Net Zero Score overcomes the lack of a standard framework for sharing the crucial information contained in corporate emissions reports, leaving businesses and consumers on their own as they navigate a complex landscape of reporting formats and certifications.
Together with the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, normative has developed the Net Zero Score framework, which will give enterprises a scientific, standardized, and comparable way to measure progress toward net-zero emissions.
The Net Zero Score will be an open-source, transparent framework developed with support from expert advisors from academia and business including the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, Nordea, and Planet Mark.
At its core, the score will capture businesses’ current net-zero performance in a single number, informing stakeholders about the percentage of verified reductions a company has achieved against the net-zero target.
In other words, the score represents to what extent a business’s yearly reduction efforts are on track to reach the Paris Agreement-aligned target of net zero by 2050 – and the accuracy and trustworthiness of such a claim.
Complementing the work by Oxford Net Zero Tracker and the UN’s Race to Zero campaign, both of which assess the qualitative integrity of corporate targets, the Net Zero Score framework will be a tool for investors, customers, researchers, and businesses to evaluate emissions reduction progress in a comparable way.
The framework will be open-source and publicly available, to encourage wide adoption and full transparency.
The methodology is based on four core principles:
Net-zero focus: measurement of progress toward net zero emissions following the Carbon Law principle, according to which emissions need to halve every decade and reach net zero by 2050 at the latest.
Completeness: reflects all economic activities across all three scopes defined in the GHG Protocol.
Reliability: reflects the reliability of the methods and data sources used to estimate a business’s progress toward net zero.
Transparency: the methodology behind the score will be fully transparent and available to all.
The next steps
To provide businesses with the means to share their progress towards net-zero emissions, we are consulting with leading experts in net-zero research, the UN Race to Zero partners, and the private sector. The framework will be first tested by participating partners in early 2023.
Normative’s carbon accounting engine calculates your business’s emissions with industry-leading accuracy, enabling you to report your climate impact and make targeted reductions.
