Glossary

What Are Sustainable Development Goals and How Can You Assess Their Impact?

by: Stephanie Hefelfinger and Rebecca Stoops | January 19, 2022

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a popular topic worldwide, and you’ve probably seen organizations displaying their SDG contributions with these colorful icons. How are they justifying their SDG claims? How can you feel confident when purchasing credits, and what are the levels of assurance for SDG claims? What tools do professionals use to analyze their projects?

What are SDGs?

The SDGs are 17 key issues that projects, businesses, and governments must target to improve the world by 2030. They were created by the United Nations (UN) Development Program and include targets like No Poverty, Responsible Consumption and Production, and Clean Water and Sanitation.

This diagram shows how all SDGs are interlinked and depend on each other. Image source: How food connects all the SDGs – Stockholm Resilience Centre

Case Study of The WaY Project and Available SDG Tools

In the voluntary credit market, plastic credits have been established to represent 1 metric ton of plastic waste collected from the environment. Projects like this can also offer other benefits that improve the community’s well-being and the environment – these benefits can align with the Sustainable Development Goals.

The WaY (Women and Youth) plastic collection project in Cote d’Ivoire, developed by Conceptos Plásticos, collects plastic waste that would have otherwise been left in the environment. The plastic is turned into construction bricks, which are used to build schools for local communities. The project focuses on hiring women to increase empowerment and economic opportunities for a heavily underserved population. ClimeCo is partnering with the WaY Project to generate plastic credits from its plastic collection activities.

It is essential for an organization to provide a good faith effort when presenting their SDG impact claims. When purchasing credits from a project with these claims, we highly recommend that you contact them and ask what steps they took to assess their SDG impact. To help you with this, let us walk you through the public SDG tools we used to determine our project’s biggest SDG benefits.

The Tools

The SDG Impact Assessment Manager Tool is a free resource developed by the UN Global Compact and B Lab. The SDG Impact Assessment Manager Tool measures a project’s current impact and helps identify which SDGs have the greatest opportunity for improvement, with straightforward suggestions for actual changes. Think of this as an SDG personality quiz for a project.

This is an example of a question from SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities, as well as SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth:

The SDG Compass was developed by the UN Global Compact, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Since the UN developed the SDGs at an international and country level, it can be hard to understand how they relate to smaller–scale projects. This tool translates each SDG and all the targets into manageable and realistic goals that a project can achieve. The SDG Compass recommends prioritizing SDGs that could potentially affect human rights.

The Outcome of Our Efforts

We started with the SDG Impact Assessment Manager Tool. This requires the completion of 15-30 questions for each SDG, which usually takes a few hours to complete. The higher the score percentage (see below), the higher the impact on the goal. While The WaY Project has a positive effect on many SDGs, the results of this tool demonstrate that the largest impact is on SDGs 1, 4, 5, 9, and 10.

Next, we used the SDG Compass to study each SDG in greater detail. This explains how our project intends to actively meet the relevant SDGs.

Next, we created a diagram to see what parts of our project are directly quantifiable and measurable. All impacts are important, but it’s easier to prove and certify measurable impacts. Gold Standard recommends this step through their tool.

Leveraging all three tools, we can see where our project has the biggest impact. We’ve also determined where we can improve. For example, The WaY project should continue encouraging women to use the provided Proper Protective Equipment (PPE) and work with the women to choose improved PPE offerings that fit their cultural attire.

Conclusion

For those who want greater assurance on SDG claims, there are several credit registries that offer credits with SDG impacts that a 3rd party has verified – Gold Standard, the American Carbon Registry, the Climate Action Reserve, and Verra. At ClimeCo, we want clients to feel confident in our projects and their SDG claims. We are here to educate and be a resource for understanding SDG claims, finding the right projects for clients’ ESG goals, and helping new projects develop their SDG claims. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions; we are happy to help.

This is an example of certified SDGs from a project listed under Gold Standard’s registry.

About the Author

Rebecca Stoops is a Project Manager at ClimeCo, focusing on plastic credit projects and refrigerant projects for carbon credits. She enjoys hiking, the great outdoors, and cleaning up nature by picking up trash. Stephanie Hefelfinger is a Project Associate at ClimeCo, focusing on plastic credit projects and livestock and composting projects for carbon credits. She enjoys hunting for pretty rocks. They both enjoy getting into the nitty–gritty details of projects to learn how they operate and their positive impacts on the environment.

Experiencing COP26

by: Zach Harmer | Strategic Policy & Markets Manager | November 30, 2021

Experiencing COP26

I had the honor of attending the Conference of Parties 26th (COP26) meeting in Glasgow, UK, on behalf of ClimeCo. Upon arrival, I was pleasantly surprised to see how Glasgow had wholly transformed to facilitate the arrival of over 30,000 participants. From airport and train station signage to rapid antigen test procurement sites spread throughout the city, it’s safe to say that there was much preparation to ensure the welcome for the global community was as smooth as possible. The effort put forth allowed attendees to focus on the power of coming together to discuss and make climate commitments.

About COP26

If you are unfamiliar with COP26, it is a United Nationals Climate Change conference that brings parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement. It is organized into three core areas: the Blue Zone, the Green Zone, and then side events, such as the New York Times Climate Hub (NYT Hub). The Blue Zone is dedicated for delegates and select leaders of the business world to provide space for the negotiations that led to the agreement on the Glasgow Pact. The Green Zone is open to the public, focusing on education and a plethora of side events that offered the opportunity to listen to world-renowned speakers and network with other attendees.

My Favorite Speaker

I was excited to be able to attend the Green Zone as well as several side events. Of the various presentations I attended, the one speaker that resonated with me the most, Vanessa Nakate, spoke on a panel at the NYT Hub. If you have never heard of Vanessa, she is well known as a climate activist from Uganda. She is the founder of the Rise up Climate Movement, which aims to amplify the voices of activists from Africa. During her presentation, Vanessa provided the following powerful statement on global temperature rise:

“It’s important for people to know that even at 1.2 degrees, it has been hell for so many communities in my country… the climate crisis has been ravaging vast parts of the African continent, many people have lost their farms, many people are losing their businesses, many people have lost their lives… this is what is happening at 1.2. The weather patterns are changing, they’re being disrupted… this is one of the disconnections that I have been talking about. We think that 1.5 is our salvation, and yet, still at 1.5, it won’t be safe for very many communities.” NYT, Full Recording of Session

To me, her comment brings light to a common misconception that I see frequently in the media – that limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels is not a universal solution to climate change. The 1.5 degrees is a threshold defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that, if crossed, will bring “catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change.” (Check out ClimeCo’s recent blog on the Key Takeaways from the most recent IPCC report).

Many of the world’s most vulnerable populations are already experiencing significant effects from the global temperature rise, which further emphasizes the urgency of the worldwide community to work together to reduce emissions and support those in need.

My Key Takeaways From The Pact

The Glasgow Climate Pact (Pact) was underscored by a commitment by all parties to the 1.5-degree target. With that, there is an urgent need to drastically scale up funding for developing countries to assist with the costs associated with mitigation and adaptation for climate change. Additionally, for the first time, there was an explicit reference for the need to phase out fossil fuel usage, though the requirement for coal was downgraded from a “phase-out” to a “phase-down” at the last minute due to pressures from China and India.

Another notable outcome from the Pact was the announcement of the intention to form a stand-alone organization to provide financial support and technical advice to developing countries seeking to mitigate loss and damages from climate change. Despite some of the successes of COP26, participant countries were unable to deliver on the $100 billion climate finance target set in the year leading up to COP26. In response, members of the Pact committed to reaching the $100 billion target and to match the amount annually up until 2025.1 Alongside the commitments was the agreement on the rules of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Article 6 Overview

A significant achievement of the Glasgow Pact was the approval of the rules for implementing Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement. Article 6 was ratified in 2016 along with the rest of the Paris Agreement; however, agreeing on the rules for implementation proved to be a challenging exercise. The main components of the Article are briefly highlighted below:

Article 6.2: establishes an accounting framework for country-level cooperation. The purpose of this article is for linking the emissions-trading schemes of two or more countries (but not for business-level transactions). This “treaty” framework will also allow the international transfer of Internationally Traded Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs).
Article 6.4: establishes a United Nations-centralized mechanism to trade emission reduction credits (referred to as “A6.4ERs”) generated through projects that will contribute to reducing emissions in developing countries. This mechanism would issue A6.4ERs to developers of clean energy projects, where the developers can either be foreign countries or private entities.
Article 6.8: is meant to guide the implementation of the framework for non-market approaches in implementing parties’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). Article 6.8 is not instrumental in the implementation of an emission trading system. Examples include, but are not limited to, the application of taxes or other relevant initiatives to discourage emissions.

Conclusions

It is no easy feat to bring over 200 delegates together from around the world in a time where COVID-19 is ever-present, let alone to get all delegates to agree on a plan to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. Though there may be criticisms from both sides on the intricacies of the Pact, progress has been made on one of the biggest challenges we have ever faced as a global community. As I reflect on my visit to COP26, I am left with these two thoughts:

No action is too small; everything starts with the individual. Every action you can take to reduce your emissions and waste footprint helps. I encourage you to look into actions you can take to reduce your daily footprint, such as reviewing your city’s waste, organics and recycling rules.
Climate change is here and is already affecting the world’s most vulnerable populations. We must continue to encourage our leaders to drive emissions reductions from both inside and outside their borders.

It will be interesting to see what the delegates of our world will do to meet the commitments they made at COP26. At ClimeCo, we strive to continually work with our partners to reduce emissions and go beyond business-as-usual. I am looking forward to helping our partners navigate the multiple paths available to them to reach their goals/commitments.

Watch #TeamClimeCo at COP26 on our Instagram.

About the Author

Zach Harmer is the Strategic Policy and Markets Manager at ClimeCo Canada, based in the Calgary office. At ClimeCo, Zach leads the tracking and analyses of regulatory and market updates in California and Canada’s carbon programs. Zach earned his Master of Public Policy from the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Alberta in Political Science and French Language and Literature.

Responsible Plastic Management Step 1: Plastic Footprinting

by: Alyssa Hudson | Plastic Program Intern | October 20, 2021

Source: Green Queen

It is indisputable that plastics have made their way into every aspect of our lives, and they’re here to stay.

While plastics play an important role and offer many benefits, there is growing concern over the waste accumulating in landfills, rivers and oceans, and the stomachs of animals and marine life.

Globally, 380 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year, with some reports indicating that up to 50% of that is for single-use purposes. COVID-19 has exacerbated the issue. Roughly 200 billion plastic-based disposable masks and gloves have been used globally every month during the pandemic; the United Nations (U.N.) projects that most of this COVID-19 personal protective equipment will likely end up in landfills or the ocean.

Source: Plastic Pollution Treaty

Plastics have numerous benefits and continue to gain popularity with businesses. Plastics can reduce logistics costs, protect and preserve food, enhance vehicle safety, and contribute to life-saving medical treatments. With a growing trend of businesses increasing plastic use, the World Economic Forum predicts that plastic production will double in the next 20 years.

As the use and production of plastics increase, businesses seek to understand how they can help solve one of the most significant challenges of our time – plastic waste.

Taking Account of Your Plastic Footprint

Plastic Accounting? Plastic Footprinting? What does it mean, and why do it?

Plastic footprinting is an exercise in which a company quantifies plastic volumes and flows throughout its value chain. Akin to greenhouse gas (GHG) footprinting, plastic footprinting documents plastic material flows and how they are managed throughout the entire supply chain – including design, use, reuse, recycling, and end of life. Similar to GHG emissions, which are typically broken into Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions (direct emissions, indirect emissions from electricity, and other indirect emissions), plastic accounting requires consideration of plastic within a company’s control and value chain. Unique from GHG accounting, a plastic footprint must split plastic volumes by their ultimate destination: landfill, ocean, recycling, reuse, etc.

Source: Climate Action/Photograph by Greenpeace

Unlike GHG footprinting – guided for most corporations by the World Resource Institute’s GHG Protocol – there is currently a lack of standardized guidance for plastic footprinting. Many are preparing corporate plastic footprints even before a de facto standard is established, while others are working to create the standard. For instance, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) recently developed an innovative tool called ReSource Footprint Tracker. Others are calling on the U.N. to develop a treaty that could provide some of this consistency.

Corporations interested in plastic impacts can help shape the standardization and rigor of this process. ClimeCo is currently helping leading organizations engage with leading NGOs and have a voice in this movement.

A Meaningful Step Forward

Why quantify a company’s plastic footprint? It allows you to set credible targets, strategically improve your company’s impacts, and reap stakeholder and reputation benefits as a result.

Source: Resource Plastic

Once a corporation has quantified its plastic footprint, the next step is to improve its plastic impacts. One way to do this is by empowering product designers and engineers to be innovative thinkers on reducing plastic use in product development and within the overall supply chain. In parallel, as your organization evaluates how you can reduce your operational plastic footprint, ClimeCo can help you finance environmental plastic waste cleanup using plastic credits. Companies can use these credits to mitigate external environmental plastic waste beyond company control and the unavoidable volume portion of their plastic footprint. Funding from credits help to scale the recovery and recycling of environmental plastic waste around the world.

Utilizing reporting frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI): GRI 306: Waste, SASB: Waste Management, and U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), can inform how companies can credibly share their progress.

The same factors that drove climate into corporate reporting are starting to do the same for plastics. Investors and supply chains need comparable ESG metrics to evaluate companies’ performance against market competitors. Customers and employees want company actions on plastics to match their values. Accounting for your plastic footprint can help your company enhance its performance and reputation. For leaders who want to integrate plastic into their corporate strategy, ClimeCo is ready to assist.

About the Author

Alyssa Hudson serves as an intern for the Plastics Program at ClimeCo. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in sustainability and business. In the future, Alyssa would like to work in corporate sustainability to help businesses forge sustainable futures.

What Are The Key Takeaways From The IPCC AR6 Report?

by: Caroline Kelleher | Analyst, Sustainability, Policy & Advisory | September 23, 2021

Amidst a year devastated by extreme weather, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered its sixth assessment report (AR6). The AR6 comes in time to be fresh on the minds of the climate leaders meeting this week at Climate Week NYC to discuss fulfilling and increasing the commitments made by businesses. It will be instrumental in driving conversations by governments ahead of COP26 in November. While the conclusions of AR6 remain consistent with the IPCC’s last major assessment in 2014, there is a window of opportunity to make the necessary changes to avoid a catastrophic future.

A 1.5C Warmer World Is On The Horizon

Restricting temperature rise to no more than 1.5C to 2C is thought to be the range that will minimize the likelihood of reaching critical environmental tipping points. When the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, world leaders set the goal to limit temperature rise to 2C, with a preferred goal of a 1.5C increase. AR6 shows that 1.5C of warming is expected to occur by the mid-2030s, and without drastic change taken today, experts predict that roughly 3C of warming will occur by the end of the century.

Source: IPCC report

Unprecedented Warming Leads To Unprecedented Changes

Compared to pre-industrial levels, temperatures are now around 1.1C warmer, heating the climate to a 100,000 year high. As a result, the planet is undergoing unprecedented changes in human history – carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is the highest in 2 million years; sea level is rising at the fastest rate in 3000 years; glaciers are retreating at the fastest rate in 2000 years, and arctic sea ice area is at the lowest level in 1000 years.

Source: IPCC report

Attributing Weather Events To Climate Change

Prior to recent advancements, it was virtually impossible to attribute any weather event to climate change. Experts in the field of attribution science can now assess to what extent climate change played a role in the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events. From the heavy rainfall and flooding in western Europe, and extreme heat in western North America this year, experts can now say with certainty that human-driven climate change is causing more frequent and severe weather events.

The Most Peer-Reviewed Science In History

Over 14 000 scientific papers were assessed by 234 AR6 authors from 65 countries to create a comprehensive summary of the drivers, impacts, risks, and mitigation strategies of climate change. The report was distributed for review by experts and received over 78 000 comments incorporated into the second draft. The final report was reviewed and approved by all 193 member states from the United Nations.

The Path Forward To Safety And Prosperity

A strong and sustained reduction in greenhouse gas emissions has the potential to rein in climate change, limiting global warming levels to manageable temperatures. Parties must take immediate action: with a decades-long delay to see the results of today’s emission reductions, the next several decades will show the impacts of our actions in the past. Any hope of stabilizing global temperature, improving air quality, and conducting business in the future, depends on the speed that radical changes can be taken today.

Leading A Low-Carbon Future

What does the AR6 mean for the growing number of businesses acting on climate change? Now more than ever, businesses play a critical role in galvanizing efforts to manage climate risk and monetize climate opportunities. From modeling resilience and asset exposure to developing projects at a scale that mitigate emissions and engaging in voluntary mechanisms, the corporate leaders of the 21^st century will also be climate leaders. ClimeCo is a pioneer in climate strategy and has supported corporate leaders with climate expertise for over ten years. We are just getting started, and our team is ready to support clients in their transitions towards climate leadership.

About the Author

Caroline Kelleher is an Analyst on ClimeCo’s Sustainability, Policy, and Advisory team, where she advises clients on the development of carbon reduction and sustainability strategies. Caroline holds a Master of Science in Environmental Sustainability from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science in Geoscience from Trinity University.

The Role of Net-Zero in Corporate Strategy

by: David Prieto | Director, Climate Finance & Strategy | August 25, 2021

The Paris Agreement signed in 2015 ushered in a new era in corporate strategy. This new era is one where companies and investors play a fundamental role in addressing the key issue of our time – climate change. In our lifetime, the corporate sector has increasingly experienced the impact of climate risk – both physical and transitional. High-profile examples include the bankruptcy of PG&E after the 2018 wildfire season in California and the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal from 2015. Nonetheless, corporate leaders realize that climate change is also the biggest wealth-creating opportunity in human history. It is, therefore, no surprise that investors are rewarding low-carbon business models with record valuations, such as Tesla and Beyond Meat.

In the absence of broad climate policy and regulation, corporate leaders have to navigate a growing landscape of voluntary initiatives designed to address many environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, including climate change. The rapid pace of change in ESG can be daunting to navigate for corporate leaders. Therefore, it is important to understand which voluntary initiatives best align with a company´s strategy and business model, from campaigns and commitments to methodologies, registries, and standards. This blog will discuss the latest development in ESG – Net-Zero – and why it plays a fundamental role in any corporate strategy.

The Science Behind Net-Zero

The goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit the rise in mean global temperature by 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change. To succeed, global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) need to halve by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050, according to a landmark study published in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Achieving net-zero emissions will be a monumental challenge – human activities generate 55 GT of carbon dioxide (CO₂) per year, resulting in a total carbon budget of 580 GT of CO₂ before exceeding the 1.5°C threshold.

Establishing a Net-Zero Target

Net-zero is a state in time where corporates meet two conditions, according to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). First, GHG emissions from a corporate value chain are abated at a rate consistent with a 1.5°C pathway. Second, residual emissions that cannot be eliminated for technical and economic reasons are compensated by an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide removals. During the transition to net-zero, a science-based target (SBT) informs whether the current rate of emissions abatement is aligned to a 1.5°C pathway. Establishing a net-zero target (NZT) is a commitment to the deep decarbonization of a business model and the resulting future emissions rate.

Deep decarbonization is complex work that requires a diverse set of policy, legal, technology, and market solutions that remain in development as outlined by various net-zero roadmaps, such as the IEA Net-Zero by 2050 and BNEF New Energy Outlook. Optional compensation measures play a key role during the transition to net-zero by neutralizing unabated emissions as the global economy aligns with climate science.

Graphical representation of a net-zero target, an interim science-based target, and optional
compensation alongside the taxonomy of climate mitigation tactics, Science Based Targets Initiative

Different Pathways to Net-Zero

The journey to net-zero is critical to corporate strategy because it entails a fundamental transformation across all sectors of the global economy for business models to operate in balance with the planet. Unfortunately, not all net-zero transformations are created equal, as the emissions profile of value chains vary significantly by sector. In particular, so-called hard-to-abate sectors, such as plastics and aviation, will take longer to decarbonize in the absence of low-carbon alternatives. Nonetheless, the complexity of business model decarbonization has not deterred the private sector that now has approved science-based targets encompassing 20% of total global market capitalization.

Sustainability Solutions for Net-Zero

Since our founding, ClimeCo has been a leading transformation partner to companies, investors, and governments pursuing a low-carbon future. As a vertically integrated sustainability solutions provider, we have enabled our clients to go beyond business as usual. By developing frontier technology-based and nature-based carbon reduction projects, transacting voluntary and compulsory environmental credits, and advising on climate risk and disclosure, our team is dedicated to implementing decarbonization pathways tailored to our clients’ sector, business model, and balance sheet.

Cypress trees planted at a Climate Forward reforestation project in Louisiana, Restore the Earth Foundation

Commencing the Net-Zero Journey

From carbon neutral to net-zero and climate positive, any corporate climate strategy must follow a mitigation hierarchy. A mitigation hierarchy will inform whether a mitigation strategy effectively neutralizes a company’s impact on the climate, mitigating climate risk on the company, and incentivizing low-carbon capital allocation. At ClimeCo, our team aligns to the Blueprint for Corporate Action on Climate and Nature and recommends four priority interventions:

1. Account for and disclose emissions using internationally recognized frameworks, such as the GHG Protocol, CDP, and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD),
2. Reduce value-chain emissions in line with a science-based target pathway, as defined by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi),
3. Quantify a financial commitment by pricing remaining emissions through an internal carbon price, and
4. Invest the financial commitment for impact to climate and nature to further emission reductions, unlock climate solutions, and source high-quality carbon credits.

Net-Zero in a COVID World

The IPCC released the first part of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) this month and the science is clear – it is in our hands to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C. Global emissions must fall 7.6% per year between 2020 and 2030, roughly the same drop in emissions from the COVID-19 lockdowns. As a result, extreme weather and the failure of climate action have continued to dominate the long-term risks by likelihood among members of the World Economic Forum. However, COVID-19 has accelerated stakeholder pressure to transition to a low-carbon growth path that could deliver a direct economic gain of US $26 trillion through 2030, compared to business-as-usual. In his annual letter, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, succinctly points this out: “given how central the energy transition will be to every company’s growth prospects, we are asking companies to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net-zero economy – that is, […] how this plan is incorporated into your long-term strategy and reviewed by your board of directors.” For leaders integrating net-zero into their corporate strategy, ClimeCo is ready to help.

About the Author

David Prieto serves as Director for Climate Finance & Strategy at ClimeCo, where he advises clients navigating the risks and opportunities associated with an increasingly changing climate. David holds a Master of Science from Columbia University and Bachelor of Arts from the University of London.

« Older Entries

Glossary

What Are Sustainable Development Goals and How Can You Assess Their Impact?

What Are Sustainable Development Goals and How Can You Assess Their Impact?

Experiencing COP26

Experiencing COP26

Responsible Plastic Management Step 1: Plastic Footprinting

Responsible Plastic Management Step 1: Plastic Footprinting

What Are The Key Takeaways From The IPCC AR6 Report?

What Are The Key Takeaways From The IPCC AR6 Report?

The Role of Net-Zero in Corporate Strategy

The Role of Net-Zero in Corporate Strategy

Sources

Additional Resources