For years, meeting the Science Based Targets initiative’s Corporate Net-Zero Standard has mostly meant getting a target validated and reporting progress against it each year.
Version 2.0, published on June 11, 2026, shifts the burden of proof. Validation still matters, but the standard is now built to test whether the actions behind a target are actually happening, more than whether the target itself is credible. That plays out differently across Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3, and it’s worth going through each in turn.
Optional long-term targets, mandatory near-term delivery
The most visible change in V2.0 is that the long-term, net-zero target is now optional in most cases. Companies are required to set two or more near-term targets on a rolling five-year cycle, rather than a single target anchored to a fixed historical base year.
Reading this as SBTi softening its ambition misses what’s actually changed. Most near-term targets in the market were originally set for around 2030, close enough now that another round of long-range goal setting wouldn't tell a company much it doesn't already know. The standard has shifted from long-term ambition toward continuous, recalculated near-term delivery, with the base year moving with each cycle instead of sitting fixed in the past, so targets stay anchored to where a company is, rather than where it was five or ten years ago.
This sits inside what SBTi calls a best-efforts framework. Companies are expected to deploy every lever genuinely within their control and be transparent about the barriers they don't control, rather than treating a missed target as an automatic failure. But the trade-off is real: falling short in one cycle means steeper required cuts in the next, which raises the cost of under-delivering over time.
Company size and geography now also determine which of these requirements apply. Larger organizations and mid-sized companies in high-income countries face the full set, including assurance of base-year data. Smaller companies, and mid-sized companies in lower-income countries, get a lighter version, with optional Scope 3 targets.
Scope 1 and Scope 2 no longer share a target
Under the previous standard, Scope 1 and Scope 2 targets were bundled together, so genuine progress on purchased electricity could offset stagnation in direct, on-site emissions. V2.0 splits them into standalone targets, each expected to show its own progress.
It also updates how a Scope 1 target can be set beyond straightforward absolute reduction: an updated sector emissions-intensity pathway, limited as before to specific emissions-intensive industries, or an asset-transition target built around a formal decarbonization plan for physical assets that don't turn over on a predictable cycle.
That second option matters mainly for project-centric, asset-heavy industries such as oil, gas, or mining, where new sites and long asset lifespans make a fixed reduction trajectory impractical. For most manufacturers and retailers, it isn't the relevant option, and near-term Scope 1 targets must still cover 100% of emissions regardless of which pathway a company chooses.
What all the pathways point towards is the same destination: net-zero Scope 1 emissions by 2050 at the latest. For most industrial and manufacturing supply chains, on-site fuel and process emissions make up the largest share of that number. Under V1, that could sit quietly behind a Scope 2 target that was already trending in the right direction. Under V2.0, it can't.
Scope 2 progress is no longer the same as reduction
Scope 2 spans purchased electricity, heat, steam, and cooling, and near-term targets have to cover 100% of all four. SBTi’s detailed mechanics so far, the tiered hierarchy and the low-carbon classification system, are published for electricity only. The standard hasn’t yet set out an equivalent framework for heat, steam, or cooling, so what follows covers the electricity framework specifically.
Scope 2 now runs on a three-tier hierarchy for what counts as delivery, and where a company sits on it determines how much credit its electricity strategy gets alongside a target.
The first tier is reduction: cutting electricity use through efficiency or switching to renewable or low-carbon electricity generated off-grid.
The second tier is progress: buying renewable or low-carbon electricity delivered via the grid, which under the previous standard was enough on its own to make demonstrate progress, but which V2.0 now treats as a separate, lesser category than reduction.
The third tier, contribution, applies only once both of those are exhausted, for example in a region without renewable energy certificates available to buy. There, a company can still count action such as investment or advocacy aimed at removing what’s blocking progress in the market.
V2.0 also broadens what counts as low-carbon electricity in the first place, extending the definition beyond renewables to include nuclear and carbon capture-fitted generation. New rules on contract age and deliverability tighten what counts as a credible power purchase agreement (PPA), and the standard recommends hourly matching of consumption to generation for large electricity users, without making it mandatory.
The practical effect for buyers is more specific supplier questions, covering both the volume of electricity purchased and where it sits within the hierarchy. “Renewable” is simply no longer enough of an answer.
Scope 3 evolves
Much of what changes in Scope 3 sounds newer than it is. Supplier engagement targets already existed under the previous standard, and some exclusions were already permitted. What V2.0 does is sharpen an existing structure rather than replace it.
Suppler engagement targets have been renamed to supplier alignment targets; with the underlying way targets and progress get assessed largely unchanged. Justified exclusions, already permitted forcategories below a materiality threshold or where a company genuinely has no contractual or practical means to influence emissions, are now more clearly defined. The standard’s own examples sit mostly downstream:
- Leased assets a company doesn’t operationally own,
- Transport where a company can’t influence route or fuel type,
- Processing carried out by a processor the company has no direct relationship with.
These exclusions sit in categories further down the value chain, separate from purchased goods and services.
The more consequential shift for procurement is the option to set a target on the emission intensity of purchased materials directly: the share of a specific commodity purchased that meets a lower-carbon threshold, rather than a target based on overall Scope 3 volume or supplier count. Combined with the standard’s direction to prioritize suppliers producing emission intensive materials such as steel, cement, aluminium, and methanol, this is likely to drive real demand for supplier-specific emissions data rather than supplier participation alone.
As with Scope 2, an implementation hierarchy applies here too, determining whether a given action counts as reduction progress, or contribution. Which level a company reaches for affects how it counts against the target, separate from whether the action happens at all.
Where the two obligations meet
Put the threads together and a clearer picture emerges. The Scope 1 obligation depends on decisions inside operations and supply chains. The Scope 3 obligation depends on which suppliers a company chooses to prioritize, with the standard now naming specific materials rather than leaving it general.
Neither of these is primarily a sustainability team's operational lever. Sustainability sets and validates the targets, but delivering against them depends on decisions procurement teams already make: which suppliers to engage, and where to direct capital and attention first.
V2.0 makes those decisions harder to avoid.
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