Carbon has become an increasingly important unit of business measurement, regulatory exposure, investment analysis, supply-chain management, and strategic decision-making. Companies are being asked to understand not only their direct greenhouse gas emissions but also emissions associated with purchased energy, suppliers, logistics, products, investments, and broader value chains. At the same time, carbon taxes, emissions trading systems, carbon credits, border carbon measures, corporate climate commitments, and emerging carbon-removal markets are creating financial consequences that managers must understand.
Carbon Accounting & Markets is an advanced Junior MBA course designed to develop the managerial capabilities required to understand, evaluate, and govern corporate greenhouse gas inventories and carbon-market exposure. It moves beyond introductory sustainability concepts and general discussions of climate change to address the practical architecture of emissions measurement, organizational and operational boundaries, Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 accounting, emissions factors, data quality, verification, carbon pricing, emissions trading, carbon credits, carbon removals, procurement strategy, financial implications, and executive governance.
The course distinguishes carefully between concepts that are frequently—and incorrectly—treated as interchangeable. A corporate greenhouse gas inventory is not the same thing as a carbon credit portfolio; an emissions allowance is not necessarily a carbon offset; avoided emissions are not automatically reductions in an organization’s inventory; and purchasing credits does not erase the need to understand and manage underlying emissions. Students learn how these distinctions affect corporate strategy, financial decisions, disclosures, claims, procurement, and risk management.
Because this is an advanced course, the emphasis is not on memorizing terminology. Students instead learn to think like managers who must determine what should be measured, where the data comes from, how reliable it is, what carbon actually costs the enterprise, which emissions can realistically be reduced, when market instruments are appropriate, what constitutes a credible carbon asset, and how carbon-related decisions should influence strategy and capital allocation.
Course Objectives
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Interpret corporate greenhouse gas inventories from a managerial and strategic perspective.
• Distinguish among Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions and understand their business implications.
• Evaluate organizational and operational boundaries used in greenhouse gas accounting.
• Understand activity data, emissions factors, estimation methods, and calculation architecture.
• Assess greenhouse gas data quality, uncertainty, controls, and verification requirements.
• Analyze Scope 3 emissions across complex global value chains.
• Distinguish location-based and market-based approaches to purchased-electricity accounting where applicable.
• Understand carbon intensity, absolute emissions, avoided emissions, reductions, removals, offsets, allowances, and credits as distinct concepts.
• Evaluate mandatory and voluntary carbon-pricing mechanisms.
• Understand the economic operation of emissions trading systems.
• Assess the basic quality characteristics of carbon credits and carbon-removal claims.
• Evaluate additionality, permanence, leakage, baselines, double counting, and verification risks.
• Incorporate carbon prices into operating and capital-allocation decisions.
• Evaluate carbon exposure across products, suppliers, facilities, investments, and business units.
• Understand carbon-related procurement and portfolio decisions.
• Analyze carbon-market risks without treating carbon prices as certain or uniform.
• Integrate carbon accounting into enterprise strategy, finance, operations, procurement, supply chains, and governance.
• Communicate carbon information accurately without making unsupported environmental claims.
