Carbon Accounting Conference 2026

The Carbon Accounting Alliance (CAA) annual conference’s purpose is to inspire a radical acceleration of climate impact within the carbon accounting industry. It will bring together thought leaders, academics, experts and professionals together through a series of technical, challenging and collaborative sessions.

The event is designed for those with experience in measuring carbon emissions, whether that be in an in-house sustainability role, an independent or a service provider. The agenda is still being designed, in collaboration with our community.

We want to make meaningful progress as an industry, all the whilst we achieve our 3 objectives:

• Education: To ensure delegates are more informed on practical ways to have more climate impact
• Demystification: To demystify controversial topics and provide delegates with nuanced views
• Collaboration: To enable collaboration and technical alignment on key topics

The conference will be hosted in Senate House, part of the University of London, which is an iconic Grade II listed heritage site full of history and character. The event will run for the whole day and include, coffee/tea, snacks and lunch. Doors will open at 8:30am, with sessions starting around 9:30am and ending at 5pm. For those who wish there will also be networking drinks in the venue 5pm - 7pm and an afterparty from 7pm in The Chancellor's Hall, an iconic space with a wonderful grand piano on the first floor of Senate House. 

Afterparty tickets are being sold separately and will include canapés and small bowls - equivalent to a 3-course meal per person - as well as drinks and live music. 

The event is being recorded, all ticket holders, both in-person and virtual, will be given access to watch sessions back post event.

Any surplus from the event will help the CAA fulfil its mission as a non-profit.

In the afternoon, you’ll choose one of three parallel breakout tracks. Whether you want big-picture debate, practical tools you can take straight back to work, or an interactive delegate-led discussion, each track is designed to offer a different way to engage. Tracks 1 and 2 will be available for both in person and virtual attendees and Track 3 will be for in person attendees only. 

• Track 1: New Thinking
  How can we professionalise our industry whilst achieving the scale we need to have impact?
  Carbon accounting is at a crossroads. Investors, regulators and boards increasingly expect emissions data to meet the same rigour as financial data. The launch of the RCAA professional register is a landmark step. But professionalisation creates a tension: the industry needs to scale rapidly to meet demand, yet higher standards risk creating bottlenecks at exactly the moment we need more people doing this work, not fewer. This session explores how we navigate that tension. Is the comparison to financial accounting's professionalisation journey a useful blueprint or a cautionary tale? What can we learn from how the accounting profession scaled globally while maintaining trust? And what does this all mean practically for the people in this room, whether you're an independent consultant, an in-house sustainability lead, or a service provider trying to hire?
  How to leverage AI in carbon accounting
  AI is reshaping carbon accounting, but between the hype and the reality, what does it actually look like in practice? This session brings together a variety of voices to share real-world examples of how AI is being applied across emissions measurement, data quality, and reporting. Expect honest accounts of what's working, what isn't, and where the technology genuinely accelerates progress versus where it introduces new risks around transparency and over-reliance on automated outputs. Whether you're already experimenting or still evaluating where to start, this session will give lots of food for thought.
• Track 2: Practical Skills 
  How to match the accounting method to the decision you're actually making
  Corporate GHG inventories answer one question: what emissions should we attribute to this organisation? But that's a different question from: will this decision actually reduce emissions in the real world? In this session, Matthew walks through his thinking comparing attributional corporate accounting, consequential life cycle assessment, and project/policy-level accounting, using case studies to show where the three methods give strikingly different answers.
  How to establish an internal carbon price and construct carbon abatement curves?
  An internal carbon price is one of the most powerful and underused tools sustainability leaders have for shifting how their organisations make decisions. But setting one that's credible, defensible, and actually influences behaviour is harder than it sounds. This session walks through the practicalities: how to arrive at a price that reflects your risk exposure and decarbonisation ambitions, how to build abatement curves that help you prioritise where to invest, and how to frame both in language that finance teams and boards will take seriously. For anyone trying to move carbon from a reporting metric to a genuine factor in capital allocation.
• Track 3: The unconference (in person only)
  The third will be a highly interactive delegate-led unconference, where topics and format will be decided by popular vote. All under Chatham House rule. The first 15min, delegates can pitch ideas and topics they'd like to discuss (30 second pitch), followed by voting and seperation into 4-5 groups depending on the topics for small group discussions. Alternative is that there is an impromptu panel discussion can also be organised if that is the format delegates decide on. A bit of thought still needed on how this will work in practice. 

If you have any queries regarding the event or tickets, please contact events@carbonaccountingalliance.com