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As you have read, ISO dropped amendments on nearly all of the Management System Standards (MSS) back in February 2024 dealing with the topic of “Climate Change”. It was one thing to add the requirement with a “shall” in clause 4.1. However, with a Note added in clause 4.2 that stated: “Relevant interested parties can have requirements related to climate change”, the potential flood gates have now been opened to any number of new customer requirements.

As one Technical SME Review in quality recently commented to me, what does climate change have to do with quality? I had to point out to that person that they are falling behind as the ISO has now required consideration for climate change in all of the MSS and that by de facto under the ANSI guidance of using the American Society for Quality in updates to the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, that quality professional now needs to learn a lot more about the climate change and its related aspects. So, I am now on the hunt to learn more!

Well, it hasn’t taken long for global companies to see what they can do with their suppliers, with respect to adding new requirements in the name of climate change. Just this past week, one of my large chemical clients approached the registrar that I am affiliated with on how they might be able to obtain registration to ISO 14067:2018 Greenhouse Gases — Carbon Footprint of Products — Requirements and Guidelines for Quantification. One of their customers is now going to require this registration as part of doing business with them.

So how is the ISO involved with Greenhouse Gasses (GHG)? Over the past 20 years or so, ISO has released a number of standards around GHG – please note that none of these follow the Annex SL so they are not part of the MSS series, and thus cannot be integrated into your 9001, 14001, 45001, etc.  With that said, organizations are still encouraged to utilize the ISO 19011:2018 Guidelines for auditing management systems as the auditing basics.

Therefore, of the 31 published standards and guidelines involving greenhouse gas, and another nine (9), plus others under development, none of these can be integrated with your existing ISO 14001 or ISO 5001 registrations. Most of these greenhouse gas standards are under the current ISO 14001 series with several specifically designed for your registrar to work with you on actual validation and verification that you are meeting the requirements. They mostly fall under the 14060 sequence, with specific audit requirements being the ISO 14061 parts 1 or 2 and the ISO 14067.

Additionally, the various documents on GHG, ISO have published a few free publications, including the PUB100271 ISO Environment Climate Change Mitigation.

The primary focus of the GHG in government agencies is the Kyoto Protocol.  The ISO basically follows these guidelines and adapts the requirements to industries. The greenhouse gases that are specifically targeted include:

• Carbon dioxide (CO₂)
• Methane (CH₄)
• Nitrous oxide (N₂O)
• Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
• Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)
• Sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆)
• Nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃)

In applying the ISO 1406x series, you will need to use one of the available calculations programs (would be much too hard to develop your own system and probably would not be accepted by your registrar), and calculate the annual tonnage of each of the pollutants that your organization is releasing, based on a 100 year calculation. Note: think here how Six Sigma calculates the part per million opportunities – DPMO.

So let’s looks at some of the basics of how the GHG relates to the Environmental (EMS) and Energy (EnMS) Management Systems:

EMS – is an MSS that deals with identifying, managing, monitoring and controlling and your aspects and impact of your environmental footprint for your organization. The goal is to improve the environmental performance of your company. The stated purpose of ISO 14001 clause 0.2 is: “to provide organizations with a framework to protect the environment and respond to changing environmental conditions in balance with socio-economic needs.”

The auditable section of 14001 clause 4.1 begins by stating that you are to evaluate what is relevant to your environmental management system. This is where customer requirements, such as greenhouse gas, sustainability or any other factor related to climate change will come into play. And from a marketing standpoint, you could even consider doing some test marketing with your customers to show how you are addressing their needs and maybe bypass their demands for registration to something like the ISO 14064 or ISO 14067. Or at least show that you are being “compliant” to the GHG issues under your existing ISO 14001 registration.

EnMS – is a MSS that deals with controlling your energy usage for the products or services that you provide to customers. You are to establish your baseline, implement, maintain and improve the reduction of energy. The goal is to reduce energy usage as stated in ISO 50001 clause 0.2: “requirements for a systematic, data-driven and facts-based process, focused on continually improving energy performance.”

The same scenario applies here for energy management as in the EMS. If you have both the 14 & 50, this makes even more sense to tell customers that you are “compliant” to the climate change needs as in GHG. But even if you are only EnMS registered, you should still be able to make the argument with your customers that you can and will add their new requirements within what you are doing to monitor and track energy usage.

The key point here is that some of your customers may be looking to jump on the climate change challenge to meet some sort of needs that they have. As they are looking to you to comply, you need to be willing to push back and to show how you are already meeting their needs without having to add costs to your current operations. The calculations for GHG are not simple and will take time to track. You could do that under your existing registrations, even to ISO 9001. Otherwise, if you accept the demands to add new registrations to your organization, you will have to evaluate the hidden costs as the possible need for a new engineer to track, and report internally the aspects of climate change that your customer is looking for.

ISO is working on new documents and if you see the acronyms: CD (committee draft) or AWI (approved work item), then these are future documents that are being worked on through the assigned TC (technical committee).

Please stay tuned to Quality as things are changing quickly and updates will be provided as we get the information.

Keyword Search in ISO for Greenhouse Gas

• ISO 11771:2010 Air quality — Determination of time-averaged mass emissions and emission factors — General approach
• ISO/CD 14002-3 Environmental management systems — Guidelines for using ISO 14001 to address environmental aspects and conditions within an environmental topic area — Part 3: Climate
• ISO 14050:2020 Environmental management — Vocabulary
• ISO 14064-1:2018 Greenhouse gases — Part 1: Specification with guidance at the organization level for quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals
• ISO 14064-1:2018/D Amd (Rod, is this a word?) 1 Greenhouse gases — Part 1: Specification with guidance at the organization level for quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals — Amendment 1
• ISO 14064-2:2019 Greenhouse gases — Part 2: Specification with guidance at the project level for quantification, monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emission reductions or removal enhancements
• ISO 14064-3:2019 Greenhouse gases — Part 3: Specification with guidance for the verification and validation of greenhouse gas statements
• ISO/CD TS 14064-4 Greenhouse gases — Part 4: Quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions for organizations — Guidance for the application of ISO 14064-1
• ISO/WD 14064-5.2 Greenhouse gas management — Part 5: Guidelines for the use of remote methods in conducting verification and validation greenhouse gas statements
• ISO 14067:2018 Greenhouse gases — Carbon footprint of products — Requirements and guidelines for quantification
• ISO 14068-1:2023 Climate change management — Transition to net zero — Part 1: Carbon neutrality
• ISO/TR 14069:2013 Greenhouse gases — Quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions for organizations — Guidance for the application of ISO 14064-1
• ISO/AWI 14070 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emission Measurements in Urban Environments — Part 1: GHG Concentration Measurements in Urban Atmospheres with Surface-Based Observing Networks
• ISO 14083:2023 Greenhouse gases — Quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions arising from transport chain operations
• ISO 14097:2021 Greenhouse gas management and related activities — Framework including principles and requirements for assessing and reporting investments and financing activities related to climate change
• ISO 14385-1:2014 Stationary source emissions — Greenhouse gases — Part 1: Calibration of automated measuring systems
• ISO 14385-2:2014 Stationary source emissions — Greenhouse gases — Part 2: Ongoing quality control of automated measuring systems
• ISO/IEC 15067-3-30:2024 Information technology — Home Electronic System (HES) application model — Part 3-30: Energy management agent functional requirements and interfaces
• ISO 19694-1:2021 Stationary source emissions — Determination of greenhouse gas emissions in energy-intensive industries — Part 1: General aspects
• ISO 19694-3:2023 Stationary source emissions — Determination of greenhouse gas emissions in energy-intensive industries — Part 3: Cement industry
• ISO 19694-4:2023 Stationary source emissions — Determination of greenhouse gas emissions in energy-intensive industries — Part 4: Aluminium industry
• ISO 19694-5:2023 Stationary source emissions — Determination