international accounting standard for carbon allowances, credits or similar instruments, so companies are left to invent their own treatment. The result is a genuine mess: of the 121 companies that referred to carbon-related instruments in their financial statements, some booked them as intangible assets, others as inventory, financial assets, or simply “other assets,” and on the liabilities side, some recognised provisions gross while others went net. Measurement was just as inconsistent, split between historical cost and fair value, with a number of companies not disclosing their approach at all. The study also found a disconnect between the front and back halves of annual reports: 84 companies mentioned carbon market participation in their narrative sections, but only 77 did so in the financial statements, and just 50 companies were consistent across both.
The report’s recommendations call on international standard-setters, particularly the IASB, to develop a dedicated global accounting standard covering how to scope, recognise, measure and disclose carbon-related instruments, arguing that even basic terminology needs aligning first, since terms like “credits,” “allowances” and “offsets” are used inconsistently both within and across companies. In the meantime, it urges companies to state their accounting policies clearly, describe what their instruments are actually for, and better connect the narrative and financial-statement sections of their reporting, while asking auditors to push for consistency and treat the area as one requiring real technical scrutiny rather than an afterthought.
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