Dive Brief:
- The Science Based Targets initiative announced a strategic pivot Thursday, which looks to expand its role within the corporate climate action ecosystem. The target-setter said it is looking from being a climate “ambition-setter” to a corporate “transformation partner.”
- The organization announced the changes as part of its 2026-2030 strategy, highlighted by a shift to focusing on developing interoperable sector-specific guidance for companies in different industries and geographies, as well as increased data collection and benchmarking for members and the public.
- “The world has changed significantly since the SBTi was established ten years ago,” the strategy document said. “Business as usual is not an option. This strategy, therefore, marks a clear shift as we embark on a second phase focused on supporting the corporate net-zero transition.”
Dive Insight:
More than 13,000 companies globally have set or committed to set science-based targets, SBTi said in the May 21 strategy document, including nearly 11,000 that have set near-term climate targets. The organization was founded in 2015 by CDP — formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project — the United Nations Global Compact, the World Resources Institute, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the We Mean Business Coalition. SBTi became an independent organization in 2023.
SBTi’s strategy for the rest of the decade sets out four operational central shifts: going from creating more generalized target-setting guidance to creating tailored approaches; increasing its focus on target implementation; expanding across high-emitting sectors and regions; and strengthening partnerships “to reduce fragmentation, duplication and burden.”
The organization said that until now, its standards — including its original Corporate Net Zero Standard — were based on high-level global emissions pathways and targeted net-zero by 2050. The organization said that approach is “less relevant going forward because the rate at which companies should decarbonize varies” and relies on factors such as technology availability, feasibility and cost of implementation.
SBTi’s future approach will look to provide corporations in different sectors and geographies with “menus of options to reflect the wide variation in corporate contexts.” The standard-setter said it’s “of fundamental importance that these pathways collectively align with the international climate objective” of limiting global temperature rise to an additional 1.5 degrees Celsius for them to remain science-based, which it will use economy-wide modeling to demonstrate.
The organization has been developing the second version of its Corporate Net-Zero Standard, and said in the strategy document that its new approach to target setting will be further explained in the final version of the update. This standard is also being designed to be interoperable with its sector-specific standards and other approaches like the GHG Protocol and in-development standards from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
To increase its focus on transition implementation, SBTi said it will begin consolidating its data on corporate emissions and investments and provide private benchmarking data to companies on where their peers are making progress. SBTi will also begin providing annual public reports of corporate progress on net-zero and where system-wide barriers and challenges remain.
The organization said it plans to develop a set of indicators that are designed to “assess whether emissions are falling in line with targets and whether actions are being taken to deliver future ambition.”
“Companies face rising costs, shifting demand, regulatory uncertainty, and growing expectations from investors, customers, and employees,” SBTi said in a Thursday blog. “Transition risk is no longer theoretical — it is a core business consideration.”
While the organization is looking to become more embedded in the corporate climate transition, SBTi said in its strategy document that it “will not play the role of consultants to individual companies, nor seek to become a policy design and dialogue organization.” It said it will work “in partnership” with other organizations it believed are “better placed” to play those roles.
