SBTi launches ‘best efforts’ corporate standard

Long-awaited update recognises ‘that companies do not control everything, and that pretending otherwise does not serve anyone’. 

The Science-based Targets initiative (SBTi) has today launched a long-awaited update to its corporate net-zero standard. 

The revised framework is intended to respond to firms’ frustrations when trying to achieve their climate goals. 

“Company after company told us the same thing: they had set their targets in good faith, and then found themselves navigating supply chains about which they had limited information and could not fully control, technologies not yet available at scale, investment cycles that did not align with target periods, and Scope 3 emissions that depended on the decisions of thousands of suppliers and customers at very different stages of their own journeys,” wrote SBTi’s chair, Franscesco Starace, in a statement announcing the new standard. 

SBTi has “made an explicit choice to recognise that companies do not control everything, and that pretending otherwise does not serve anyone”. 

As a result, Starace said, the new standard takes a “best-efforts” approach. 

“The expectation is clear: set targets based on science accompanied by reasonable implementation plans, deploy every lever within your control, be transparent about where barriers have limited what was possible, and demonstrate what you are doing to address those barriers over time,” he wrote. 

Companies should set two or more near-term targets and can choose to set an overarching net-zero target. 

The size and location of the business will be taken into consideration, and, if a company has “genuinely exhausted the levers available” it will be allowed to take other approaches, including buying energy and commodity certificates. 

SBTi insists that it is taking “a balanced approach” to the use of carbon credits under the framework. 

Version 1.0 will remain open for setting targets until the end of 2027. 

Real Economy Progress will dive deeper into the new standard over coming days, so make sure you’re signed up to receive alerts to your inbox.