Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF)

Banks, insurers and asset managers had no shared way to count financed emissions, so figures could not be compared. PCAF supplies a standard with calculation rules for asset classes such as listed shares, corporate loans, project finance, mortgages, vehicle loans and sovereign bonds. Each rule sets how to attribute a client's emissions to the lender, usually by the share of financing in the client's total value. It also grades data quality on a scale, from reported and verified figures to rough estimates by sector averages, so users can see how reliable a result is. Members commit to measure and disclose, and the method is recognised in several disclosure frameworks. Lenders and investors setting net zero targets need a baseline measured the same way as their peers measure theirs.

An asset manager uses the PCAF method for its listed equity funds. For each company held, it takes its reported emissions and multiplies them by the fund's share of that company's total value. Where a company reports nothing, it uses a sector estimate and marks the data as low quality. Its report shows both the total and the share of weaker data.