Accounting for Carbon Credits (#368)
/What is a Carbon Credit?
We begin with, what is a carbon credit? It’s a permit that allows you to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases, which usually means carbon dioxide. Each carbon credit gives you the right to emit one metric ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent in some other greenhouse gases. And by the way, one metric ton equals about 2,200 pounds. Governments issue these credits when they’re trying to reduce emissions in order to reduce the effects of climate change.
Carbon credits are part of a cap-and-trade system, where the government sets a cap on the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions that it’s going to allow per year. The intent is usually to reduce the amount of this cap over time, which forces companies to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.
Under the cap, a company can either receive or purchase the carbon credits that it needs. For example, if the government issues a manufacturer a permit to issue one thousand tons of carbon dioxide and it doesn’t actually use all of this amount, then it can sell its excess credits. Conversely, if it emits more than a thousand tons, then it has to buy credits for the overage, or else pay the government a penalty.
Under this system, you could buy the credits from an official offset project, such as an operation that plants trees that soak up carbon dioxide. And as an aside, AccountingTools is a partner of the National Forest Foundation, and in the past twelve months, we paid to have a little under 10,000 trees planted. In case you’re curious, each tree planted ends up sequestering about a half of a ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, so our annual payments end up sequestering a little under 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide. And we’ve been doing this for a long time. AccountingTools doesn’t actually emit many greenhouse gases – that’s pretty negligible. We just think that it’s a good idea to do something like this.
Anyways, a company can buy these carbon offsets from a third party, or it can purchase carbon credits on an exchange, which is run by the government. When everyone wants to purchase carbon credits, that increases demand, so the price of a carbon credit goes up. Or, if everyone is reducing their emissions, then demand goes down, so the price of a carbon credit goes down.
So in short, the whole concept of carbon credits is designed to create a financial incentive for companies to reduce their emissions.
How to Account for Carbon Credits
The next question is, how do you account for it? That is a multi-step process. The first step is to identify the nature of the carbon credits. Did you buy them on an exchange because of a legal requirement do so, which is called a compliance credit, or did you buy them voluntarily to offset your emissions, which is called a voluntary credit. For example, if you were to buy credits from a provider that plants trees, that would be a voluntary credit.
The next step is to determine the accounting treatment. There’s some argument about whether they should be classified as inventory or as intangible assets. I would say that most use cases would favor recording carbon credits as some form of inventory. If the credits are then used to offset internally-generated greenhouse gases, you would charge them to expense from the inventory account. Or, if you sell the credits to someone else, then you could also charge them to expense from the inventory account.
I’m not really seeing the use case for recording the credits as intangible assets, unless you’re just holding them with no intent of use – which would mean that you’re holding them as an investment that’s expected to appreciate over time.
You can make up your own mind about which way to go with the classification.
There’s no question that the initial recordation of the credit should be at its purchase cost, and you can add in any transaction fees, though there shouldn’t be many. An interesting option if you’re using international financial reporting standards is to subsequently adjust the cost of the credits to their fair value. This option is most possible if the credits are being traded on an exchange, so you can just revalue the credits at the end of a reporting period based on the price at which the credits are trading at that time.
Of course, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, then you’ll realize that I would never recommend adjusting anything to its fair value if you can possibly avoid it. After all, adjustments like that require work, and I don’t advocate spending extra time on accounting transactions if it can possibly be avoided.
So. The next accounting activity occurs when you use up the carbon credits. This is done when you’re officially offsetting carbon dioxide emissions that have just occurred. That involves a credit to eliminate the recorded intangible asset or inventory item, and a debit to an expense account.
Personally speaking, I would record that expense within the cost of goods sold, since it’s directly associated with the operations of your business.
Another possibility is that you sell the credits on an exchange. If so, that could result in a gain or a loss, depending on how supply and demand have impacted the market price of the credits. Realistically, most companies use up all or most of their credits, so the amount sold tends to be pretty small.
And here’s a final issue – impairment. If you’re holding carbon credits that are losing value over time – probably due to a decline in demand on the relevant exchange – then you may need to test them for impairment and write them down to their market value. This applies to credits that are being recorded as intangible assets. If you’re recording them in an inventory account, the same general concept applies, but now it’s called the lower of cost or net realizable value.
From a practical perspective, a business is likely to hold only just enough carbon credits for its own needs, and flush them out fairly quickly – which means that the probability of having an impairment is not all that high. Also, the theory behind setting up a cap-and-trade scheme is that the price of these credits should gradually go up over time, thereby creating an incentive for businesses to emit fewer greenhouse gases. Consequently, the odds of having to take a write-down are relatively low.
Who Accounts for Carbon Credits?
A final point here is whether this whole concept of carbon credits applies to you. In the United States, there’s a cap-and-trade system that covers the eleven states in the northeast, plus California and Washington. Several Canadian provinces also have it, and the Canadian government is setting up a nationwide system that covers its oil and gas sector. China has a system that covers its electricity production. And of course, the European Union has had such a system for a while now. In most cases, these cap-and-trade systems are only targeted at certain sectors, and usually only for larger businesses. If you’re not in one of the targeted areas, then it does not apply.