The Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 has been unveiled by SBTi, who are calling it the “most comprehensive framework for corporate climate action to date”.

The Standard includes an expanded toolkit for setting and implementing targets and introduces updates across several key areas.

1. Differentiated approaches across markets: The Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 includes accommodations for small and medium-sized enterprises, and companies in lower-income countries.


2. Sets actionable, context-specific targets: Companies set targets that reflect their opportunities to reduce emissions in different contexts, including capital stock, supply/ value chains, sectors, and geographies. It also strengthens the link to transition planning. Companies set two or more near-term targets and can choose to set an overarching net-zero target.


3. Transparently on a best-efforts basis: Targets are pursued on a best-efforts basis, with transparency over key assumptions and dependencies. Companies are expected to use all available levers to reduce emissions, address any implementation barriers and transparently report on them.


4. Mobilise all available levers to deliver emissions reductions: The Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 introduces an implementation hierarchy that prioritises actions, from those directly reducing emissions in company operations and value chains to broader activity pool and sector-level actions where appropriate. These may be supported by market instruments such as energy attributes and commodity certificates based on different chain-of-custody models (e.g., mass balance, book-and-claim), subject to guardrails.


5. Continuously assess, disclose, and strengthen progress: A process of annual reporting and periodic assessment of progress, barriers to implementation, and actions to address these; and for setting new targets before or at the end of a cycle, including where there are gaps between emissions and targets, to ensure ongoing alignment with net-zero pathways. Through this continuous improvement process, companies can continue progressing within the SBTi framework toward net-zero.


6. Maintains ongoing emissions responsibility: The Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 takes a balanced approach to the use of high-integrity carbon credits and other climate contributions as a complement and not a substitute to companies reducing their carbon footprint, through a voluntary recognition programme.

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