The workshop featured participation from leading ESG technology experts: Mr. Quan Nguyen – a Doctor of Environmental Science with over 10 years of experience in carbon credit trading, waste management, and a member of the GHG Protocol; Mr. Tuan Pham – a Master of Business Administration, a Doctoral candidate in Climate Finance in Europe, and Product Manager of VertZéro at FPT IS. The event attracted nearly 500 representatives from businesses across the country.

In Vietnam, since early 2023, approximately 1,920 designated emission sources have started to conduct periodic greenhouse gas inventories. From 2025, thousands of enterprises will be required to conduct greenhouse gas inventories as mandated by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. As a participant in the Paris Agreement, Vietnam has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 15.8% (with domestic resources) and 43.5% (with international support) by 2030 compared to the business-as-usual scenario.

According to Mr. Quan Nguyen, to conduct greenhouse gas inventories, businesses need to comply with various international standards such as: ISO 14064 – Total emissions, greenhouse gas reduction, carbon storage for organizations, enterprises, projects; ISO 14067 – Assessment of the product's greenhouse gas lifecycle; ISO 14068 – Climate change management, net-zero carbon transition – carbon neutrality; GHG Protocols; Corporate/organization standards; Value chain standards (Scope 3) – Indirect emissions…

Among them, ISO 14064-1:2018 is the most important content within the ISO 14001 Standards System related to greenhouse gas management activities. The ISO 14064-1 standard sets requirements for designing, developing, managing, reporting, and verifying an enterprise's greenhouse gas inventory; assessing baseline emissions and annual emissions; identifying emission sources and carbon sinks; and obtaining primary data from organizational activities.

Mr. Quan Nguyen stated that applying the ISO 14064-1:2018 standard brings many benefits to businesses, such as: enhancing reputation (demonstrating a commitment to environmental protection, building a green image, and being responsible to the community); improving management (guiding businesses to identify, monitor, and report greenhouse gas emissions); reducing costs (controlling and cutting emissions); and increasing competitive advantage (meeting greenhouse gas emission requirements from customers and partners).

To conduct greenhouse gas inventories, Mr. Quan Nguyen emphasized that businesses should not undertake this alone. As this process requires high accuracy, transparency, and precision, businesses need to collaborate with three parties: (1) Determining relevant scope and boundaries, (2) Verifying information and data provided by the first party, (3) Having the authority to assess (ISO 14065).

Sharing his views on this issue, Mr. Tuan Pham – Master of Business Administration, Doctoral candidate in Climate Finance in Europe, and Product Manager of VertZéro, stated that the greenhouse gas inventory process involves five steps: (1) Defining organizational boundaries and emission sources; (2) Collecting activity data and emission factors; (3) Calculating emissions for each source (fuel, electricity, procurement, etc.); (4) Setting emission reduction targets; (5) Reporting results and establishing emission reduction goals.

However, Mr. Tuan Pham also noted that many Vietnamese businesses face challenges in conducting greenhouse gas inventories, such as time-consuming data collection, lack of knowledge about complex standards and regulations, and the unavailability of environmental data.

“In this context, FPT IS is currently one of the first units to provide a greenhouse gas inventory solution in Vietnam – VertZéro. The solution comprehensively digitizes the process of collecting environmental data, calculating, managing, and generating emission reports, meeting global standards for emission reporting and greenhouse gas elimination such as ISO 14064-1, GHG Protocol, and other standards,” Mr. Tuan Pham shared.

VertZéro enables businesses to define boundaries and measure emissions across Scopes 1, 2, and 3; break down multi-dimensional emissions; and access global emission factors. This provides a basis for setting emission reduction targets (over time, by scope, as per government regulations, etc.) and tracking actual emissions. Once information is transparent, the solution helps businesses create greenhouse gas inventory reports in compliance with the regulations of: the Vietnamese Government (Decree 06/2022/NĐ-CP, ISO 14064-1:2011), international standards (GHG Protocol, IPCC, EPA, ISO 14064-1:2018), and European standards (CBAM). With VertZéro, organizations hold the key to automating the greenhouse gas inventory process, including regulatory and standard compliance, emission factor updates, data connection from suppliers, and automatic report generation.

VertZéro is being implemented for FPT Software, aiming to help the company proactively inventory greenhouse gases across all three scopes, connect and synchronize data from 30 countries, and build standard emission factors customized for each region. The implementation process is designed to meet global standard frameworks, closely adhering to sustainable development requirements in the global technology supply chain.

With practical implementation experience, a solid technological foundation, and a network of experts and global partners from Europe, Germany, Japan, Australia, and more, FPT IS aims to support Vietnamese businesses in quickly adopting a green transformation roadmap according to global standards, striving to become sustainable development organizations.