Bilan Carbone · GHG · ISO 14064
The carbon standards
The same litres, kilometres and kilowatt-hours produce three different totals depending on which standard you compute them under. This is where the difference comes from, and what it means for a number you have already published.
Bilan Carbone — the ADEME methodology
Bilan Carbone is the French corporate carbon accounting methodology, created by ADEME and maintained by the Association Bilan Carbone. It covers the same physical reality as the GHG Protocol, but it makes one accounting choice that changes the headline number substantially: capital goods are spread across their useful life instead of landing entirely in the year they were bought.
- Author
- ADEME, maintained by the Association Bilan Carbone (ABC)
- Emission factors
- Base Empreinte — the French public emission factor database
- Scope coverage
- Scopes 1, 2 and 3, with Scope 3 mandatory rather than optional
- Capital goods
- Amortised across the asset's useful life
- Typical trigger
- BEGES regulatory obligation, an LP request, or a client tender
Why Scope 3 is not optional here
The defining feature of Bilan Carbone is that it treats the full value chain as in scope by default. A footprint that stops at scopes 1 and 2 is not a Bilan Carbone — it is an energy audit with a carbon label on it.
For most companies this matters enormously. In manufacturing, purchased goods and services plus capital goods routinely account for seventy to eighty-five per cent of the total. A portfolio company reporting 2 100 tCO₂e on scopes 1 and 2 may be carrying 12 000 once the value chain is included. If your LP asks for a carbon figure and you supply the smaller one without saying which scopes it covers, you will be asked again.
Capital goods: the line that moves
Under the GHG Protocol, Scope 3 Category 2 books capital goods in full in the year of purchase. A company that buys a production line in 2025 carries the entire embodied emissions of that line in its 2025 footprint, then nothing in 2026.
Bilan Carbone amortises instead. The same production line is spread across its useful life, so each year carries a proportional share. Neither is wrong — they answer different questions. Booking at purchase answers what did we cause this year. Amortising answers what does running this business cost annually.
The practical consequence is that the two methodologies cannot be compared without restating. A company that switches methodology between reporting years and does not restate the prior year will appear to have halved or doubled its footprint through an accounting change.
| Bilan Carbone | GHG Protocol | |
|---|---|---|
| Treatment | Amortised over useful life | Booked in full at purchase |
| Lands in year of purchase | 1 310 tCO₂e | 10 480 tCO₂e |
| Lands in each of years 2–8 | 1 310 tCO₂e | 0 |
| Effect on year-1 total | 12 480 tCO₂e | 21 650 tCO₂e |
Emission factors and where they come from
Bilan Carbone draws on Base Empreinte, the public French emission factor database. Using a maintained, citable factor base is what makes a footprint auditable — a number computed from a factor you cannot source is a number you cannot defend.
In practice most portfolios need a mix: public factors for energy, fuel and standard materials, plus supplier-specific factors where a company has them. Both should be stored against the activity data rather than baked into a total, so that a factor update recomputes the footprint instead of invalidating it.
How the platform handles it
Activity data is collected gross — litres of diesel, kilometres driven, kilowatt-hours metered, euros spent by purchase category. The methodology is a lens applied at computation rather than at collection.
That means switching a workspace from Bilan Carbone to the GHG Protocol recomputes every existing footprint on the same underlying data, including prior years, so the comparison stays valid. Multi-site perimeters, your own factor library and a reduction plan with owners and abatement estimates sit on top of the same dataset.
Common questions
Is Bilan Carbone the same as BEGES?
No. BEGES is the French regulatory obligation to publish a greenhouse gas emissions assessment; Bilan Carbone is a methodology you can use to produce one. A BEGES réglementaire has a narrower mandatory scope than a full Bilan Carbone.
Can I report Bilan Carbone results to an LP expecting GHG Protocol figures?
Only if you state the methodology and the capital goods treatment alongside the number. The totals are not directly comparable. The cleaner answer is to keep activity data gross and produce whichever presentation the recipient asked for.
Which methodology should a portfolio company use?
Whichever its obligation names. French companies subject to BEGES usually land on Bilan Carbone; companies reporting to international LPs or under CSRD usually need GHG Protocol figures. A fund with both should collect once and apply the lens per recipient.
GHG Protocol and ISO 14064 — the international standards
Once the activity data is the same, the difference between carbon standards is smaller than it looks — and concentrated in a handful of accounting choices. Knowing which three or four lines actually move is what lets you collect once and report to whoever asks.
- GHG Protocol
- Corporate Standard plus the Scope 3 Standard, 15 upstream and downstream categories
- ISO 14064-1:2018
- Six reporting categories rather than three scopes
- Capital goods
- GHG Protocol Category 2 — booked in full at purchase
- Scope 3 status
- Optional under the Corporate Standard; effectively required by most reporting regimes
- Usual driver
- International LPs, CSRD alignment, or a customer's supply chain request
Scopes versus categories
The GHG Protocol organises emissions into three scopes: direct, purchased energy, and everything else. ISO 14064-1:2018 replaced that with six categories, splitting what the Protocol calls Scope 3 into transport, purchased products, use of sold products, and other.
This is a presentation difference, not a measurement one. The same litre of diesel lands in the same place physically; it is simply filed under a different heading. A footprint computed properly can be presented either way without recollecting anything — which is the entire argument for storing activity data gross.
| Emission source | GHG Protocol | ISO 14064-1 | Bilan Carbone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company vehicles, on-site fuel | Scope 1 | Category 1 — direct | Scope 1 |
| Purchased electricity and heat | Scope 2 | Category 2 — imported energy | Scope 2 |
| Employee commuting, freight | Scope 3 (cat. 4, 6, 7, 9) | Category 3 — transportation | Scope 3 |
| Purchased goods and services | Scope 3 (cat. 1) | Category 4 — products used | Scope 3 |
| Capital goods | Scope 3 (cat. 2), full at purchase | Category 4 — products used | Scope 3, amortised |
| Use of sold products | Scope 3 (cat. 11) | Category 5 — products sold | Scope 3 |
The differences that actually move the number
Three choices account for nearly all of the variance between two footprints built on identical data.
- Capital goods timing. The GHG Protocol books them at purchase; Bilan Carbone amortises. For a capital-intensive company in an investment year, this alone can nearly double the reported total.
- Significance thresholds. ISO 14064-1 requires the organisation to declare and justify which indirect categories it deems significant. That declaration is auditable, and it tends to pull in upstream transport that other approaches leave optional.
- Scope 3 completeness. The GHG Protocol makes Scope 3 optional in principle. Two companies both claiming GHG Protocol compliance can differ by an order of magnitude if one reports five categories and the other reports fifteen.
Choosing one, and living with the choice
Pick the standard your obligation names, not the one that flatters the number. French companies under BEGES generally land on Bilan Carbone; companies reporting to international LPs or aligning with CSRD generally need GHG Protocol figures; ISO 14064 shows up where third-party verification is contracted.
Whatever you choose, the discipline that matters is restating prior years when the choice changes. A methodology switch without a restatement produces a year-on-year movement that is pure accounting, and it will be spotted.
Common questions
Can one footprint satisfy GHG Protocol and ISO 14064 at once?
Yes, if the activity data is collected gross and the standard is applied at computation. The underlying measurements are the same; what differs is categorisation and a small number of accounting choices.
Is ISO 14064 certification the same as verification?
No. ISO 14064-1 sets out how to quantify and report; ISO 14064-3 covers verification. An organisation reports under Part 1 and may then have that report verified under Part 3 by a third party.
Which standard do LPs usually ask for?
International LPs overwhelmingly ask for GHG Protocol figures with scopes stated separately, because that is what aggregates across a multi-country portfolio. French LPs often accept Bilan Carbone, but will still want the scope split.