SBTi submission

Methods
1

Good morning,

We have two questions regarding our client’s first SBTi submission:

  1. Our client’s base year is 2019, from which they will be setting targets. There is also an area in the SBTi submission form where “current year” information can be included. Because the client does not have final 2020 emissions data available, we are planning on submitting base year results and current year results as the same year (2019) even though technically a more current financial year is 2020. Can I confirm this is acceptable?

  2. Company emissions datasets (from sources such as MSCI, Bloomberg and TruCost, etc) can either include direct company reported emissions, or an estimate of the emissions for that company. Where the dataset has direct reported emissions however, it does not state whether that company has had these emissions verified and audited, or whether the company itself is “estimating” these emissions. Is it therefore recommended to score these “reported” emissions as a data quality PCAF score of 1 or 2?

Thanks very much,
Cassandra

2

Hi Cassandra,

Thanks for your questions.

  1. I’m not sure if you are asking about the client’s scope 1+2 target or scope 3 target, but for either cases it’s fine to use 2019 as the base year given SBTI’s guidance on selecting inventory baseline given Covid’s impact on businesses.
  2. The PCAF secretariat might be better suited to answer this question, but their latest reporting guidance included options 1a or 1b differentiated by if the emissions are verified or not, and 1b falls under the score of 2. In cases where you are not sure if the company verified its emissions, it’s more conservative to use the score of 2.
    image Source: PCAF
3

Thanks very much Chendan!