Published

2 years ago

April 11, 2024

Alice Rush

Silke Mooldijk works at NewClimate Institute and is part of the core team behind the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor.

A decade ago, the Science-based Targets initiative (SBTi) was launched with the goal of mobilising the private sector for climate action.

Today, it stands as the largest and most influential validator of corporate climate targets, having confirmed the 2030 goals of around 5,000 companies.

Yet new analysis reveals a leniency within the initiative. According to the 2024 Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor (CCRM), the emissions reduction commitments of 51 major global corporates are falling short of what’s needed at the global level.

Surprisingly, most of these companies received SBTi validation for their targets to be aligned with the 1.5ºC warming limit backed by governments in the Paris climate agreement.

What explains this discrepancy?

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Currently, the SBTi’s 2030 target validations often overlook substantial shares of companies’ full value chain emissions by excluding upstream and downstream value chain emissions, known as “scope 3”. Scope 3 emissions account for the majority of corporate greenhouse gas footprints, sometimes exceeding 95%.

The SBTi requires companies to set a near-term target for scope 3 emissions, but only when those emissions account for more than 40% of their greenhouse gas footprint. However, these targets do not have to cover all scope 3 emissions and only need to be aligned with global warming of 2ºC or well below 2ºC, not 1.5ºC.

While the SBTi checks whether companies have set a scope 3 target, the initiative does not provide a temperature classification for these scope 3 targets – only for companies’ scope 1 and 2 targets, which apply to direct operations and their energy use.

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This important nuance is often missed by the public, as many companies nonetheless prominently advertise their scope 3 climate targets as science-based.

Take Fast Retailing, owner of clothing chain Uniqlo, for example. The company pledges to reduce its operational emissions (scope 1 and 2) by 90% by 2030, which represent just 5% of its total emissions.

It also commits to reduce its emissions from procured goods and materials (scope 3) by 20% by the end of this decade. However, upstream emissions in the fashion sector need to be reduced by around 40% to be aligned with global warming of 1.5ºC.

Whereas the SBTi validated the target for operational emissions as “1.5ºC temperature aligned”, the initiative did not provide a temperature classification for the scope 3 target.

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Yet Fast Retailing also describes this target as “science-based”. This pattern is not unique to Fast Retailing but common across companies validated by the SBTi.

As a voluntary organisation primarily funded by third parties, the SBTi relies on the voluntary participation of companies. Its methodologies need to accommodate the perspectives of various stakeholders.

This may explain why the SBTi’s methodologies for 2030 targets are not necessarily always aligned with the scientific consensus on limiting global warming to 1.5ºC.

However, addressing the lack of stringency in scope 3 targets is key to ensuring that the SBTi can effectively drive corporate climate ambition.

Offsetting controversy

Despite the large degree of leniency that already exists in scope 3 standards today, there is a significant risk that the rules will be loosened even further.

Just this week, the SBTi Board of Trustees issued a unilateral and possibly illegitimate decision to revise scope 3 standards to allow for carbon offsetting.

This decision is not based on scientific insights but comes after a lot of pressure on the SBTi from supporters of carbon markets. SBTi staff have already reacted strongly to voice their discontent with the decision and the process.

Introducing offsetting in the SBTi scope 3 standards could effectively nullify already insufficient targets, reversing years of incremental progress that SBTi and its member companies have fought so hard to achieve. 

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Allowing companies to offset their emissions could also deprive their suppliers – who are often located in the Global South – of much needed financial and technical support for their own emissions reduction efforts.

Climate target-setting has become standard practice in the corporate world – progress the SBTi helped foster over the past decade. But the recent decision by the SBTi Board of Trustees on offsetting could bring any further advances to a halt.

Reversing this decision and tightening the rules for scope 3 targets would be the next step to propel corporate climate ambition forward.

The post SBTi needs tighter rules on companies’ indirect emissions appeared first on Climate Home News.

SBTi needs tighter rules on companies’ indirect emissions

Climate Change

Asheboro, North Carolina, Is Under Pressure to Control Discharges of a Toxic Chemical Into Drinking Water Supply

Published

11 hours ago

October 27, 2025

Alice Rush

The EPA wants the city of 28,000 to rein in an industrial solvent, 1,4-Dioxane, from its wastewater discharges. So far, Asheboro has refused.

By Lisa Sorg

ASHEBORO, N.C.—Some members of the public in attendance at the Environmental Protection Agency hearing last week called the City of Asheboro’s actions “despicable.” Others said they were “shameless.” And still another remarked that those who pollute the water—which data show Asheboro is doing—await “a special circle of hell.”

Asheboro, North Carolina, Is Under Pressure to Control Discharges of a Toxic Chemical Into Drinking Water Supply

Climate Change

Can COP30 mark a turning point for climate adaptation?

Published

19 hours ago

October 27, 2025

Alice Rush

Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio is a senior advisor on adaptation and resilience and Pan Ei Ei Phyoe is a climate adaptation and resilience consultant with the United Nations Foundation.

COP 30 compels the world to make a decision. Already 3.6 billion people are highly vulnerable to rapidly worsening climate impacts such as droughts, floods, and heat stress. Meanwhile, Glasgow-era climate finance commitments are expiring, and elements of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) are yet to be finalized.

This November provides the opportunity to elevate the issue of adaptation and resilience – and for countries to demonstrate they grasp the urgency and are prepared to act.

Success at COP30 will hinge on how three key questions are answered:

Will countries agree on a new adaptation finance target backed with real commitments?
Will countries finalize architecture to track progress toward the Global Goal on Adaptation and implement the UAE Targets for Global Climate Resilience?
Will adaptation receive elevated political attention at COP30?

A new adaptation finance target backed with real commitments

Belém will test whether negotiators can agree on a new adaptation finance goal that is anchored in clear targets, timelines, and accountability. The Glasgow Climate Pact’s goal to double adaptation finance is set to reach its deadline at the end of this year and countries are facing the question of what, if anything, comes next.

The form of the finance goal also matters: will it be a provision-based target ensuring measurable public contributions, or a mobilization target dependent on less transparent private leverage?

After two consecutive years of falling short, all eyes will be on whether the Adaptation Fund can finally meet its mobilization target and secure a multi-year replenishment to deliver predictable support.

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are under pressure to demonstrate how to integrate adaptation into country-platform approaches including aligning finance for accelerated country-driven action and providing fast-start financing for implementation of National Adaptation Plans. NAPs have been completed by 67 developing countries and are underway in another 77 countries.

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Vulnerable countries currently need an estimated $215 billion-$387 billion annually to adapt to climate change, far exceeding available funding. And developed countries face growing expectations to renew or grow their bilateral commitments beyond Glasgow-era pledges that are expiring this year or next.

Without tangible new finance commitments, the ambition of the Global Goal on Adaptation risks remaining rhetorical.

System to track progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation

The GGA still has no mechanism to measure progress, despite being established under the Paris Agreement in 2015, shaped through multiple work programs since 2021, and further expanded by the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience of COP28 which set 11 targets and launched the UAE-Belém Work Programme.

Agreeing on a robust, streamlined indicator set that is both scientifically sound and usable by countries with differing capacities will be one of the hardest tasks at COP 30. These outcomes will be a test of whether we can move from measuring resilience to building it.

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Negotiators must settle the inclusion of equitable means-of-implementation indicators covering finance, technology, and capacity building. Finally, they must decide what comes next under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to ensure the UAE targets are acted upon within the next two to five years.

Those targets include seven that set resilience priorities for water and sanitation, food and agriculture, health, ecosystems, infrastructure, livelihoods and cultural heritage.

Adaptation needs greater political attention at COP30

Last week, COP30 President Corrêa do Lago released the first-ever COP presidency letter focused on elevating adaptation, calling for solutions that will make Belém the “COP of adaptation implementation”. His task now is to embed that principle across every strand of COP30’s delivery architecture.

One test lies in how realistically adaptation is integrated into the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap to $1.3 trillion to be released by the presidency. The implementation of the COP 30 Action Agenda, which provides a blueprint for collective climate action and solutions, could become the bridge between political vision and practical delivery on adaptation.

Momentum builds for strong adaptation outcome at COP30

Questions remain on whether Brazil’s leadership on adaptation thus far will position adaptation as a political priority that will be reflected in leaders’ statements at the opening of COP30. The inaugural High-level Dialogue on Adaptation – hosted by the outgoing COP President Azerbaijan and Brazil – is another opportunity where countries can reaffirm and institutionalize adaptation as a permanent pillar of climate action.

In the role as the host and president of COP30, Brazil has repeatedly stressed the importance of matching adaptation with actual resources and accountability, highlighting adaptation as one of the five guiding stars of the Paris Agreement alongside mitigation, finance, technology, and capacity building.

With the right outcomes in Belém on finance targets, measurement systems, and political commitments, COP30 could be remembered as the moment adaptation financing and implementation finally matched the scale of the challenge.

The post Can COP30 mark a turning point for climate adaptation? appeared first on Climate Home News.