A group of prominent climate scientists is putting pressure on the key oversight group for corporate targets to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions data supplied by companies are accurate.
The independent Science Based Targets initiative has become an arbiter of corporate net zero plans, and its approval confers credibility, in the absence of regulation or mandated standards. Fashion house Chanel, for example, raised €600mn in a bond issue linked to its environmental goals, with the borrowing terms tied to SBTi-approved targets.
But the SBTi does not check the accuracy of the underlying emissions data reported by companies, and does not require the data to be verified by a third party.
The SBTi approach to target setting and validation was “critically flawed” and created an “ample opportunity for companies to submit flawed data”, the scientists complained in a letter.
The scientists, some of whose work is cited in the latest landmark UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, said the SBTi “does not appear to ensure sufficient scrutiny of the self-reported greenhouse gas data submitted by reporting companies”.
It should disclose what steps it took to verify the accuracy of corporate data, and require companies to publish the detailed information to allow researchers to scrutinise it, they said.
The SBTi said it was “committed to continually evolving and improving our methods, standards and guidance” and it would respond to the complaint in due course.
While SBTi checked what was included in a company’s emissions data, and might ask for additional information about the calculations, it was “not a third-party verifier of greenhouse gas inventories and data”, it said.
The body was launched in 2015 by a handful of big environmental groups, including the World Resources Institute, and last year appointed its first chief executive, Luiz Amaral.
It has experienced growing pains as demands for its services rise significantly and Amaral is trying to overhaul its governance structure, including by hiring a compliance director and developing a formal grievance policy.
Among the steps SBTi is taking to improve company disclosures is new guidance about how companies in the land use and agriculture sectors should report their emissions. This area is particularly “complex” and emissions estimates can “vary substantially” since trees and other plants can absorb as well as emit carbon, the UN Environment Programme noted in its latest report.
Paper and pulp company test case
One company that will be subject to new science-based targets guidance is Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings (April), a major pulp and paper company with large plantations in Indonesia.
The Singapore-headquartered company owned by the RGE group, founded by Indonesian businessman Sukanto Tanoto, missed an original deadline to submit its SBTi target in October, though it said it still intended to submit a plan using the new land sector guidance effective from September. Companies must put forward their plans within 24 months of signing up to SBTi.
Forest fires are a source of carbon emissions for the pulp and paper sector. April estimates that 139 hectares — or about the size of London’s Hyde Park — it controls directly or is controlled by exclusive supply partners had burned in 2019.
That figure would be included in the emissions baseline, or the level from which it would reduce its pollution, when it submits its decarbonisation target, the company said.
But David Gaveau, a forest researcher whose work has been cited by the UN IPCC, said his analysis using satellite data showed a far greater area of more than 3,000 hectares was burned in 2019.
The company rejected these findings as “inaccurate and unverified”, adding that it identified and reported fire incidents wherever they occurred.
Fires were monitored using a combination of data sources, including satellites and on-the-ground CCTV cameras, as well as a rapid response team of firefighters who were deployed to tackle blazes when detected, it said. The fire data were independently assured by a third party, the company added.
Alex Helan, senior adviser for forest finance at the Rainforest Action Network campaign group, said it was “critical that companies publicly disclose the data used to calculate their results”.
“These emissions are difficult to measure — especially sources like deforestation or burnt areas. Therefore scientific scrutiny is imperative,” he said.
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