The Climate Registry (TCR): How QETs Feed the General Reporting Protocol

The TCR — The Climate Registry — is the long-standing US framework for voluntary and sub-national GHG reporting. Its General Reporting Protocol is the methodology a wide range of state, municipal, and corporate reporters use for credible disclosure. This page explains how Greentruth's Quantified Emissions Tokens (QETs) align to that protocol — including the specific sections where the alignment is most developed — and what QETs do not do under TCR rules.

TCR-aligned reporting, in one paragraph. Greentruth's QETs are fuel- or electricity-attribute certificates, verified to ISO 14064-3 reasonable assurance, retired on the EarnDLT registry to anchor a specific reporting claim. They are designed to feed The Climate Registry's General Reporting Protocol. The most developed alignment is for QET-RNG, which maps directly to GRP §D-7 (fuel-attribute documentation), §D-15 (Steam and Heating eligibility), and §B-7 (biogenic emissions accounting). QETs are not offsets, not carbon credits, and do not transfer Scope 1 emissions.

Read the long-form TCR guide

The Climate Registry is a non-profit GHG reporting body that originated as a collaboration among US states and Canadian provinces. It maintains the General Reporting Protocol (GRP) — a long-running, third-party-verified GHG reporting methodology used for voluntary and state-level disclosure. Compared with frameworks like the SBTi or CDP, the framework's emphasis is on the integrity of the underlying inventory: how emissions are measured, documented, verified, and disclosed at the reporting-entity level.

For corporate sustainability and ESG teams, the practical questions are usually three:

• What can be claimed under the GRP, and what supporting documentation is required?
• How are biogenic emissions handled separately from fossil?
• How are fuel- or electricity-attribute certificates treated as supporting evidence?

QETs are designed to answer all three with a single retire-able record per MMBtu or MWh.

The Climate Registry

GHG Protocol Corporate Standard

The General Reporting Protocol is a long document covering inventory boundaries, calculation methodologies, biogenic treatment, fuel-attribute documentation, verification expectations, and reporting formats. Three sections are particularly relevant for reporters using QETs:

• GRP §D-7 — Fuel-attribute documentation. Defines what supporting documentation is required to substantiate fuel-attribute claims (renewable, low-carbon, certified-low-emission, etc.).
• GRP §D-15 — Steam and Heating eligibility. Defines when steam, heating, and thermal-energy attributes can be claimed by the consuming entity.
• GRP §B-7 — Biogenic emissions accounting. Defines how biogenic CO₂ is reported separately from fossil emissions under the protocol.

These three sections are the ones the QET-RNG methodology anchors to most explicitly — and the sections any TCR reporter using QETs should expect their verifier to focus on.

A QET-RNG is a renewable natural gas thermal certificate — one MMBtu of RNG thermal energy with a verified carbon intensity in kgCO₂e/MMBtu. Its alignment with the GRP is the most developed across the QET family because the methodology (v2.1.2) was authored against these GRP sections specifically.

• GRP §D-7 (fuel-attribute documentation). Each QET-RNG carries the producer, basin/feedstock, injection point, customer delivery point, pipeline connectivity, volumetric equivalence, and temporal matching — the documentation set that §D-7 calls for, in a single machine-readable record. The token's verifier of record is stamped on the certificate under ISO 14064-3 reasonable assurance.
• GRP §D-15 (Steam and Heating eligibility). The QET-RNG methodology's well-to-pipeline-injection scope and the underlying mass-balance chain of custody are designed so that thermal-energy claims can be substantiated under the eligibility criteria §D-15 sets out for the consuming entity.
• GRP §B-7 (biogenic emissions accounting). Biogenic CO₂ is accounted separately from fossil emissions on the token. That preserved biogenic carve-out is exactly the structure §B-7 expects, so reporters can present a clean fossil-only fuel-attribute number where the protocol requires it.

How biogenic accounting works in detail

How retirement anchors the claim

The protocol alignment of the other two abatement-layer QETs is less developed at the section level than QET-RNG's, but the same retire-once / verifier-stamped / methodology-versioned architecture applies. The underlying record structure is exactly the same as the foundational QET architecture.

For a reporter using the framework, the value across the family is consistency: every token retires once, carries its methodology version and verifier of record, and produces a machine-readable retirement record an inventory auditor can inspect.

How QETs feed GHG Protocol Scope 1/2/3

How QETs align across reporting frameworks

For Climate Registry submissions, Greentruth produces a framework-mapped export from the same underlying QET record the buyer is already using for other disclosures. The export is structured so an inventory verifier can reconstruct the calculation from the source data without leaving the report:

• Per-token line items mapped to the relevant GRP sections (§D-7, §D-15, §B-7 where applicable).
• Methodology version, reference dataset version (including R&D GREET 2025 where applicable), and verifier of record stamped on each line.
• Biogenic carve-out preserved as a separate line item per the §B-7 expectation.
• Retirement record linking each token to the specific TCR reporting period and entity.

The export is delivered in both human-readable PDF and machine-readable JSON form alongside the on-chain retirement record. The intent is that the verifier never has to ask “where did this number come from?” — the answer is on the token.

For corporate sustainability teams

For ESG / disclosure teams