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  • CASI Logo
  • What
  • Why
  • How
  • Who
  • Publications
  • Partners
  • Contact
  • Impressum

Why? The Mission

Current Carbon Accounting & Reporting has room for improvement.

CASI recommends how to improve transparency, comparability and decision usefulness based on Integrated Corporate Carbon Accounting (ICCA).

As governments and companies set net-zero targets and commit to climate-aligned action, the ability to measure and verify greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonization efforts has become foundational to effective decision-making throughout the world‘s industrial economies.

Frameworks such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, ISO standards, life-cycle assessments, and national emissions inventories have provided useful starting points—establishing a common language and framework. Industry-level initiatives like Catena-X and Together-for- Sustainability have advanced these frameworks with specific suggestions for standardizing the measurement of carbon emissions within particular industries.

Yet, as the climate transition increasingly shapes trade policy, financial disclosures and executive incentives, it is becoming increasingly clear that corporate emissions data too often lacks the precision and reliability required to support auditable and decision-useful action. From climate-related financial disclosures to carbon border adjustments and emissions-based executive compensation, the need for investor-grade information about corporate carbon emissions is growing.

What? ICCA - Concept and Value

Integrated Corporate Carbon Accounting (ICCA) integrates product carbon accounting and corporate carbon accounting to enable reliable and decision-useful reporting on carbon emissions.

Unlike existing approaches, ICCA applies rigorous double-entry-style accounting logic to GHG emissions and offsets, thereby enabling a coherent, reconcilable, and audit-ready infrastructure for carbon reporting.

Our proposed carbon accounting system is compatible with and builds on the substantial progress already made by existing frameworks and initiatives, such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, ISO standards, and corporate climate disclosure regimes such as the global baseline standard IFRS S2 by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), the TCFD Recommendations (now folded into the IFRS Foundation), or ESRS E1.

CASI Whitepaper No. 1 (Foundations)↗ CASI Whitepaper No. 2 (CO₂ Statements)↗

Who? The Team

Companies from various industries and academics from leading universities around the globe.

We are a working group of company representatives and academics from the fields of accounting, corporate reporting, and climate sustainability. We are united by the belief that effective decarbonization depends on reliable investor-grade emissions data and that the principles of financial accounting offer a useful foundation for reliable carbon accounting at the corporate level. Ultimately, corporate carbon accounting must evolve to the point where emissions are tracked, allocated, and reported with the same rigor and structure as financial transactions.

Our academic members are faculty at the following universities, and our industry members are with the following companies:

CASI Founding Members:

Christoph ErnstMannheim
Stefan ReichelsteinStanford/Mannheim
Thorsten SellhornLMU

CASI Members:

Benedikt SteinerBMW, Catena-X
Mike SzaboSAP
Amadeus BachMannheim
Martha AmramGylnt
Jochen KurtzBASF
Fernando PeñalvaIESE
Gaizka OrmazabalIESE
Christoph EhrhardtSAP
Julia ZickeSAP
Patricia DechowUSC Marshall
Jürgen ErnstbergerTUM
Anna Rohlfing-BastianFrankfurt
Gunter GlenkMannheim
Brandon GipperNotre Dame
Mykola VlasovSAP
Thomas BeckerBMW

How? The Agenda

To increase its visibility and impact, CASI also intends to partner with practice-oriented journals to facilitate outreach and provide a publishing forum for proceedings of the working group.

The task before us is large, and we believe the path forward is collaborative. With this initiative, we invite you—whether you are a policymaker, corporate leader, standard-setter, investor, or academic—to join us in refining our approach to corporate carbon accounting. Whether through dialogue or pilot testing, your involvement at this early stage will be essential to ensuring that our initiative advances the transition to a decarbonized economy at speed and scale. We look forward to entering into a dialogue with you as we work toward a new era of climate accountability.

We look forward to entering into a dialogue with you as we work toward a new era of climate accountability.

Our next in-person workshop is scheduled for 2025 December 4-5 in Frankfurt/Germany. We will discuss particular topics of Integrated Corporate Carbon Accounting (ICCA) in our group and with other experts. If you are interested to join the discussion please contact us.

Publications

, , and

Books
Introducing Carbon Accounting for Sustainability with SAP
Articles
Corporate carbon accounting: balance sheets and flow statements
Articles
Incorporating Carbon Emissions Into Decision-Making: The Case of Transactional Connectivity
Publication
Accounting for Carbon Credits
Articles
An Accounting Architecture for CO₂-Statements
Articles
Product Carbon Footprints – Zur Vergleichbarkeit der Produkte die wir kaufen?
Articles
Automated Product Carbon Footprint Calculation in the Chemical Industry
CASI Whitepaper
CO2 Statements: Double-Entry Bookkeeping for Integrated Corporate Carbon Accounting
Articles
Automotive Supply Chain Decarbonization as a Driver for Carbon Accounting
CASI Whitepaper
Foundations of Integrated Corporate Carbon Accounting
Other Whitepaper
BMW Group Vehicle Carbon Footprint Reports
Articles
Innovations in Corporate Carbon Accounting
Other Whitepaper
BASF Methodology for Product Carbon Footprint Calculation
Articles
How Carbon Accounting Supports Corporate Decarbonization

Partners

↗ Mannheim Institute for Sustainable Energy Studies (MISES)

↗ Institute for Accounting, Auditing and Analysis at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich's School of Management

↗ Rapid Decarbonization Initiative, Stanford University

You can reach out to us via: info@casinitiative.org

Impressum

Carbon Accounting Standards Initiative (CASI)
an informal, academic and professional network

Contact (Responsible for content according to § 18 Abs. 2 MStV)

Dr. Christoph Ernst
c/o University of Mannheim
Mannheim Institute for Sustainable Energy Studies (MISES)
Schloss
68161 Mannheim
info@casinitiative.org

Nature of the Initiative

The Carbon Accounting Standards Initiative (CASI) is an international network of academics and professionals from universities and organizations in the EU, UK, and the U.S. Its goal is to advance the understanding and application of rigorous and transparent carbon accounting and to share relevant research and insights.

Legal Notice

This website is operated for informational and scientific exchange purposes only. Although the content has been created with care, we cannot guarantee its completeness or accuracy. The authors assume no liability for external links; the content of linked pages is the sole responsibility of their operators.

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Disclaimer

This website is maintained as a voluntary, collaborative effort. The initiative has no legal personality and does not constitute a registered organization or association. All contributions reflect the views of their respective authors.

Last updated: November 2025

Privacy Policy (Datenschutzerklärung)

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This website is operated by the Carbon Accounting Standards Initiative (CASI), an informal, non-commercial academic and professional network based in Germany. We take the protection of your personal data very seriously and handle it in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG). The following information explains what data we collect, how we use it, and what your rights are.

2. Name and Contact of the Responsible Person

Responsible according to Art. 4 (7) GDPR:
Dr. Christoph Ernst
c/o University of Mannheim
Mannheim Institute for Sustainable Energy Studies (MISES)
Schloss
68161 Mannheim
info@casinitiative.org

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Last updated: November 2025

Carbon Accounting Standards Initiative