The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) launched an open consultation to refine the 2023 Guidance on Avoided Emissions by gathering the perspectives and consensus of various stakeholders on key refinement themes. The update aims to enhance technical aspects of the Guidance while allowing for practical use and adoption. More broadly, the aim is to provide a helpful and implementable foundation for standard setters, including the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to build on when working on standardized approaches to intervention-based/avoided emissions accounting in their respective standard-setting and governance procedures.
Overview of the Guidance on Avoided Emissions
As businesses work toward net-zero emissions, they face the dual challenge of reducing their own greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint while innovating to provide low-carbon solutions that contribute to broader decarbonization efforts —known as “avoided emissions.” Avoided emissions – emissions savings that occur dominantly outside a company’s GHG inventory – offer an additional means to accelerate decarbonization through the development of products and services that help other actors to decarbonize.
Unlike traditional emissions inventories, companies calculate avoided emissions by comparing a low-carbon scenario with a reference scenario, allowing them to understand the potential impact of their solutions on the emissions of others . To support standardization in this area, WBCSD released its Guidance on Avoided Emissions in 2023, gaining endorsement from the industry, finance, and policy sectors, including the G7. In response to demand for consistent practices, we expanded our program in 2024, launching projects focused on methodology, implementation, and policy integration to promote avoided emissions accounting.
Update of the Guidance
After several companies tested and applied the Guidance in real-world settings, we began identifying key areas for improvement. A thorough review of several intervention-based frameworks, combined with the stakeholder feedback collected over the past 24 months led to this open consultation. Our aim is to receive public feedback on key Guidance themes and on the key refinements that have been identified since its launch in 2023.
The updated Guidance will:
- Include high-quality, technically robust content in line with emerging methodologies and terminologies
- Provide comprehensive practitioner guidance, good practice, and rooting the work in practical evidence
- Prepare for adoption by standard setters in corporate climate action and market-based mechanisms.
To ensure the updated Guidance will meet these objectives, the open consultation will comprise of 5 themes and 10 refinements for feedback:
- Clarity on definitions related to avoided emissions;
- Eligibility criteria for making claims (gates);
- Improvements on methodological aspects;
- Guidance on data and traceability;
- Implementation of the Guidance in practice.
We have not included all refinement themes in the open consultation – only those which are identified as a priority in gathering external feedback.
How to contribute
We invite stakeholders to review the themes and refinement proposals and share their input over the course of 2 months. The aim is to reach a broadly accepted view of the refinements for inclusion in the enhanced version of the WBCSD Guidance on Avoided Emissions. We will consolidate the results, share them publicly, and use them to finalize the refined Guidance.
Options to participate:
- For comprehensive feedback on all themes please refer to the Open Consultation -Technical Document and submit answers in the online survey;
- For partial feedback on selected themes please refer to the Executive Summary to select the themes and/or refinements for which you would like to provide feedback, use the Open Consultation – Technical Document for detailed information and submit your feedback via the online survey.
Duration: 16 November 2024 – 18 January 2025
The results of the open consultation will be available and we will publish the updated Guidance in 2025.
Outline