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Corporate net zero targets, and initiatives to validate those targets, are widely seen as playing a powerful role in conversations about the transition to net zero.  The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) is the largest validator of corporate net-zero targets and is in the process of reviewing how to treat so-called ‘scope 3’ emissions – those that are not produced by a company directly but by ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ parts of its value chain. These emissions can be very significant, but businesses have – arguably – less control over them than over their own emissions.  

The Grantham Institute teamed up with Oxford Net Zero to convene a set of workshops bringing together academics and other experts to discuss issues related to the assessment and mitigation of scope 3 emissions. This briefing sets out the themes arising from workshop discussions on how standard setting bodies such as SBTi might approach scope 3. Areas it addresses include: 

• accounting methods and sector-based approaches in Scope 3;
• carbon credits and market-based approaches including a consideration of how to define ‘hard-to-abate’;
• whether standard setting organisations should recommend investment in permanent carbon removal and storage.

Several academics at ³Ô¹ÏÍø have recently published papers on the topic of corporate action on science-based targets. See for example: