•The term carbon accounting is being developed to refer to accounting treatment for carbon emission rights , or the accounting methods for carbon emission for financial reporting purpose, as opposed to scientific carbon accounting which is intended to measure and quantify amount of physical GHG emissions.

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•In general there are a multiplicity of ways to perform this asset treatment, according to the different interpretations of general principles of accounting (International Financial Reporting Standards IFRS).  Some firms classify emission rights as intangible assets, others as inventory assets, others as R&D, and so on.