How to track progress against an SBTi target

Setting an SBTi target is one decision. Knowing whether you are on track is a question you answer every year, across your own emissions and across every supplier whose targets feed your Scope 3. This guide covers what tracking involves, why the baseline and the weighting change the answer, and where a forecast helps.

What does tracking progress against an SBTi target involve?

Tracking progress means comparing each year's emissions with the base year and the trajectory your target implies, and recording the result in a form someone else can check. For a company with a Scope 3 target there are two halves: your own inventory, and the status of the suppliers whose reductions move it.

The standard is raising the bar on the second step. Version 2.0 of the Corporate Net-Zero Standard adds a progress assessment: companies complete an end-of-cycle assessment within 12 months after the target time frame closes, covering progress, implementation barriers and the actions taken or planned. For Category A companies, that assessment needs independent third-party assurance over the underlying data and calculations (Beveridge & Diamond's summary).

A year-end number is the last step. The work is the record behind it: a base year that does not move without a documented reason, factor sets that are version-locked, and a source for every figure. The SBTi baseline guide covers how to build that record.

Why does the baseline year decide how progress is measured?

Every percentage reduction is measured against the base year, so a change to the base year changes every result that follows. For targets submitted under version 2.0, companies generally must use the most recent year with comprehensive data as the near-term base year, and those submitting or renewing targets may need to revisit their baseline inventories (Beveridge & Diamond).

A recalculation policy is the guard. It lists the triggers, such as acquisitions and divestitures, methodology or factor changes, data corrections and boundary changes, and sets a materiality threshold above which the base year is restated.

Scope 3 base years also move for a reason that has nothing to do with strategy: the method improves. A baseline built on sector averages is restated when supplier-specific data replaces them. Recording which method produced each figure keeps that restatement explainable, because the change in the number can be traced to the change in the method.

How do you track progress across organisations when only some have targets?

Give every organisation a status and a date, and count only what you can evidence. The status runs from committed, through near-term and long-term targets, to net-zero, and each step needs evidence: a public commitment, a validation, and the base year and scope the target covers.

The status changes during the year, so the data behind it has to as well. The SBTi dataset behind DitchCarbon's SBTi progress tracking is snapshotted weekly, so a supplier that commits or gets validated shows up within days of publication, not at the next annual review.

Fix the cohort once a year, for example at 31 March, so year-over-year comparison measures progress rather than a changing list. Group parent companies so that a group is counted once. The supplier engagement targets guide sets out that method in full.

Does weighting by count, spend or embodied emissions change the answer?

Yes, and it can reverse the story. Weighted by count, a portfolio can look weak when its largest emitters are all committed. Weighted by share of embodied emissions, the same portfolio can look strong. Neither is wrong, because they answer different questions.

Supplier engagement targets increasingly use the emissions-weighted form, so tracking and reporting can share one figure, and spend is the usual fallback while emissions data is thin. DitchCarbon's SBTi progress tracking shows all three and does not choose one for you.

Is a forecast the same as progress?

No. Progress is what an organisation has reported against its base year. A forecast projects that history forward and shows where emissions land if the trend holds. You need both: progress tells you where things stand, and the forecast tells you whether the target is still in reach.

DitchCarbon's emissions forecast to 2050 carries each organisation's own reported history forward, so you can see where its emissions will be in 2030 if nothing changes, and set that against the trajectory its target implies. The same view rolls up to account, portfolio or category level, so a team sees where a whole book lands as well as where any one organisation in it does.

A forecast is a projection rather than a measurement, and it is only as good as the disclosure behind it. Where an organisation's Scope 3 reporting has missing years, large swings or patterns that do not hold together, a forecast reliability notice appears above the forecast, names the reason and links to the latest disclosure so you can judge the data yourself.

How do you track a supplier engagement target?

A supplier engagement target commits a company to a defined share of its suppliers adopting science based targets within a fixed window of up to five years, usually measured by share of upstream emissions, or by spend where emissions data is not yet available. Progress is the covered share: the emissions of covered suppliers divided by the total for the in-scope categories.

Each supplier carries a status, the cohort is frozen once a year, and the reductions behind each commitment are logged as expected and verified tonnes of CO2e per year. The supplier engagement targets guide works through the method with an example.

What does good SBTi progress tracking look like in practice?

One record that answers three questions: where each organisation stands, whether the portfolio reaches the organisations that matter, and where each is heading. That record starts from verified emissions data for over 2 million organisations, built on primary emissions data wherever it exists, so status and trajectory sit against figures with a source behind them.

DitchCarbon tracks all three in one place: status refreshed weekly, progress weighted by emissions, spend or count, and a forecast that flags where the disclosure behind it is thin.