First reality check launched for corporate climate claims: Details here

A UN-backed body launched a scheme to verify corporates’ net zero strategies on Thursday that is likely to become a standard for regulators and investors to measure companies’ climate ambitions.

With rising investor and societal pressure on companies to reduce emissions to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, firms have come up with multiple ways to express climate strategies.

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a collaboration between the United Nations and commodities, and climate-focused non-governmental bodies, aims to make corporate climate pledges comparable and, ultimately, more credible.

“For the first time, the SBTi Net-Zero Standard offers companies robust certification to demonstrate to consumers, in­vestors and regulators that their net-zero targets are reducing emissionns at the pace and scale required,” Alberto Carrillo Pine­da, Managing Director, SBTi, said.

“We’re now inviting all companies with net-zero targets and ambitions to show stakeholders that their decarbonisation pathway is aligned with science.”

Large companies must convince the SBTi that they have a credible plan to halve their emissions before 2030 and eliminate 90-95 per cent of emissions before 2050 compared with a base year after 2015.

Reductions have to cover greenhouse gas emissions from a company’s direct operations and use of electricity, also known as Scope 1 and 2, as well as from the suppliers and end-users of its products, or Scope 3.