FLAG Targets and New Emissions Accounting Categories for Sustainable Organizations

FLAG Targets and New Emissions Accounting Categories for Sustainable Organizations

Introduction:

In the quest for sustainability, many organizations are adopting FLAG (Future-Proofing, Leadership, Adaptability, Governance) targets, which bring new categories of emissions accounting into focus. These include emissions from land use change (LUC), emissions from land management, and emission sinks, commonly known as carbon removals.

However, calculating FLAG emissions comes with its own set of challenges, requiring SBTi-committers (participants in the Science Based Targets initiative) to address them effectively:

 Enumerate the information required for land management, LUC and removals

 Possess historical records for instances involving a preceding base year

 Handle the issue of challenging calculation and reduction of scope 3 flagged emissions, even for non-flag targets

FLAG and non-FLAG targets necessitate separate tracking and reporting. Therefore, any removals related to FLAG targets, particularly biogenic removals, cannot be utilized to offset non-FLAG emissions. To facilitate this, SBTi has devised two distinct pathways for setting FLAG targets