Guidance on Avoided Emissions: Helping business drive innovations and scale solutions towards Net Zero

There is a growing recognition of the need to scale climate solutions (e.g., products, services, technologies) in order to produce necessary system-wide change. In response, private sector sustainability claims are surging. Unfortunately, many of these claims are not credible. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and a host of multi-stakeholder collaborators have created this guide to help you to credibly account for avoided GHG emission stemming from your climate change-related solutions. The guide outlines a rigorous methodology for assessing these avoided emissions so that strategic decisions related to climate investments are better informed. It covers five areas: defining avoided emissions; leveraging avoided emissions; ensuring the contribution is legitimate; assessing avoided emissions; and reporting avoided emissions. These insights will be most useful to sustainability professionals, but will also have implications for other departments including finance, development, and communications.