ISO 14068-1 is the international standard that sets out what an organisation or a product has to do before it can be called carbon neutral. In its 2023 edition it defines the words, fixes the order the work happens in, and sets the conditions for saying it out loud.
Two things trip people up. The title promises a transition to net zero, and a replacement is weeks away.
The most misleading thing about ISO 14068-1 is its own title. It says transition to net zero, and the document then sets no requirements for net zero.
Where ISO 14068-1 stands right now
Here are the facts worth having in front of you before the detail, including the one that changes how you should treat the document this autumn.
| Detail | ISO 14068-1 |
|---|---|
| Standard | ISO 14068-1 |
| Full title | Climate change management, transition to net zero, part 1, carbon neutrality |
| Current edition | 2023, the first edition, published on 30 November 2023 |
| Status | Published, and flagged by ISO for revision since May 2026 |
| Type | Requirements and guidance, not a certification |
| Published by | ISO/TC 207 Environmental management, subcommittee SC 7 on greenhouse gas and climate change management |
| Length | 44 pages |
| Built on | ISO 14064-1, ISO 14064-3 and ISO 14067, cited as normative references |
| Being replaced by | ISO 14068, which drops the part number, with a September 2026 date |
| What it will not give you | Requirements for net zero, or anything usable by a country or a city |
One line in that table does more work than the rest. Because ISO 14064-1 and ISO 14067 are normative references rather than suggestions, you cannot conform to ISO 14068-1 without quantifying the footprint their way first.
Carbon neutral and net zero are not the same thing
People use the two phrases as if they were interchangeable. ISO 14068-1 spends a section of its introduction pulling them apart, and the split decides which of the two you are actually allowed to claim.
Start with the standard's own definition. Something is carbon neutral when, over a stated period, its carbon footprint has been reduced through emission cuts or increased removals, and anything still left over has been counterbalanced by offsetting.
Two details in that sentence are easy to skim past;
- Carbon means every greenhouse gas, not just carbon dioxide. The standard says it follows common practice and uses carbon as shorthand in phrases like carbon neutrality, so everything is counted in carbon dioxide equivalents. Its definition matches what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calls greenhouse gas neutrality, which is the wider of the two IPCC terms.
- It is always tied to a period. For an organisation that period is a set number of years. For a product it is the full life cycle or a stated part of it, so carbon neutral is never a permanent property of a thing.
Where net zero parts company
Net zero is the term the standard deliberately does not define requirements for, and the table below is its own account of why.
| What to compare | Carbon neutrality in this standard | Net zero greenhouse gas emissions |
|---|---|---|
| Used for | Organisations and products | Territories and organisations, never products |
| Offsetting | Normally part of getting there | For an organisation, restricted to removal credits, and for a territory sometimes excluded altogether |
| Shape of it | A pathway of continual improvement, where the need for offsetting falls over time | A condition reached once only residual emissions are left |
| Covered here | Yes, with requirements you can be held to | No requirements and no recommendations, at any scale |
At global scale the IPCC treats the two as equivalent, and the standard calls that condition global net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Everywhere below global scale they are different claims resting on different evidence, which is why a company promising net zero by 2040 and a product labelled carbon neutral today are not doing the same thing.
The order the standard makes you work in
This is the part of ISO 14068-1 that has teeth. It sets a hierarchy, and the hierarchy says that cutting your own emissions and increasing your own removals come before buying anything.
Three of the four moves happen inside what the standard calls the boundary of the subject, meaning the organisation or product you are making the claim about. Only the last one comes from outside it.
Reading that in order, the work goes like this.
- Measure the footprint. For an organisation, under ISO 14064-1. For a product, as a life cycle assessment using climate change as the single impact category, under ISO 14067.
- Cut the emissions. Both the direct ones you own and the indirect ones in your value chain count, because both sit inside the boundary.
- Increase the removals you control. Reforestation, carbon stored in soils and direct air capture with storage are the examples the standard gives.
- Offset what is genuinely left. Only then, and only under conditions.
Why the fourth step is not a shortcut
Offsetting has a narrow meaning here. It is counterbalancing the footprint by retiring carbon credits, where a credit is a tradeable certificate for one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Retiring means taking that certificate permanently out of circulation in a public registry, so nobody can use or trade it again.
The standard attaches two conditions. Credits have to meet the criteria in its Clause 11, and they are only used after the reductions and removals have actually been made in line with your plan.
So offsetting is not an alternative to the first three steps. It is what closes the gap the first three leave behind.
That gap has a name too, and the distinction matters if anyone audits you. Unabated emissions are whatever is left after your reduction activities, while residual emissions are the narrower set that remains after every reduction that is technically and economically feasible has been made.
What has to be written down before you can claim anything
A carbon neutrality claim in ISO 14068-1 is a public declaration made about a named subject, so the paperwork behind it is the whole point. The document that carries it is called the carbon neutrality management plan, and it is where the commitment stops being a slogan.
What the plan and its records pin down
Three things have to be fixed in writing before a claim stands up, and the first one is what step four of the hierarchy is gated on.
The targets are the reductions and removals the footprint will be measured against. The reporting period is the specific stretch of time the claim covers, typically a year, though the standard allows shorter for something like a six-monthly event and longer for forest or agricultural systems.
The baseline is a quantified figure for a chosen base period, so a change in the footprint is measured against something rather than asserted.
Underneath all three sits what the standard calls documented information, meaning the records an entity keeps and controls. That is what turns a claim into something a third party can actually check.
For the checking itself, ISO 14068-1 points at ISO 14064-3, the standard for verifying greenhouse gas statements. The standard is also, in its own words, greenhouse gas programme neutral, so if a scheme applies to you, its requirements land on top of these rather than replacing them.
Who can be called carbon neutral and who cannot
ISO 14068-1 splits the world into the entity making the claim and the subject the claim is about, and the two are often the same company looking at itself. The subject can be an organisation or a product, and both words are wider than they look.
Organisations include companies, local authorities and financial institutions. Financial institutions get their own guidance inside the document, in Clause B.3.
Products include services as well as goods, and the standard names buildings and events explicitly, so a conference or an office block can be the subject of a claim.
Territories cannot. Regions, countries, states and cities are ruled out, including countries reporting national outcomes under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Two things are also outside the scope, and both are commonly claimed anyway. Avoided emissions, the argument that your product saved emissions somewhere else, are not addressed here at all.
Neither is the quantification of greenhouse gas projects whose purpose is to generate reductions or removals, which is ISO 14064-2 territory.
How ISO 14068-1 fits with ISO 14064 and ISO 14067
ISO 14068-1 is the newest member of the ISO 14060 family of greenhouse gas standards, and it deliberately does not repeat what the others already do. It sits on top of them.
The division of labour is worth learning once, because the wrong document produces the wrong number.
| Document | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| ISO 14064-1 | What is this organisation's greenhouse gas inventory |
| ISO 14067 | What is this product's carbon footprint across its life cycle |
| ISO 14064-3 | Can somebody independently verify that statement |
| ISO 14068-1 | Is this subject carbon neutral, and on what terms |
Around that core sit ISO 14064-2 for greenhouse gas projects, ISO 14065 for the bodies doing the verifying, and ISO 14066 for the competence of their teams.
Further out, the method for any product footprint comes from ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 on life cycle assessment, and the rules for saying any of it on a label come from ISO 14021 and ISO 14025.
One thing ISO 14068-1 is not is a management system. If you want a certified system to hang this work in, that is ISO 14001, which is the certifiable standard in this family. ISO 14068-1 is something you conform to and can have verified, not something you hold a certificate for.
What this means if you sell packaging in the EU
Here is the honest position first. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation says nothing about carbon neutrality.
It regulates recyclability, recycled content, minimisation and reuse, and its own environmental claims rule, Article 14, only governs claims about those properties. Conforming to ISO 14068-1 demonstrates nothing under it.
The pressure comes from consumer law instead, and it is sharper than most producers expect.
Directive (EU) 2024/825, the directive on empowering consumers for the green transition, adds a new entry to the list of commercial practices that are unfair in all circumstances.
The banned practice, in its own words, is claiming, based on the offsetting of greenhouse gas emissions, that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
The examples the directive names are the phrases already printed on packs today, including climate neutral, CO2 neutral certified, climate compensated and reduced climate impact.
The part that catches people out
ISO 14068-1 permits a claim in which residual emissions are counterbalanced by credits generated outside the subject's own boundary. That is not an accident in the standard, it is how offsetting is defined.
From 27 September 2026, when Member States have to apply the new rules, saying that on a product sold to consumers in the EU is prohibited regardless of how well the underlying work was done. The ban is on the claim, not on the method, so conformity with the standard is not a defence.
What still works
Everything before the offsetting step survives intact. Measuring the footprint, cutting it, and being able to show your working are the parts that still earn you credit with a customer or a regulator, without straying into greenwashing.
Investing in credit projects also stays perfectly legal to talk about, as long as you do not turn it into a neutrality claim about the product.
For a packaging producer that lands close to work you already do. The evidence for a footprint sits in the same place as the packaging data behind your technical documentation, your declaration of conformity and your EPR reporting.
That is the practical reason to keep it somewhere retrievable rather than in a spreadsheet on somebody's laptop.
Two dates that land in the same month
September 2026 is a busy month for anyone relying on this standard, because two separate things happen in it and they pull in opposite directions.
On the ISO side, the successor is called simply ISO 14068, without the part number and without the words transition to net zero in the title. It is at the final production stage with a September 2026 publication date, and ISO records that it will replace the 2023 document.
Its published abstract matches the current scope, so expect a renumbering and a tidy-up rather than a new set of rules. If you are buying the standard now, buy it knowing that.
On the legal side, 27 September 2026 is the date the offsetting claim ban starts to apply across the EU.
Worth knowing about the document these two replaced between them. PAS 2060, the British specification widely used for carbon neutral claims before ISO 14068-1 existed, was withdrawn on 1 December 2025, so the older route has closed.
Frequently asked questions about ISO 14068-1
Short, plain answers to what people ask most about this standard.
What is ISO 14068-1?
ISO 14068-1 is an international standard, published in 2023, that sets the principles, requirements and guidance for achieving and demonstrating carbon neutrality. It covers organisations and products, and it works by quantifying, reducing and then offsetting the carbon footprint in that order.
Is ISO 14068-1 a certification?
No. It is a requirements and guidance document you conform to, not a scheme that awards a certificate. Verification of the greenhouse gas statements underneath a claim is handled by ISO 14064-3, and ISO 14001 is the certifiable standard in this family.
Which edition of ISO 14068-1 is current?
The 2023 first edition, published on 30 November 2023 and running to 44 pages. ISO flagged it for revision in May 2026, and its replacement, ISO 14068, is at the publication stage with a September 2026 date.
Is carbon neutral the same as net zero?
Not below global scale. ISO 14068-1 defines carbon neutrality for organisations and products and states outright that it sets no requirements for net zero. Net zero is normally applied to countries and organisations, never to products, and it treats offsetting far more strictly.
Does ISO 14068-1 let you offset your way to carbon neutral?
No. It sets a hierarchy in which cutting your own emissions and increasing your own removals come first, and offsetting only covers what genuinely remains. Credits must also meet the criteria in Clause 11 and be retired in a public registry.
Can you still call a product carbon neutral in the EU?
Not on the strength of offsetting. From 27 September 2026, claiming a neutral, reduced or positive greenhouse gas impact for a product based on offsetting is an unfair commercial practice under Directive (EU) 2024/825, whatever standard the calculation followed.
What replaced PAS 2060?
ISO 14068-1 is the international standard that carbon neutrality claims now point to. PAS 2060, the British specification widely used before it, was withdrawn on 1 December 2025.
Does ISO 14068-1 apply to packaging?
Only through the product it wraps. Packaging emissions form part of a product's carbon footprint under ISO 14067, which ISO 14068-1 builds on, but the EU's packaging regulation sets no carbon neutrality rules and names no ISO standard for it.
