Why the SBTi must abandon its offsetting proposal

This is the title of an opinion page by Carbone 4 and our climate experts Mélodie Pitre, Isaure Marchand and Florian Zito, published on 18 June 2024 in Environmental Finance.

What is the initiative all about?

The Science-based target initiative (SBTi) is a label for companies that aims to drive ambitious climate action. Since its creation, it has attested to the relevance of the climate objectives of more than 4,000 companies, establishing itself as a key label for climate commitment.

However, on 9 April this year, its Board of Directors announced that it wanted to authorise the use of "environmental attribute certificates", including carbon credits, to achieve reduction targets in scope 3, i.e. the largest part of a company's emissions in the vast majority of cases.

This announcement has provoked outrage among many climate action players, and rightly so.

In this opinion piece, we call on the organisation to abandon this development because :

It is contrary to the scientific consensus (which is very damaging for a Science Based initiative).
It is ineffective for climate action.

It is therefore in the name of scientific rigour and effective climate action that we are calling on SBTi to abandon this proposal.

More than 370 people have signed the petition, including our partners Alain Grandjean, Jean-Marc Jancovici, Laurent Morel, the Chairman of Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, Daniel Baal, and the CEO of the MAIF group, Pascal Demurger.

For the full text, read it here