Honors Theses

Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Accountancy

First Advisor

Dave Nichols

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The thesis concerns the search for a converged International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) and United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP) standard to account for carbon credit trading schemes. Many nations, including those in the European Union, have adopted carbon credit trading schemes In order to reduce carbon emissions. Carbon emissions trading schemes present many accounting challenges, including the exact nature of the credits and hovj to measure the obligation to which credits will be applied. However, there is not a standard to address these accounting Issues. The short-lived former standard was withdrawn because of extensive shortcomings. Currently, participating companies use a variety of approaches to account for carbon credits, and this creates comparability issues in the financial statements. As part of the thesis research, a survey was conducted of graduate accounting students and accounting professionals to solicit input on the possible ways to account for carbon credits. The survey contained a simple scenario of a company's carbon activity for the year. Five distinct approaches were gathered from the surveys and were then scrutinized using existing accounting standards and frameworks promulgated by IFRS and US GAAP. The conclusion was reached that carbon credits granted by the government are not actually a government grant; they should be netted out by was also concluded that a liability should be measured emissions over held credits both at Interim and year-end reporting date. It was also concluded that the research was limited by the lack of a converged IFRS/US GAAP framework, the small size of the survey, and the lack of development of carbon credit trading schemes to date. an allowance for granted credits. It as the estimated excess of carbon

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