ISO’s new net-zero standard is here: What to know

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published the consultation draft of a new, independently verifiable standard for corporations that make net-zero emissions commitments.

The ISO Net Zero Aligned Organizations Standard (ISO 14060) started life as loose guidelines shaped by more than 1,200 stakeholders from civil society and the corporate world, including Amazon, FedEx,Google, Intel, Mars, McDonald’s and Meta. 

The 91-page draft outlines processes that companies should use to develop, implement and communicate their strategies for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, as outlined in the Paris Agreement.  

The standard builds on ISO’s existing suite of rules for quantifying and reporting on emissions, many of which are referenced along with widely used standards and guidance from other organizations, including the Science Based Targets initiative’s new corporate net-zero recommendations. 

“The big proposition of ISO is scalability,” said Noelia Garcia Nebra, head of sustainability and partnerships at ISO. “The standard is for any organization, any size, any sector. In that sense, it is agnostic. Anyone can apply it.” 

The backstory

ISO is a respected organization that has produced more than 25,000 international standards that are used by companies for everything from food safety to information security. 

It’s also a close — and getting closer — partner of the carbon accounting rules maker Greenhouse Gas Protocol: The two standards organizations aim to combine their existing guidance into a new set of co-branded standards, a relationship disclosed in late 2025.    

ISO’s net-zero draft will be circulated for 12 weeks, during which its members — more than 170 national standards bodies — will collect feedback. The British Standards Institution, the UK National Standards and Colombia’s national standards body, ICONTEC, are responsible for the process.

ISO hopes to reach consensus by September, but the timeline is difficult to predict because member organizations will be obligated to address every comment, Garcia Nebra said.

What it is

The standard’s focus is the commitment and governance necessary to achieve net zero, and toward that end, it will require companies to publish a detailed transition plan within two years of setting a target. That roadmap must include, among other things:

  • “Reliable, quantified data” justifying the suggestions
  • Processes for integrating the strategy into the company’s core business model
  • Timelines for the actions the company plans to take
  • Information about how progress will be measured, reported and verified
  • Details about any planned use of carbon credits

The draft also includes a section specific to net-zero strategies for small and midsize enterprises, which is intended to simplify the process for them and reflect the unique challenges they face.

For example, smaller companies are more likely to grow significantly, making absolute carbon emissions cuts more difficult. They’re also less likely to have access to detailed data or the same reduction options as large companies, ISO’s standard suggests.

To reflect those obstacles, small and midsize enterprises can opt to concentrate on interim targets or on prioritizing their most significant emissions categories. They also can decide to report on progress every three years, rather than annually. 

“We do hope that through this ISO standard, we can reach out to other companies that have not been thinking about it yet,” Garcia Nebra said.

On the flip side, ISO encourages companies with “higher technical and economic capacity” to act more ambitiously. That might include phasing out products and services that could “lock-in the use of fossil fuels” or to aim for an operational state “in which the organization’s annual CO2 removals exceed its GHG emissions.” 

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What climate comedians can teach us about storytelling

“Can climate be funny?” asks Stuart Goldsmith before answering his own question. “Can grief be funny? Can war be funny? These are all the things that comics have spoken about since there have been comics.”

So, why not make the climate crisis funny?

That’s the challenge of the two guests that my co-host, Solitaire Townsend, and I talked with in the latest episode of our Two Steps Forward podcast. UK-based Goldsmith is a climate comedian, keynote speaker and podcaster known for getting corporate audiences (including those at our last few GreenBiz conferences) belly laughing about the fears, foibles and hypocrisies that are part of all sustainability professionals’ lives.

Joining him was Esteban Gast, a Colombian-American comedian and writer. Together, they appeared last month on Netflix Is a Joke’s “An Emergency Board Meeting Slumber Party” — “a stand-up comedy show for anyone coping with the slow collapse of everything” — along with Adam McKay, Robby Hoffman, Jimmy O. Yang and others.

Goldsmith and Gast work a genuinely difficult beat. Climate isn’t exactly a natural setup-punchline subject. It’s as serious as a heart attack. And yet both men have built careers using climate as a setup in comedy clubs, at corporate events and in front of audiences who likely had little idea what was coming.

A few things from the conversation stuck with me.

Hypocrisy is the material. Climate comedy works precisely because climate is soaked in ambiguity, guilt and contradiction. The more unspoken the truth, the more juice there is in it. Both comedians talk extensively about their own failures — Goldsmith doing a thermal survey of his house, then ignoring the results; Gast explaining how BP invented the concept of the personal carbon footprint, which regularly blows audiences’ minds.

The audience is smart; they just don’t have context. When a joke about greenwashing or carbon footprints lands wrong, it’s usually not because the audience is uninformed or indifferent. It’s because they lacked the context. The correct response isn’t to talk down to them. It’s to remember what it felt like to hear it for the first time.

Treat audiences like friends. Gast’s approach is to walk in thinking, “These are my friends, and I can’t wait to tell them this.” It sounds simple, but it’s a nifty reframe from how most sustainability professionals enter a room — pre-defensive, braced for skepticism, ready to justify the subject matter before they’ve even started. Goldsmith called it “grappling” — you have to be seen to be working through this alongside the audience, not delivering verdicts from on high.

Permission to feel. Goldsmith’s corporate pitch is essentially this: “I give them permission to feel joy even if they’re scared. I give them permission to have fun even if the subject matter is dry.” His goal: Make climate seem real and relatable and part of their lives rather than something on a spreadsheet.

This was one of the more useful climate communications conversations we’ve had. These aren’t just comedians talking about their craft. They’re practicing something most of us in sustainability struggle with: meeting people where they are. We can learn a lot from these funnymen. Seriously.

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Employee retirement plans are the next frontier for corporate decarbonization 

The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis or its editors.

Modern chief sustainability officers are tasked with decarbonizing scopes 1 and 2 and operational Scope 3 supply chains. While they’re making progress, sustainability teams remain siloed from corporate financial architecture. This creates a glaring “exposure gap”: While a company publicly celebrates its 100 percent renewable operations or ambitious net-zero targets, its employee 401(k) plan is quietly funneling billions into the extractive economy.

The result is a massive disconnect. Corporate retirement menus heavily rely on major asset managers’ target date funds. Because these default funds blindly track standard market-cap indexes, they are deeply exposed to systemic climate risk. For example, data from As You Sow’s Corporate 401(k) Sustainability Scorecard reveals that Microsoft’s 401(k) retirement plan has over $2 billion invested in high-carbon sectors  — despite Microsoft’s pioneering public pledge to become carbon negative by 2030.

This is not only an ethical contradiction; it also introduces severe long-term financial risk. High-carbon assets have introduced intense volatility and structural underperformance, trailing the S&P 500 in seven of the past 10 years.

The fossil fuel penalty 

A white paper by researchers at the University of Waterloo School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED), in partnership with As You Sow, quantified this penalty across the tech sector. The 2024 study found that 2 million employees across 12 tech giants — including Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft—missed out on an estimated $5.13 billion in returns had their companies moved to decarbonize their retirement plan holdings 10 years prior. A fossil-fuel-free portfolio would have yielded an additional 8.9 percent in cumulative returns, proving that high-carbon exposure actively penalizes employee life savings.

As workplace climate advocacy hits an inflection point, employees are recognizing that financed retirement emissions represent their largest personal carbon footprint and are leveraging internal networks to demand change.

Momentum is growing across major enterprises. Amazon shareholders have submitted proposals focusing on 401(k) carbon intensity, requesting that Amazon’s board publish a report “disclosing how the company is protecting plan beneficiaries with a longer investment time horizon from climate risk in the company’s default retirement options.” The Walt Disney Company employees mobilized around a shareholder vote requesting transparency on climate portfolio risks.

The tech sector has provided a blueprint for this movement. More than 1,200 Alphabet employees signed a directive urging executive leadership and Vanguard to offer a fossil-fuel-free index fund option. They amplified this demand in a public op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, outlining exactly how workers can take effective climate action through their benefits packages. In response, Google added the Parnassus Core Equity Fund to its plan menu — providing a sustainable option that avoids direct fossil fuel investments.

How to take action 

This advocacy isn’t isolated. Advocates now regularly share ideas and news through the Cross Company Alliance for Employee Climate Action, an informal peer network fostered by non-profit organization ClimateVoice. As part of the Alliance, advocates share insights from tools like the Invest Your Values 401(k) Scorecard and track their 401(k) investments on platforms like Fossil Free Funds. As one Google employee detailed in a recent Trellis analysis, these grassroots efforts treat sustainability teams as vital allies rather than adversaries.

These employee advocates are shifting away from purely values-based framing, instead approaching benefits teams through a rigorous risk-management lens, presenting data on cost parity, diversification and the fiduciary safety of index-based, passive exposure. They ask a fundamental question: “Does doing the right thing mean sacrificing your retirement security?” The data says no.

Meanwhile, regulatory clarity surrounding the Employee Retirement Income Security Act has dismantled the traditional compliance excuse for inaction. Historically, legal and benefits committees feared that integrating climate-conscious funds would violate their fiduciary obligations. The U.S. Department of Labor fundamentally shifted the landscape in late 2022, clarifying that a fiduciary’s duty of prudence permits — and sometimes requires — evaluating the economic effects of climate change and other environmental factors on an investment’s risk-and-return profile. Furthermore, the 2022 framework formally established that plan sponsors may take participants’ climate and ESG preferences into account when constructing a diversified retirement menu. 

For sustainability leaders searching for the next frontier of corporate decarbonization, addressing these employee demands isn’t just a benefit; it’s a fiduciary responsibility. 

What businesses can do 

While bottom-up employee courage is driving this conversation, solving the 401(k) blindspot requires top-down strategic action. CSOs should not treat corporate retirement benefits as outside their purview. Aligning a company’s financial footprint with its environmental goals is the next frontier of corporate decarbonization.

This expansion is a powerful operational asset. Extensive research, including the Deloitte CxO Sustainability Report, highlights that visible corporate climate action acts as a powerful lever for talent attraction and retention, particularly among highly competitive millennial and Gen Z cohorts. By building a unified climate strategy that spans from the supply chain to the retirement plan, leadership can eliminate a glaring reputational liability while deeply reinforcing workforce loyalty.

To seize this opportunity, sustainability executives must step out of their traditional comfort zones. An immediate first step is utilizing tools like As You Sow’s Corporate 401(k) Sustainability Scorecard to audit current portfolio exposure and quantify the exposure gap. Armed with that concrete internal data, CSOs can actively engage HR executives and retirement investment strategists, and move their companies to address both ethical contradictions and long-term financial risk. 

In the next part of this series, we’ll provide the definitive CSO playbook for greening the corporate retirement menu — from leveraging modern self-directed brokerage windows to deploying institutional, fossil-free passive indexes and climate-smart default funds.

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SBTi’s shift on electricity decarbonization attracts praise and criticism

The Science Based Targets initiative’s (SBTi’s) net-zero standard overhaul redefines how companies should approach electricity decarbonization, but it’s more flexible than the strict carbon accounting rules proposed by the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol. 

The new approach to Scope 2 — which covers purchased electricity — marks a major departure from the current standard, under which companies can set one goal to cover emissions reductions for energy and their own operations, which is defined as Scope 1. 

The two categories must now be handled separately, which is a wake-up call for some companies that have leaned on the practice of buying renewable energy certificates (RECs) to help with their combined target.

The SBTi update encourages companies to reduce electricity use and source low-carbon energy where possible through direct connections and contracts. They can “match” the rest of their load by supporting low-carbon energy projects in the same region. Companies can still do that by using existing market instruments such as power purchase agreements (PPAs) or RECs.

“We are encouraged to see SBTi explicitly call out that PPAs are still acceptable,” said John Powers, vice president of global renewable energy and carbon advisory for Schneider Electric, which has advised corporate buyers on more than 25 gigawatts of these transactions.

PPAs have been widely used by companies ranging from Amazon to Walmart to claim emissions reductions from electricity; they have helped add more than 100 gigawatts of clean energy to the U.S. grid since 2014.

Stricter geographic lens

The location focus is tougher than past requirements — and the definition of what qualifies as the same region is under debate — but SBTi offers room for exceptions, especially for organizations with distributed geographic footprints, such as retailers or franchisers. 

“This framework needs to stay focused on practical implementation and the recognition that entities are part of systems,” said Abby Davidson, managing director for U.S. with sustainability consulting firm Quantis.

No hourly matching, yet

Corporate energy strategists welcomed SBTi’s decision to let companies match energy consumption with low-carbon electricity sources on an annual basis when reporting on their progress, a change from an earlier proposal. 

That’s at odds with the strict hourly matching model favored under a proposed new accounting rule from the GHG Protocol, which many companies use to calculate emissions reductions across their operations, electricity consumption and supply chains. That proposal is opposed by many corporate energy buyers.

“We have heard from many clients that uncertainty about what is going to count is absolutely delaying action,” said Powers. “This should be a big sigh of relief.” 

Stay tuned, though. SBTi wants firms that buy more than 10 gigawatts annually — think big tech companies or utilities — to report on how they’re matching electricity consumption with low-carbon energy resources on an hourly basis. In the new standard, it has created an optional recognition path for companies that report hourly, while it studies how hourly matching should be considered in the future.

“SBTi’s decision to support voluntary, not mandatory, matching of clean energy purchases to the hour and location of a company’s buildings is the right signal to keep markets moving,” said Miranda Ballentine, senior advisor at sustainability consulting firm Green Strategies. 

Consistent rules needed

Not everyone is a fan of SBTi’s flexibility, adopted after the organization considered more than 1,400 comments submitted during its public consultation in late 2025. 

Some nongovernmental organizations, including Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists have urged SBTi and GHG Protocol to align on policies that embrace hourly matching. They criticized SBTi for bowing to corporate pressure with its changes. 

“These requirements will drive real decarbonization by aligning corporate emissions reduction claims with investments in renewable energy that credibly displace fossil fuels,” the NGOs said in a letter to SBTi CEO David Kennedy and technical council members. “Any reliance on status quo annual matching will result in non-impactful investments counting toward unscientific climate targets.”  

Likewise, corporate strategists expressed some concern over the potential misalignment between SBTi’s and GHG Protocol’s approaches on electricity. “Everyone is looking to push toward a consistent approach,” Davidson said. 

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Jet fuel made from captured carbon begins to flow from new plant

Employees of Microsoft and Shopify will soon be able to use a novel approach to lowering business-travel emissions thanks to the opening of a pioneering facility that uses renewable energy to transform carbon dioxide and water into low-carbon jet fuel.

The facility, in Moses Lake, Washington, is operated by Twelve, a startup that spent the past decade developing its approach to manufacturing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The fuel will be used by multiple carriers, including Alaska Airlines, which will sell the associated emissions credits to Microsoft and other partners.

First of a kind

Twelve’s plant, known as AirPlant One, will produce a relatively small amount of “eSAF”: 50,000 gallons annually, compared to the 1.1 million gallons Alaska’s planes burned in 2025. But the plant’s opening is a milestone nonetheless, argued Ryan Spies, managing director for sustainability at the airline. “It’s always so hard to get the first of anything built,” he said. “And in the fuel space probably 10 times harder.”

The technology inside AirPlant One uses renewable energy to transform CO2 and water into a synthetic crude oil that can then be refined to produce eSAF and other products. Twelve claims that the lifecycle emissions associated with its eSAF are up to 90 percent lower than conventional fossil-based jet fuel. It’s also considerably more expensive: Nicholas Flanders, Twelve’s CEO and co-founder, declined to share the cost, but industry estimates peg eSAF as five to 10 times more expensive than conventional fuel.

Cost curve

The premium is covered, at least at present, by companies that want to support the growth of eSAF and reduce business travel emissions. Under the agreement with Alaska and Twelve, Microsoft and other buyers will receive credits that can be netted against Scope 3 emissions. Spies did not specify a price for eSAF credits, but noted that credits on the broader SAF market, which includes fuel made from used cooking oil and other waste biomass, costs between $100 and $300 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent. 

The eSAF industry will also soon have regulatory support. Under the European Union’s RefuelEU aviation program, airports in the bloc were required to use 2 percent SAF in 2025, rising to 70 percent in 2050. A separate sub-mandate for eSAF will begin at 1.2 percent in 2030 and reach 35 percent by 2050.

Scale will be critical if eSAF producers are to cut costs and become competitive with other forms of SAF. Flanders said that Twelve, which closed a $645 million funding round in 2024 and has a contract to supply five European airlines with 260 million gallons of eSAF, is planning an AirPlant Two facility that will produce tens of millions of gallons annually.

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How autonomous vehicles can move EV policy forward

The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis or its editors.

Autonomous vehicles, or AVs, are ushering in a new era of mobility in cities across the country. If you’ve used a driverless taxi in a big congested city like New York or San Francisco, you’ll know that they’re convenient and reasonably priced —  plus they promise to be safer than human drivers and reduce crashes, one of the leading causes of accidental death in the U.S.

Nearly all the AVs on our roads are electric. Although AVs remain a tiny fraction of the vehicles on the road, they represent an important part of the future of low-carbon urban transport — and they can help support the broader shift toward cleaner, more advanced and affordable transportation.

Newark, Calif.-based EV manufacturer Lucid, for example, is advancing both consumer and commercial autonomous cars, including a newly announced robotaxi partnership with Uber and Nuro slated to launch in the San Francisco Bay Area in late 2026. It has also been an important partner for Ceres in making the case on Capitol Hill that AVs and EVs will advance the American economy together.

Making the business case

That linkage further underscores that the business case for electrifying transportation remains strong, even amid recent federal policy headwinds.

Innovation, safety and efficiency can move forward together, reinforcing the long‑term shift toward electrification without relying on government mandates.

But right now, there’s no national policy framework governing autonomous vehicle deployment. AV manufacturers and operators are navigating a patchwork of inconsistent state and local rules. This fragmentation increases costs, slows deployment and creates uncertainty for AV manufacturers and developers investing in electric and automated vehicle technologies.  

That dynamic ultimately hurts the larger EV industry because autonomous cars could be a huge catalyst for electrification if they are deployed with clear, uniform rules more widely.

Electric robotaxis make perfect sense because they’re fleet vehicles that can be charged at a central location when they’re not in use. They’ll be cheaper to operate over the long term as self-driving technology matures, because they can rely on relatively steady electricity prices, rather than volatile global oil markets. It’s cheaper to fuel up an EV than a gas-powered car, even though electricity rates are generally on the rise.

Goldman Sachs projects AVs will make up 8 percent of the rideshare market by 2030. That’s still small, but the growth would be significant, to 35,000 AVs on the road from around 1,500 today. It’s also a huge number of vehicle trips, given that millions of Americans use rideshare services. A national framework is the best way to make sure that the growth trajectory continues and that electric AVs keep displacing pollution on the roads.

There’s a bipartisan opportunity here as Congress considers a major bill to revamp highway and transportation programs. Including a national framework for self-driving cars in that legislation would advance both AVs and EVs.

Countering China 

This policy appeals to both Republicans and Democrats: It’s a way to strengthen U.S. technological leadership, support domestic manufacturing and ensure that American companies remain competitive with rivals in China who face fewer restrictions on deployment.

China is increasingly dominating international EV markets, but the U.S. remains ahead of the curve in self-driving technology. The U.S. can’t cede its technological advantage here. In the current political environment, the fact that putting more AVs on the road will reduce pollution is almost a side-benefit.

The federal EV tax credit is gone, and the policy solutions for electrifying transportation today have dwindled in the last few years.

But Lucid is a clear example of the direction the auto industry is headed, as it shows to lawmakers through its support for Ceres’ advocacy work in D.C.

Advancing AV policy does not require compromising on safety. Given its resources, the federal government has an important role to play in ensuring AVs remain the safest vehicles on the road.

And the technology is advancing fast. The partnership with Uber, for example, will take advantage of Lucid’s fully redundant zonal architecture — a way to string wiring around an EV more efficiently — which was designed to support AV applications.

The company also offers a comprehensive suite of sensors, including LiDAR, radar, visible-light and surround-view cameras, an infrared driver monitoring camera, and ultrasonic sensors.

That all adds up to an incredibly safe roster of vehicles, and it’s a leading example of how America’s EV industry is setting the stage for a safer, cleaner transportation future.

Lucid is focused on moving the industry forward by championing innovation that delivers real-world results. Enlisting more companies to take action will build bipartisan engagement, leading to federal policy that will accelerate the EV revolution.

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World Cup fans are more likely to choose sustainable products and brands

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off and brands activate around a highly visible cultural moment, new GlobeScan data points to an important strategic opportunity: Soccer fans are not only highly engaged audiences, but are also more inclined than the general public to adopt sustainable shopping behaviors that align closely with the kinds of choices brands can influence at venues, in retail environments and across fan experiences.

Globally, self-identified FIFA World Cup fans report higher participation across the sustainable shopping behaviors shown in this analysis. Nearly half say they buy products in returnable, reusable or refillable containers most or all of the time (47 percent, compared a 41 percent global average) and the same share say they often buy natural or organic products (47 percent vs. 38 percent). Fans are also significantly more likely to say they try to buy from responsible brands or companies (46 percent vs. 35 percent). Taken together, these results suggest that soccer fans are not simply an attentive audience for sustainability messaging, but that they may be more behaviorally receptive to more sustainable product and brand choices than the general public.

The contrast is even more pronounced in the U.S., where the World Cup will generate intense commercial and cultural attention. American soccer fans are almost twice as likely as the general public to say they try to buy from responsible companies (61 percent vs. 32 percent), while also over-indexing strongly on other emerging sustainable consumption behaviors, including buying natural or organic products (55 percent vs. 30 percent) and choosing reusable or refillable packaging (50 percent vs. 33 percent). This suggests that World Cup activations need not treat sustainability as a peripheral communications layer. For a meaningful subset of fans, greener choices may already align with how they want to shop and consume.

World Cup soccer fans are more likely than the global average to make sustainable consumer choices, including buying from responsible brands (46 percent vs 35 percent), choosing natural or organic products (47 percent vs 38 percent) and selecting reusable or refillable packaging (47 percent vs 41 percent).

What does this mean?

For brands, the implication is not simply that soccer fans care more, but that the World Cup creates a rare convergence of attention, identity and action in which more sustainable options may be more visible, more relevant and more likely to be chosen. That creates room for brands, retailers, sponsors and venue operators to move beyond messaging alone and make more sustainable choices easier, more attractive and more normal during the fan journey itself, whether through refill and reuse formats, more responsible product assortments or clearer signaling around responsible sourcing and brand practices.

More broadly, the findings highlight the role that major sporting events can play in accelerating behavior change. The World Cup is not only a media platform, but also a social occasion in which norms are made visible and shared. If brands use that moment well, soccer fans could become an influential audience for helping more sustainable consumption feel mainstream, aspirational and part of the excitement of participation, rather than a trade-off that sits outside the event experience.

Based on a representative online survey of more than 31,000 people in the general public in July and August 2025.

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P&G’s long-time sustainability chief retires

Procter & Gamble’s longtime sustainability chief Virginie Helias is stepping down, effective June 30. Her replacement will be Michele Baeten, another veteran of P&G marketing and brand management, who is currently vice president of integrated sustainable growth.

Helias has spearheaded the consumer products giant’s sustainability strategy since 2011 and was named chief sustainability officer in 2016, reporting to P&G’s chief executive officer. She joined P&G in 1988 as a brand manager in Paris. 

“Some of my friends have chosen to retire in search of freedom, fulfillment and fun,” said Helias in a LinkedIn post about her retirement. “Those aren’t my reasons. I’ve already experienced all three throughout this journey, especially during the last 15 years leading sustainability for the company. The horizon just got a little wider.”

Helias isn’t leaving for another job, at least not yet, vowing to spend time with friends and family for the foreseeable future. 

Over the past 10 years, Helias has pushed to integrate sustainability considerations into every employee’s job — using her marketing skills to keep it front and center through multiple communications channels.

“We don’t hire for sustainability, we hire for the best finance people, the best marketers, the best legal people. We want to integrate [sustainability] as opposed to having it be a theoretical topic,” she said in our recent Climate Pioneers interview.

Helias’ replacement, Baeten, worked for Estee Lauder Cosmetics and Nestlé before joining P&G in 2006 as a brand manager for hair care.

Based in Geneva, Baeten moved onto the corporate sustainability team in 2020. She has been vice president of integrated sustainable growth since August 2025, underscoring P&G’s focus on embedding sustainability into business decisions.

“I’ve worked closely with Michele for the past six years and have seen firsthand her ability to turn complex sustainability challenges into strong business strategy, build powerful collaboration and lead with clarity,” Helias said.

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Behind Amazon’s industry-leading water efficiency score

As scrutiny of data center water consumption intensifies, Amazon is increasing its use of recycled water for cooling applications and running its servers at hotter temperatures to decrease its freshwater withdrawals.

Amazon Web Services withdrew 2.5 billion gallons of water for its data centers in 2025, the company disclosed on June 10. At the sites that it owns and operates, water withdrawals decreased by 2 percent from 2024 to 2025.

It’s the first time AWS has published its water withdrawal figures; the company has historically focused on its best practices for decreasing the freshwater needed for cooling, such as opting for recycled water in its chillers, running servers hotter and pulling in outside air. It expresses progress by tracking the liters of water used per kilowatt-hour of energy (l/kWh), a measure known as water usage effectiveness (WUE), which as developed 15 years ago by tech industry trade group Green Grid.

“Communities want increased transparency,” said Brandon Oyer, head of Americas power and water for AWS, referring to the decision to publish its water withdrawal data. “We still think efficiency is the metric to focus on. Efficiency is paramount to scaling a business.’

AWS data centers are already seven times more water-efficient than the industry average — using 0.12 l/kWh, the company reported.The industry average rating for WUE is 0.84 l/kWh.

For perspective, Amazon rival Microsoft achieved a WUE score of 0.27 l/kWh for fiscal year 2025; it withdrew approximately 2.7 billion gallons of water in 2024 (the 2025 figure isn’t yet available). Google hasn’t reported a WUE number publicly; it withdrew 9.9 billion gallons for its data centers and other operations, as of its latest environmental report in 2025.

Both Google’s and Microsoft’s totals include their entire operational footprint; Amazon’s figure is strictly for AWS.

‘Water positive’ mandates

All of the big data center companies — Amazon, Google and Microsoft — have pledged to be “water positive” by 2030. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is also working on that goal. 

The tech industry downplays the water impacts of their IT infrastructure — data centers account for less than 1 percent of all industrial water use, or less than 1 percent of what Americans use to water their lawns. 

But their water pledges have become harder to satisfy amid the furious pace of data center expansion intended to support artificial intelligence services. The dilemma is compounded when you consider that about one-third of all energy needed for data centers goes toward cooling. “It’s a continuous balance,” said Oyer.

Another challenge is aging infrastructure at many water utilities. Amazon in March committed $235 million to upgrades in Oregon, aimed at addressing declining groundwater supplies. That’s just one of its investments.

Likewise, Google has so far committed more than $500 million toward water utility upgrades, including recycling systems. It has also pledged to opt for air cooling or recycled water in regions where freshwater sources are at “high risk.”  

AWS is prioritizing the use of reclaimed or recycled water in regions where water chillers are the most energy-efficient approach. It already supports 26 recycled water projects and has another 130 sites under contract. Using recycled water is also on the list of Google’s list of best practices. 

Water isn’t the only way to cool a data center: Many operators use chilly outside air pumped through the server halls to remove heat, although that’s only possible in certain regions. Liquid cooling technology also helps by dissipating heat at the chip level.

Amazon has also raised the temperature threshold for when chilling equipment switches on. The ambient temperature needs to exceed 85 degrees Fahrenheit before they’re used, reducing the number of hours per day that they’re in action. 

On one Amazon campus, this approach reduced water consumption by 50 percent compared with an identical data center configuration using a lower temperature to guide cooling.  

AWS is about 75 percent of the way to its water-positive goal. Aside from changing its chilling processes, it has so far supported more than 50 water replenishment projects — enough to return more than 5.8 billion gallons of water on an annual basis.

Neither Google or Microsoft has disclosed their progress toward becoming water positive on a percentage basis, but Google reported in early June that it has more than 165 projects under way that will replenish more than 19 billion gallons of water annually by 2030. 

Learn more about best practices for balancing water and energy during Trellis Impact 26, from June 23 to 25 in San Francisco.

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SBTi’s net-zero overhaul prioritizes flexibility and short-term accountability

The Science Based Targets initiative’s first major overhaul of its influential Corporate Net Zero Standard includes significant changes that prioritize five-year decarbonization milestones and provide additional options for reducing value-chain emissions.

Today’s release of Version 2 of the standard, the de facto rulebook for many companies’ decarbonization efforts, arrives close to five years after the original was published and is the second key document in the tenure of former EY consultant and U.K. government climate advisor David Kennedy, who has led SBTi for around a year. 

The initiative’s new strategic plan, released last month, signaled a shift in emphasis from an enforcer of target-setting rules toward a more business-friendly “transformation partner.” Over 96 pages, the new net-zero standard details what that approach will look like in practice. Here are some critical takeaways.

More options for Scope 3

The current standard acknowledges that companies need more options when setting targets to reduce indirect emissions generated by suppliers, product usage and other activities beyond their direct control. The update expands the paths for dealing with these Scope 3, or value-chain, emissions. 

  • In addition to existing options for targets based on emissions and supplier engagement, companies can tie goals to purchases or sales of low-carbon products, from green cement to electric vehicles.
  • When low-carbon goods cannot easily be accessed, companies can use environmental attribute certificates to fund supply-chain decarbonization and claim the associated Scope 3 benefits.
  • The current standard requires Scope 3 targets to cover 67 percent of value-chain emissions. Exclusions under new rules focus instead on specific categories of Scope 3 emissions: Only those that make up less than 5 percent of the company’s Scope 3 total can be omitted from a target. 

Emissions from products that a company lacks “practical influence” over can also be excluded from targets, provided the company demonstrates other efforts to decarbonize the relevant sector. Kennedy gave the example of a retailer that operates gas stations: The company can’t be expected to control fuel demand, but it could earn SBTi validation for its target by committing to installing EV charging facilities.

Long-term targets no longer required

Companies seeking SBTi validation under the current net-zero standard are required to pair a near-term target, often for 2030, with a long-term commitment to reach net zero by 2050 or earlier. The new standard eliminates the requirement for long-term goals in many cases and shifts the emphasis toward compliance with cycles of near-term five-year targets. (SBTi currently offers criteria companies can use to set near-term targets independently of net-zero goals; the new standard combines both types of target in a single net-zero framework.)

“Companies are often reluctant to make commitments that go 20 years into the future,” explained Kennedy. “That isn’t common business practice, which is why we’re not requiring it.”

To maintain SBTi validation, companies will commit instead to what the standard calls a “continuous cycle of target setting, implementation and ongoing progress reporting.” In practice, this will mean reporting annually on progress toward the target. At the end of each five-year cycle, that assessment must be backed by an assurer.

Companies that fail to meet targets at the end of five years can expect to retain SBTi validation, provided they can demonstrate they have used “every lever” within their control, have been transparent about decarbonization challenges and described how they will overcome those barriers. “You can’t have a binary approach to meeting targets in the real world of uncertainty and dependency,” said Kennedy.

No call on hourly matching for electricity 

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s proposal to change how companies account for emissions from electricity purchases — which fall under Scope 2 — is one of the most contested issues in corporate sustainability today. Almost all companies follow the protocol when estimating emissions, and the organization is considering tightening the rules so that they must match electricity use with local low-carbon supply on an hourly basis. 

Perhaps because the protocol is yet to make a final decision, the SBTi is charting a middle course, at least for now. Hourly matching is “probably a good thing” because of the price signal it creates for utilities, said Kennedy. “But the evidence base is really thin on that.” 

SBTi has issued a call for evidence on the topic. Meanwhile, it is adding reporting and voluntary recognition criteria to the updated net-zero standard:

  • Companies with “significant” annual electricity use — 10 gigawatt-hours or greater in any area of business — are required to report the proportion of that electricity that was matched with renewable sources on an hourly basis.
  • To earn recognition under the SBTi’s Scope 2 Hourly Matching program, companies must match at least 50 percent. The threshold increases to 75 percent in 2030 and to 90 percent in 2035.

Responsibility for ongoing emissions 

Hourly matching is not the only area where the SBTi is offering a new form of validation: Companies can also be recognized for going beyond direct decarbonization and tackling ongoing emissions using carbon credits and other support for climate solutions. 

The new Ongoing Emissions Responsibility recognition program spans three levels:

  • Engaged companies are those that purchase carbon credits equivalent to 1 percent of their total annual emissions or apply an internal carbon price to the same quantity of emissions and use the proceeds to support climate solutions.
  • Advanced businesses must cover 10 percent of emissions and, if using a carbon price approach, set it at least at $20 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e).
  • Leadership status goes to large companies that cover 100 percent of emissions with credits and apply an $80/tCO2e price to the same amount. (The bar is lower for smaller companies.)

After 2035, a related mandatory requirement will kick in: Companies must purchase carbon removal credits to cover 1 percent of ongoing emissions, with coverage rising linearly until it hits 100 percent in 2050 — or earlier, should the company opt to commit to reaching net zero before that date. 

What happens next

Companies with 2030 target dates should plan for their next cycle — 2030 to 2035 — using the standard that was released today. But those that have only committed to setting targets and have been working with Version 1 need not change course: The current standard will remain available until the end of 2027. 

SBTi is also working on additional resources that will flesh out the standard. A “Methods and Pathways” document containing technical details for target-setters was opened for comments today; companies have until July 31 to provide feedback. A final version of the document, together with other guidelines on how companies should prepare for target submission and validation, is due in the fourth quarter of this year.

That will be followed in the first quarter of 2027 by information on how to obtain assurance during end-of-cycle assessments and communicate claims about SBTi targets. Validation against the new standard will then begin in February 2027.

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