Claims & compliance
What you may say about a carbon.md ledger — and what you must not. This is a design constraint of the standard, not a legal disclaimer bolted on afterwards.
Not legal advice. If you make environmental claims commercially in the EU, get them reviewed.
The rule
Never claim neutrality. Say what actually happened:
| ✅ Say | ❌ Never say |
|---|---|
| "measures its agents' emissions and contributes 110% via verified carbon removal" | "carbon neutral" |
| "matched by verified carbon credits" | "climate positive" |
| "estimated emissions, with uncertainty ranges" | "offsets your emissions" |
| "funded the removal of X tCO₂e" | "zero-emission AI" |
Why
Legally — the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition directive (ECGT) bans environmental claims on consumer-facing products that rely on offsetting, applying from 27 September 2026. "Carbon neutral thanks to offsets" becomes prohibited, not merely frowned upon.
Substantively — matching emissions with a removal purchase is a contribution. The CO₂ was still emitted. Removal takes time and carries its own uncertainty. Calling that "neutral" overstates what happened, and the whole value of this project rests on not overstating.
What the tooling does for you
carbon.md is built so the honest phrasing is the default and the dishonest one is hard to produce:
- Generated pages and badges use contribution language only.
- Every figure ships with a low–central–high range — no false precision.
- Pages state "estimated, not measured" and name the methodology version.
- Receipts link to registry serials and, on the on-chain rail, to a transaction.
- Nothing in the spec lets you declare an outcome you can't evidence.
Writing your own copy
A safe template:
<project>measures the inference emissions of its AI agents using<methodology version>(estimates with uncertainty ranges) and contributes<X>% of them via verified carbon removal. Ledger and retirement receipts:<link>.
Keep it specific: name the methodology, show the ranges, link the receipts.
For enterprise reporting
Ledger data supports scope-3 style reporting for AI workloads, but describe it accurately: estimated emissions from a versioned open methodology, with contributions recorded separately from the emissions themselves. Contributions never subtract from your reported emissions — they are disclosed alongside them. Deeper CSRD-oriented export is planned.
Related
- Concepts — contribution, not neutrality
- Methodology & factors — the uncertainty you must communicate