Restoration Carbon Protocol (RCP) — Complete Knowledge Base

For Industry Leadership

Is your organization ready to govern this standard?

The restoration industry has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead commercial real estate on Scope 3 compliance. The infrastructure is built and open source. What it needs now is formal industry governance.

→ Read the full briefing for RIA leadership

Restoration Carbon Protocol v1.0 — The first open industry standard for calculating, documenting, and reporting Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions from restoration contractor work. Published April 2026. Free to use, implement, and build upon.

Questions or contributions: rcp@tygartmedia.com  |  Framework version: RCP v1.0  |  Schema: RCP-JCR-1.0

Start Here

If you are new to the RCP, read these three articles in order. They cover why this standard exists, where restoration contractor emissions appear in commercial property reporting, and what the framework requires.

  1. What Is Scope 3 and Why Restoration Contractors Need to Care
  2. How Commercial Property Managers Are Counting Your Emissions (Whether You Know It or Not)
  3. Introducing the Restoration Carbon Protocol: An Industry Self-Standard for Scope 3 Reporting

The Complete Framework

The single canonical reference document — all five job types, the 12-point data standard, emission factors, JSON schema, governance model, and versioning policy in one place.


Regulatory Context

The deadlines and disclosure frameworks driving commercial property managers to request contractor Scope 3 data.


Technical Calculation Guides — By Job Type

Each guide contains the actual emission factors, calculation methodology, worked examples, and proxy values for that restoration category. These are the source-of-record methodology documents for each job type.


Data Standard and Reference

The inputs, factors, formats, and schemas that make RCP calculations reproducible and auditable.


Commercial Application

How to deliver RCP data to clients, position your company, and navigate specific commercial requirements.


Reducing Your Footprint

Measurement without a reduction trajectory is compliance theater. This playbook covers fleet electrification, material substitution, route optimization, and waste diversion — with a year-by-year roadmap to 30% reduction by 2030.


For Software Developers and ESG Platforms

Everything needed to implement RCP data capture natively in restoration job management software or to ingest RCP records into an ESG data management platform.


Audit Readiness

As Scope 3 verification requirements expand under SB 253, CSRD, and GRESB, contractor data will face increasing scrutiny. This guide prepares you.


FAQ and Knowledge Stack


Contribute to the RCP

The RCP is an open standard. Contributions from contractors, software vendors, ESG consultants, property managers, and researchers are actively welcomed. The current contribution process: propose a change to rcp@tygartmedia.com with technical rationale and sources. Accepted contributions are credited in version release notes.

Priority areas for RCP v1.1: LCA-based material emission factors, EV fleet proxy values, regional proxy rates outside the continental US, subcontractor emissions inclusion methodology.

To discuss RCP adoption at the industry level or partnership with RIA: will@tygartmedia.com


Carbon Avoidance Framework

Beyond measuring what emissions occurred, the RCP supports documenting emissions that didn’t happen — through dry-in-place decisions, waste diversion, and low-emission equipment substitution. This is the data commercial clients with SBTi commitments need to demonstrate supply chain reduction progress.


API Reference — For Developers and ESG Platforms

Query all RCP articles, emission factors, and schema documentation programmatically via REST API. Includes existing WordPress endpoints and the planned tygart/v1/rcp endpoints for v1.1.