On 10 February 2026, the European Parliament voted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the European Union. The aim is for a 90% reduction from the 1990 baseline by 2040, with carbon neutrality being reached by 2050. This revision of the climate law (discussed with the European Council, which will need to approve it) confirms Europe’s environmental ambitions and hence the necessity for all economic players to go further on decarbonization. To achieve this, it is essential to have complete, high-quality information on the emissions produced and to see it reported. In this regard, though reporting requirements and environmental and social responsibility (ESR) obligations have been greatly strengthened in recent years, as well as the duty to assess companies’ carbon footprints, it is still difficult to estimate the true total emissions generated by a product (direct emissions relating to its design + indirect emissions from further up the value chain—suppliers, energy etc.).
To enhance the information flow in this area and make available the most reliable assessment of the carbon footprint, particularly within companies, one possible option would be to resort to the Carbon Cumulative Accounting method (CCA). This is the move advocated by Jérôme Boutang and Francis Charpentier of Citepa, who outline the aims and methodology of CCA here: “to circulate primary emissions data, step by step, along the value chains”, in order to document ever more precisely the greenhouse gas emissions produced at each stage. Besides the concern for exactness, the idea is that, by having available high-quality, verifiable, constantly improving information, lead firms in supply chains, together with public authorities, will also have both a common language and an effective tool for managing their decarbonization. This article presents this collaborative information system, shows how CCA is calculated, together with its advantages and also the forces aiding—and impeding—the advance of this evolving, transition-supporting tool.
The article is downloadable only in French. It is not available in English.
