Greenhouse gas inventories are a type of emissions inventory developed for several reasons. Scientists use inventories of natural and anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions as tools in building atmospheric models. Policymakers use these inventories to develop new emissions reduction strategies and to evaluate how well those already implemented are doing. Corporations and regulatory agencies also rely on these inventories to verify compliance with permitted emissions limits. Companies, people and other stakeholders use these inventories to better understand the sources of emissions and their trends.

Unlike other air emissions inventories, greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories not only include air emissions by source categories, but also how carbon sinks remove some of these emissions from the atmosphere. These extractions are usually called carbon fixation (sometimes also, due to the influence of English, carbon sequestration).

GHG inventories typically use global warming potential (GWP) values ​​to combine emissions of multiple GHGs into a single weighted emissions value.

Some key examples of GHG inventories are:.

The ISO 14064 standards (published in 2006 and early 2007) are the most recent additions to the ISO 14000 series of international standards for environmental management. ISO 14064 standards provide governments, businesses, regions and other organizations with an integrated set of tools for programs to measure, quantify and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These standards allow those who use them to participate in emissions trading schemes.

The Local Government Operations Protocol (LGOP) is a tool for computing and reporting GHG emissions across local government operations. Adopted by the California Air Resources Board (ARB) in September 2008 to help local governments develop and communicate consistent GHG inventories to meet California AB 32 emissions reduction obligations, it was developed in partnership with the California Climate Action Registry, the Climate Registry, ICLEI, and dozens of environmental stakeholders.[3]​.

The California Alliance for Sustainability also created the LGOP toolkit, which reduces its complexities and provides an area-by-area summary of recommended inventory protocols.[4]​.

The data in the GHG emissions inventory uses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) format: 7 sectors presented with the Common Reporting Format (CRF), as should be done with all communication between UNFCCC member countries and its secretariat.[5]​.