Verification / Auditing Services

Historically Beyond Neutral was an accredited independent verifier under Australia’s

• voluntary emissions reporting and climate action program, Greenhouse Challenge, and
• original carbon offset approval and carbon neutral accreditation scheme, Greenhouse Friendly™

We were accredited to verify Fossil Fuel, Renewable Energy and Land Use Change and Forestry scopes under Greenhouse Challenge.

For Greenhouse Friendly™, we were accredited to verify both projects and products for participants and was one of only five companies in Australia accredited to verify Land Use Change and Forestry sector projects.

Independent verifications were undertaken to the AS/ISO 14064.3 standard and reasonable assurance.

• The verifications assessed the reports against the criteria of completeness, consistency, accuracy, transparency, relevance and conservativeness.
• A full range of verification opinions have been provided across the verifications undertaken, with the principles of independence, ethical conduct and fair representation adopted while performing the verifications.

Verifications of the reporting of greenhouse inventories, and an assessment of the reasonableness of abatement claims and performance benchmarks were conducted on organisations in the following sectors:

• Meat Processing: the facilities were spread across three States and were either dedicated large animal or mixed large/ small animal abattoirs.
• Mining: this required a particular focus on those emission sources encountered in the mining sector, in particular coal production.
• Tertiary Education: the verification was of one of Australia’s premier institutions which had a range of unusual emission sources and widely dispersed facilities.
• Public Service: a large, geographically diverse Commonwealth department with a very high number of facilities required the utilisation of robust sampling techniques.
• Electricity, Gas and Water: this required an understanding of the key emission sources and attention to the accuracy of the largest source of emissions and the emission factors used.

We also undertook verification of the emission factor for electricity generated by one of Australia’s major fossil fuel electricity generators for as a part of a State government’s license approval process.

While we no longer undertake verifications, we apply a “verifier’s eye” to our clients’ emissions reporting.  We also offer validation services to clients, essentially a pre-audit check.