New international net-zero standard to be ‘end-to-end’

The need to address the complexity of the net-zero landscape is an urgent one for companies and investors. The latter, for example, want to know that they are allocating capital towards actors who are on a high-integrity trajectory towards credible emission-reduction goals.

It is with this challenge in mind that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has begun work to develop a new international standard on net zero, which aims to provide global guidance to companies and countries for net-zero transitions and guard against greenwashing.

Unlike other initiatives, the ISO has set out to provide a standard that will hold organisations to account on target-setting and the process towards meeting them.

The development of the new standard is being convened by the UK national standards body, the British Standards Institution (BSI), and Colombia’s National Standards Body, with the participation of thousands of experts through national standards bodies in more than 170 countries.

The initiative is to be launched at the COP30 conference in November 2025.

Speaking to IPE, Shana Gallagher, BSI net zero engagement manager, explained that the rationale for the standard was born out of a recognition of the fragmentation of guidance framework initiatives in the market.

Its origins can be traced back over two and half years ago when the BSI led the development of a deliverable called the ISO Net Zero Guidelines, which acts as the foundation of the upcoming ISO standard. The guidelines were launched in 2022 at the COP27 climate conference.

“What you end up with is all these different constituent parts of a larger puzzle which aren’t accountable to one another”

Andrew Griffiths, director of policy and corporate development at Planet Mark

“Up until the guidelines were created, and arguably until the standard is launched, practitioners who are looking to develop credible net-zero strategies face a major challenge in having to piece together what is a very disparate, fragmented landscape of net-zero frameworks and initiatives, and that confusion is a major obstacle to action,” Gallagher said.

“The process most organisations have taken is committing to net zero with no credible plan to back it,” she added.

“It has led to both greenwashing and this phenomenon of green hushing or green stalling, where organisations are so confused about what to do that they just don’t do anything, which is a major challenge when we think of the urgency of the climate crisis.”

Linking the pieces

Andrew Griffiths, director of policy and corporate development at Planet Mark, a sustainability certification consultancy, sits on the BSI greenhouse gas management committee and was among those who officially proposed the ISO standard.

Speaking to IPE, he said that the standard is due to be “end-to-end”.

“The Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) has done some great stuff on transition plans. And the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) have done some wonderful stuff on target setting, but what you end up with is all these different constituent parts of a larger puzzle which aren’t accountable to one another,” he said.

“The ISO net-zero standard will require organisations to demonstrably show they are progressing adequately against their targets and are aligned with a net-zero objective,” he said.

IPE understands that the standard will point to the work of the TPT as the way forward on transition planning, and SBTi on net-zero target-setting.

The BSI said it could not comment on what the upcoming ISO standard would decide with regard to specific legislative frameworks. While TPT is due to be subsumed into the IFRS Foundation, which could mean it becomes part of International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) climate reporting standard, the EU’s corporate reporting advisory body is working on European transition plan rules. 

Earlier this year the SBTi, an arbiter of corporate climate targets, caused an uproar when its board announced that it might allow companies to use carbon offsets to help meet their climate goals. The board subsequently said it regretted that its statement “was open to misinterpretation”.

Asked whether the ISO standard is not just a proliferation of standards upon standards, Griffiths said he felt it was a sign of the industry going in the other direction.

“If I were a betting man, I would be placing my money on ISO being the appropriate standards body to convene enough stakeholders together to get to a place where there is international consensus on what good net-zero standards look like throughout the entire journey,” he said.

Experts interested in contributing to the development of the standard are encouraged to apply to join their National Standard Body’s climate change management committee.

A public consultation is expected to open later in 2025, the BSI has said.

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