Settling promises

From August 3rd in publicly available company database, Of the companies that have registered with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), over a hundred organizations have been marked with a red flag. Commitment Removed. This applies to companies that have made declarations to set decarbonization targets in line with current scientific knowledge and have failed to fulfill these declarations within 24 months.

A company that submits a declaration of emission reduction targets is marked with a yellow „Committed” tag in the SBTi database. Once the target has been submitted and approved, it is replaced with a green tag of 1.5°C, 2°C, etc., depending on the specific target. The company has 24 months to submit the target and have it approved. In recent years, companies that failed to meet this deadline were simply removed from the database. Now they remain in the database, but with a rather unattractive red „stamp.” The new rules came into force on January 31, 2023, and organizations that have submitted declarations have been given an additional 6 months to comply.

The change introduced by SBTi has no impact on the targets themselves or the process of their approval, but it will have a significant positive effect on the credibility of companies' declarations. In the last two years, there has been a significant increase in the number of companies that have announced that they will set decarbonization targets in line with current scientific knowledge (the number of companies rose from 2,253 in 2021 to 5,851 in mid-2023). Unfortunately, for some of them, this was only part of their image promotion. Making a declaration and failing to fulfill it did not entail any negative consequences. Thanks to the change in the SBTi rules, declaring intentions to reduce emissions will no longer be empty words.

The change introduced by SBTi is one manifestation of the trend toward holding companies strictly accountable for their sustainability claims. This trend also includes the CSRD directive and its requirement to prepare reports in accordance with ESRS standards, as well as a number of initiatives to combat greenwashing.