Steel Standards Principles (SSP) agreement on transparency in greenhouse gas emissions metrics for steel

10th December 2025

With the aim of driving further alignment between GHG measurement standards for the steel industry, endorsers of the SSPs have come together to investigate key pivoting aspects that, through clear transparent declarations, can improve comparability and understanding in the sector’s GHG emissions figures. This statement identifies where additional transparency and clarity is required to provide meaningful and comparable carbon intensity metrics, and to assist stakeholders in their understanding of these metrics. Seven standard-setting organisations (see list at the end of the document) have so far committed to begin incorporating these into their standards and methodologies.

More than 65 standardisation, steelmaking, and international organisations have endorsed the SSPs1. SSP endorsing organisations recognise:

  • that divergent, fragmented, and incompatible standards and methodologies for measuring GHG emissions can lead to trade and supply chain disruptions, market uncertainty and consumer confusion, increasing the costs of decarbonizing steel production;
  • that improvements in transparency and interoperability between methodologies for measuring GHG emissions related to iron and steel production and steel products, will assist the transition to decarbonizing the industry;
  • that different methodologies may be needed at the project, production and product levels, but that interoperability between them will drive faster decarbonization of the steel industry globally.


SSP endorsing organisations endorse the principle that GHG emissions measurement standards and methodologies, data collection and disclosure frameworks, at the project, production, and product level, should be interoperable, enable recognition, build on existing international standards, avoid duplication, and be coupled with increased data reporting to improve transparency and global tracking of emissions. The dialogue between endorsers of the SSPs over the past two years has helped progress alignment and interoperability, with key organisations adapting their approaches for the sake of alignment, as outlined in the SSP COP 30 annual statement.

In support of this, the SSP endorsers have developed a set of criteria to be reported on or described when making a GHG emission disclosure. This commitment could be relevant to different types of endorsers, for example: standards setters (incorporating requirements), steel companies (providing this information/data to stakeholders), steel buyers (requesting the information via supply chains), etc. This will improve transparency and interoperability between methodologies for the measurement and reporting of the steel sector’s GHG emissions, and enable global tracking of such emissions.

We highly encourage SSP endorsers and non-endorsers to adopt these criteria for their own reporting.

Transparency criteria

Recognising the importance of transparency, coherence and clarity to achieve alignment and to nurture interoperability in a credible way, we understand that meaningful and comparable carbon intensity metrics for steel should demonstrate transparency on methods of calculation and will therefore require the reporting of:

  1. Common points of disclosure, on a site- or product-level, namely:
    • The cradle-to-gate GHG emissions from mining to crude steel as a minimum boundary (direct and indirect emissions), reported per tonne of crude steel. This should be reported in addition to other boundaries that may be specified in a referenced standard, together with details about the steel production technology route.
    • The inclusion of all relevant and significant greenhouse gases in addition to CO2, at a minimum methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O).
    • Data quality, the details of which need to be further defined but which includes quantifying the percentage of primary data contributing to the overall GWP determination.
    • Optionally, the amount of ferrous scrap input at the crude steel level, based on harmonised specifications from ISO 14021: 2016+A1:2021 and the upcoming revision, with the details to be defined by SSP, specifying the scrap type (internal, home, manufacturing, post-consumer scrap).
  2. Qualitative explanations of the following accounting rules/decisions relating to:
    • Global Warming Potential impact assessment method
    • Source(s) of primary and secondary data
    • Allocation of emissions related to co-products produced during steel making and used internally or externally to the steel production site
    • Use of alternative fuels, such as biobased fuels or hydrogen
    • Use and allocation of market or location-based electricity or contractual instruments
    • The cradle to gate emissions including transmission losses of imported electricity consumed
    • Inclusion/exclusion of transport of raw materials
    • Carbon Capture and Utilisation and/or Storage
    • Inclusion/exclusion of offsets, credits or insets

The following standards organisations and initiatives commit to aligning their standards / methodologies and their reporting requirements in line with the above: CARES, CISA, GSCC, LESS, ResponsibleSteel, RMI and worldsteel.

We will report back at the annual Steel Standards Principles meeting in 2026 on our progress on the above-mentioned commitments.

  1. https://steelstandardsprinciples.org/about-our-principles/
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