Avoided emissions – emissions savings that occur outside a company’s value chain – offer an additional means to accelerate decarbonization through the development of products and services in line with a 1.5°C pathway. 

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and its member companies, in collaboration with Carbone4 and its Net Zero Initiative and released the “Guidance on Avoided Emissions: Helping business drive innovations and scale solutions toward Net Zero”.  

Leading global companies, academia and technical experts came together to develop a shared vision of how “Avoided Emissions” could be calculated and leveraged not only by companies but also by financial institutions and governments in their ambition to support and drive climate-aligned decision-making, innovation and purpose definition.

The five key areas to making credible avoided emissions claims covered in this guidance include: 

• Defining avoided emissions 
• Leveraging avoided emissions 
• Ensuring the contribution is legitimate 
• Assessing avoided emissions 
• Reporting avoided emissions