Nature takes its place in SBTi’s net zero standard

The Science Based Targets initiative’s (SBTi’s) updated Corporate Net-Zero Standard landed earlier this summer, and it has already drawn a flood of commentary and analysis —  including on Trellis — from nearly every angle. Here I will focus on a question that many corporate sustainability teams keep asking: What path does the new standard open for investment in nature-based climate solutions, today and after 2035?

The short answer is that the door is now open and can remain so through mid-century. While direct reductions rightfully remain the priority, the new standard has cleared a credible path for high-integrity nature-based action alongside them. Below are three key aspects: the new framework for ongoing emissions and why voluntary uptake matters; nature’s explicit place within the framework; and the post-2035 picture —  including one overlooked footnote that deserves far more attention than it has received.

What’s new

Before this update, corporate climate strategy was mostly a set of reduction targets plus a long-term net-zero target date. The new standard adds an important second track: keep reducing while taking responsibility for the emissions that continue while you decarbonize. The second track, called “ongoing emissions responsibility,” or OER, builds on and formalizes concepts previously discussed under the banner of “beyond value chain mitigation.”

The reductions-first foundation is unchanged. Ongoing responsibility works alongside deep reductions, never instead of them, and high-integrity credits support that work rather than substituting for it. Under the standard, companies are not responsible for ongoing emissions until 2035, but declaring a position is not optional, and there is no reason to wait. The standard offers voluntary uptake now across three tiers: “engaged,” at 1 percent of ongoing emissions; “advanced,” at 10 percent; and leadership, at 100 percent. Shouldering ongoing responsibility is where ambition and opportunity sit today.

Waiting is a mistake for a practical reason. The governance, procurement relationships, supplier contracts and internal carbon-pricing capability that ongoing responsibility and the 2035 requirement demand will take years to build credibly, and most companies do not have them at the scale that the standard will eventually require. Starting now is how companies can arrive ready at 2035 rather than scrambling. And nothing stops NGOs and progressive companies from setting a higher bar now, to complement SBTi’s criteria rather than contrasting with them.  

Nature’s essential place

Nature is not an afterthought in the new standard; it’s an eligible, recognized activity. SBTi’s definition of verified mitigation outcomes that companies can use for ongoing emissions explicitly includes protecting, restoring and enhancing natural carbon sinks, alongside verified reductions and removals. 

This enables a portfolio approach, where nature works alongside engineered removals. And the practical reality reinforces the point: Nature-based solutions represent the large majority of global carbon removal capacity available to companies today, so a diversified, high-integrity portfolio is the sensible planning approach while other solutions reach scale. 

Nature is also distinctive in what it delivers. Well-designed projects produce measurable climate benefits alongside outcomes for biodiversity, water security and local livelihoods, including support for Indigenous Peoples and local communities already leading on nature stewardship. 

The post-2035 picture

From 2035, companies must support eligible removals equal to at least 1 percent of ongoing Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions, rising to 100 percent by their net-zero target year and no later than 2050. Within that, at least 10 percent of emissions attributable to long-lived greenhouse gases must be covered with long-lived removals from 2035, a figure that also increases to 100 percent by the net-zero target date.

SBTi splits removals into two durability classes adapted from the IPCC’s 2022 framing: short-lived (carbon stored for decades to centuries) and long-lived (centuries to millennia). It classifies by storage timescale, not by project type. The standard never designates natural climate solutions as short-lived. That is an inference many have drawn, not a distinction the standard makes.

Which brings us to Footnote 75, the open door most analysis has missed. SBTi states it intends to run a call for evidence on whether shorter-lived removals can deliver climate-equivalent permanence through contractual or stewardship mechanisms, and the post-2035 criteria are explicitly scheduled for review before they take effect.

That’s not a small aside. The portfolio of durability solutions that I wrote about recently is exactly the set of mechanisms now in question for this post-2035 period, while buffer pools remain the basis for action now. In other words, this approach allows us to act now with the tools available while work continues on additional ones that can improve confidence in nature’s long-term durability. 

What’s needed now

SBTi’s new standard sets a clear path for nature-based climate action. What matters now is momentum in the wider system: tightening and merging integrity frameworks, government action, rigorous governance and transparency across all environmental attribute certificate markets and ambitious corporate action today, rather than waiting for 2035.

The companies best placed when further guidance lands will be the ones that have already laid the groundwork.