Normative, together with the Exponential Roadmap Initiative have presented a concept for a new scoring framework offering enterprises a more scientific and standardised way to measure their progress toward net-zero emissions, kickstarting the conversation about the Net Zero Score at the international climate conference COP27.
With net zero target dates looming, ways must be found to measure and incentivize the accuracy of data alongside reported progress, said Kaya Axelsson, Policy Engagement Lead at Oxford Net Zero, who is advising the project in her personal capacity. “Or we risk gravely missing the mark on our global goal to limit temperature to 1.5 degrees,” she warned.
Kristian Rönn, CEO and co-founder of Normative pointed to the currently existing gap between legislation and practice: “Corporate emissions reporting is becoming legally required around the world, but there is no standard framework for sharing the crucial information contained in those reports,” he said.
Designed as an open source public framework to ease adoption and for transparency, and developed with support from expert advisors from academia and business, including the Exponential Roadmap Initiative, Nordea, and Planet Mark, the new scoring framework will be first tested by participating partners in early 2023.
According to its creators, the score yielded by the framework will capture businesses' current carbon performance in a single number, which is determined based on the accuracy of the data used for the emissions calculations and the business’s progress toward net zero.
The score will therefore measure the extent to which a business’s yearly reduction efforts are on track to reach the Paris Agreement-aligned target of net zero by 2050, serving as a tool for investors, customers, researchers, and businesses to evaluate their carbon performance in a comparable way.
The methodology is based on the four principles of Net-zero focus, completeness, i.e. all economic activities across all three scopes defined in the GHG Protocol; reliability and transparency. Net-zero focus refers to the 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.
Enterprises committed to net zero are invited to reach out to Normative for further conversation.