Science-based targets are emission-reduction targets aligned with the latest climate science to limit warming to 1.5°C, governed by the criteria of the Science Based Targets initiative and rooted in the Paris Agreement's goals. If you're starting from scratch, your immediate next step is to begin a greenhouse gas inventory or use the SBTi Getting Started Navigator to map your path to validation.
TL;DR:
- Achieving credible SBTs requires a comprehensive and accurate greenhouse gas inventory, especially for Scope 3 emissions, which are often the most challenging to quantify.
- Validation depends on detailed documentation, stakeholder engagement, and continuous monitoring, making ongoing data collection essential for durability.
- Near-term targets focus on feasible reductions with current technology, while long-term goals assume future technological advancements and market shifts.
- Companies need to align multiple departments early, secure leadership approval, and build capacity for regular reporting and reassessment after validation.
- Tools like half-hourly energy analytics and automated data validation support the ongoing tracking necessary for credible and auditable SBT progress.
Table of Contents
- What science based targets are and which standards govern them
- Why the 2030 and 2050 milestones matter for business strategy
- Step by step process to set science based targets
- Scopes 1, 2 and 3: boundary setting and practical challenges
- Validation and assurance: what SBTi checks and what it requires over time
- How operational monitoring turns targets into evidence
- Examples of science based targets across different industries
- Common challenges and barriers in setting and achieving SBTs
- Reporting and disclosure requirements related to science based targets
- What makes an SBT program credible and durable
- How EnerlyticsAI supports target setting and reporting
- Where to go for the primary technical guidance
- Sources
- FAQ
What science based targets are and which standards govern them
Science-based targets translate global climate science into a company-level emissions budget. The goal is simple even when the math is not: cut greenhouse gas emissions fast enough and deep enough to keep global warming within 1.5°C, the threshold the Paris Agreement identifies as the boundary between manageable and severe climate disruption.
Companies set two linked kinds of targets:
- Near-term targets, covering 5 to 10 years, that specify concrete reductions against a base year
- Long-term, net-zero targets, aligned to 2050, that define the end state for a company's entire value chain
The SBTi guidance lays out the methods companies use to build these targets, including cross-sector pathways and sector-specific approaches for industries like cement, aviation, and apparel. Every method sits on top of the GHG Protocol, the accounting standard that defines how emissions get counted and categorized in the first place.
Why the 2030 and 2050 milestones matter for business strategy
The urgency behind these dates is not arbitrary. To stay on a 1.5°C trajectory, global emissions need to fall by roughly 43% from 2010 levels by 2030, according to the United Nations. Miss that window, and the risk of triggering irreversible climate tipping points rises sharply.
Many thousands of businesses have already set targets through the SBTi, a scale that signals science-based targets have moved from a niche commitment to a mainstream expectation among investors, regulators, and customers.
The business case sits alongside the climate case:
- Validated targets increasingly function as a reputational marker that investors and business partners use to assess risk
- Setting targets early gives companies more time to restructure supply chains, energy contracts, and capital plans before regulation tightens
- Companies with credible targets are better positioned to answer the disclosure questions now standard in procurement and lending
Step by step process to set science based targets
Setting a target is a sequence, not a single decision. Each step feeds the next, and skipping one tends to surface as a rejection later in SBTi review.
- Build a GHG inventory and pick a base year. Establish a full accounting of Scope 1, 2, and relevant Scope 3 emissions for a representative year that will anchor your reduction percentages.
- Choose your method or pathway. Decide between the cross-sector Absolute Contraction Approach, a Sector Decarbonization Approach (SDA) where one exists for your industry, or another SBTi-approved method.
- Draft near-term and long-term targets. Set 5 to 10 year targets and a 2050 net-zero target, following SBTi coverage rules for which emissions categories must be included.
- Secure leadership sign-off. Targets need board or executive approval along with a rough transition plan showing how operations, procurement, and capital spending will shift.
- Submit to SBTi Services and begin tracking. Once submitted for validation, start building the monitoring systems that will generate the evidence needed for ongoing reporting.
Pro Tip: Draft your target range before your final board presentation using at least two methods so leadership sees the trade-off between ambition and feasibility, rather than a single number that looks arbitrary.
The step that trips up the most teams is the first one. A shaky inventory produces a shaky target, and SBTi reviewers will send back submissions where the underlying data does not hold up. Spend the extra weeks getting the inventory right before touching the method selection.
Scopes 1, 2 and 3: boundary setting and practical challenges
Scope 1 covers direct emissions from owned sources, like fleet vehicles or on-site combustion. Scope 2 covers purchased electricity, heat, and steam, and companies must report it using both location-based and market-based methods. Scope 3 covers everything else in the value chain: purchased goods, business travel, employee commuting, and the use of sold products, among other categories.
SBTi requires Scope 3 in a target when it makes up a significant share of a company's total footprint, which for most businesses means it is mandatory rather than optional. That is where most of the practical difficulty sits, since Scope 3 data usually depends on suppliers who may not track emissions themselves.
Practical ways through the problem:
- Map emissions by spend and activity first, then prioritize the categories that account for the largest share of your Scope 3 total
- Engage top suppliers directly for primary data before falling back on industry-average emission factors
- Use documented estimation methods where primary data is not yet available, and note the assumptions clearly
- Choose a base year with complete, verifiable data even if that means it is not your most recent fiscal year
Limited exclusions are allowed under SBTi rules, but they must be justified and disclosed rather than left unexplained.
Validation and assurance: what SBTi checks and what it requires over time
Submitting a target to SBTi Services triggers a technical review against the criteria for your chosen method. Reviewers check the base year data, the method application, and the coverage of required scopes before issuing validation.
Validation is not the finish line anymore. The Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 introduces an assurance model built around continuous improvement, and companies must complete an end-of-cycle assessment within 12 months after their target timeframe ends.
What this means in practice:
- Keep documentation current year over year, not just at the point of submission, since assessors will want a trail
- Expect third-party assurance requirements to tighten as more companies move through full target cycles
- Build in time for resubmission if an end-of-cycle assessment finds the original target no longer reflects current science or company structure
- Treat monitoring technology as part of your compliance infrastructure, not an optional add-on, since ongoing assessment depends on data you can produce on demand
How operational monitoring turns targets into evidence
A target is only as credible as the data behind it. Assessors and auditors want continuous, auditable records, not a single inventory built once a year under deadline pressure.
The capabilities that matter most for this kind of evidence:
- Half-hourly consumption data across every site, which sharpens inventory accuracy far beyond monthly bill estimates
- Automated bill validation that catches billing errors before they distort your baseline
- Anomaly detection that flags unexpected consumption spikes, which often point to equipment faults or data errors worth correcting before they reach a report
- Site-level dashboards and exportable reports that assessors can review without a manual data pull
Pro Tip: Start collecting half-hourly data at least a full reporting cycle before your next SBTi submission or end-of-cycle assessment so you have a clean trend line, not a partial one.
Platforms built for this, including EnerlyticsAI's emissions tools, give sustainability teams a way to generate this kind of continuous record without building a monitoring system from scratch, starting on a free plan that covers multiple sites.
Examples of science based targets across different industries
Target design varies by sector because the decarbonization levers differ. A cement manufacturer and a software company are not chasing the same emissions profile.
In heavy industry, companies with high Scope 1 emissions from combustion and process chemistry, such as cement and steel producers, typically rely on Sector Decarbonization Approach pathways that account for the physical limits of current production technology. Their near-term targets often focus on fuel switching and process efficiency, while long-term targets depend heavily on emerging technologies like carbon capture.
Retail and apparel companies usually carry the bulk of their footprint in Scope 3, concentrated in raw material production and manufacturing by suppliers. Their targets lean on supplier engagement programs and material substitution, like shifting to lower-carbon fibers or recycled inputs.
Technology and financial services companies tend to have smaller direct footprints but significant Scope 2 and Scope 3 exposure through data centers, employee travel, and financed emissions for lenders and investors. Their targets often center on renewable electricity procurement and portfolio-level decarbonization for financial institutions.
Transportation and logistics companies face some of the hardest near-term math, since fleet electrification and sustainable aviation fuel remain limited in supply. Many set interim targets around fuel efficiency and route optimization while long-term targets wait on fleet turnover.
Across every sector, the common thread is that near-term targets reflect what is achievable with current technology, while long-term 2050 targets assume technological and market shifts that have not fully arrived yet.
Common challenges and barriers in setting and achieving SBTs
Most companies hit the same handful of obstacles, regardless of sector.
Data quality is the most frequent barrier, particularly for Scope 3. Suppliers vary widely in what they track and disclose, and many small and mid-sized suppliers have no emissions accounting at all. The practical fix is prioritization: map emissions by spend and activity, then concentrate supplier engagement on the categories that make up the largest share of the total rather than trying to perfect every category at once.
Internal alignment is the second major hurdle. Target-setting touches procurement, finance, operations, and facilities, and without clear executive sponsorship, the process stalls in committee. Securing board-level approval before submission, as SBTi requires, forces this alignment earlier rather than later.
Cost and resourcing catch companies off guard, especially smaller organizations without a dedicated sustainability team. Building an inventory, running the method calculations, and preparing documentation takes real staff time, and many companies underestimate it.
Target drift is a quieter problem: a target validated years ago may no longer reflect a company's current operations, especially after acquisitions, divestitures, or major shifts in energy sourcing. The end-of-cycle assessment requirement under the Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 is designed specifically to catch this, which makes continuous monitoring, not a one-time inventory, the more durable approach.
Reporting and disclosure requirements related to science based targets
Setting a target obliges a company to report on it. SBTi expects annual progress disclosure once a target is validated, typically through a company's existing sustainability report, CDP response, or another public channel.
The content of that disclosure generally needs to cover current-year emissions across the scopes included in the target, progress against the base year, and any changes to organizational boundaries that affect comparability. Companies using market-based Scope 2 accounting need to disclose the instruments behind that figure, such as renewable energy certificates, alongside the location-based figure.
Beyond SBTi's own expectations, science-based targets increasingly intersect with broader regulatory disclosure regimes that require emissions reporting aligned with the GHG Protocol. Companies that already maintain SBTi-grade data tend to find these parallel disclosure requirements easier to satisfy, since the underlying inventory work overlaps heavily.
The practical implication is that reporting is not a once-a-year scramble if the monitoring infrastructure behind the target is solid. Continuous data collection, whether through internal systems or third-party monitoring, turns the annual disclosure into a matter of compiling numbers already tracked rather than reconstructing a year of activity from scratch.
What makes an SBT program credible and durable
The targets that hold up over time are not the most ambitious on paper. They are the ones with a named executive accountable for delivery, a target renewal process built in from day one, and early focus on the Scope 3 categories that actually matter rather than the ones that are easiest to estimate. Continuous monitoring beats an annual scramble every time.
— Chris
How EnerlyticsAI supports target setting and reporting
Building a defensible inventory usually means stitching together spreadsheets, utility portals, and supplier emails. Platforms exist to provide a unified solution built around half-hourly energy analytics, automated bill validation, and multi-site reporting, often including free starter options.
That matters most for teams managing more than one site, where inconsistent billing and scattered meter data make Scope 1 and 2 accounting harder than it should be. EnerlyticsAI's approach pulls the pieces into one view:
- Half-hourly consumption tracking that sharpens inventory accuracy beyond monthly estimates
- Automated anomaly detection that catches billing and consumption errors before they distort a base year
- Carbon reporting spanning Scope 1, 2, and 3, built for the kind of continuous documentation that end-of-cycle assessments now expect
Start on the free Starter plan to begin collecting the data your next SBTi submission will need, or explore the Emissions and Reports pages to see what the output looks like before you commit to anything.
Where to go for the primary technical guidance
For the criteria itself, start with SBTi's target-setting guidance and the Corporate Net-Zero Standard explanatory guide. For the underlying science and policy context, the UN's climate science summary and the Paris Agreement text cover the rest. Businesses weighing renewable procurement as part of their reduction plan can also get quotes through Edan Power for solar, thermal, and storage options.
Sources
- Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi)
- United Nations — Degrees matter (IPCC summary context)
- Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 — Explanatory guide (SBTi)
FAQ
Why is 2030 considered a critical point for climate action?
2030 matters because global emissions need to fall by roughly 43% from 2010 levels by that year to stay on a 1.5°C trajectory. Missing that reduction significantly raises the risk of crossing irreversible climate tipping points, which is why most near-term corporate targets are built around this decade.
What are the main global climate targets for 2030 and 2050?
The core international benchmark is limiting warming to 1.5°C, which requires steep emissions cuts by 2030 and net-zero emissions globally by around 2050 under the Paris Agreement framework. Corporate near-term targets under SBTi typically mirror the 2030 horizon, while long-term targets align to the 2050 net-zero goal.
What counts as an SBTi-aligned target?
An SBTi-aligned target is one validated against the initiative's criteria, covering a near-term target of 5 to 10 years and, where applicable, a long-term net-zero target reaching out to 2050. Validation requires a complete GHG inventory, an approved method, and appropriate coverage of Scope 1, 2, and material Scope 3 emissions, as set out in SBTi's guidance.
How long does SBTi validation typically take?
Timelines vary by company size and data readiness, since validation depends on the completeness of the submitted inventory and method application. Once validated, companies are also required to complete an end-of-cycle assessment within 12 months after their target timeframe ends, under the Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0.
Can EnerlyticsAI help with the data needed for SBTi submissions?
EnerlyticsAI provides half-hourly energy consumption analytics, automated bill validation, and carbon reporting across Scope 1, 2, and 3, which supports the inventory work SBTi submissions require. Businesses can start collecting this data on the free Starter plan without upfront cost, as described on the EnerlyticsAI registration page.