A growing number of corporates are exploring terms and concepts that address the perceived limitations of neutrality, which can imply no net gain for the climate. The most common terms in this space include ‘carbon positive’, ‘carbon negative’ and ‘climate positive’. ‘Carbon positive’ and ‘carbon negative’ are used to indicate a net removal or reduction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is a source of potential confusion. ‘Carbon positive’ can be read as numerically positive emissions (bad for the climate); and, ‘carbon negative’ is limited because it defines a good action in the negative. To limit confusion, we refer to all concepts that seek to convey net gain with the generic term ‘climate positive’.
In 2022, we conducted our fourth annual study into the climate commitments of the Fortune Global 500, finding that only 1% of companies had climate positive targets (Climate Impact Partners, 2022, If Not Now, When?).
Many climate positive actions and targets lack the structural integrity of other actions such as CarbonNeutral® certification. Some have complex or ill-defined goals, and an accepted global definition of what constitutes climate positive is still not agreed.”
Our working definition of ‘climate positive’ is ‘a term indicating that an entity is taking or causing action beyond carbon neutrality by removing GHGs from the atmosphere or reducing emissions to the atmosphere such that the aggregated reductions and removals exceed the unabated emissions from the subject’.
The certification class we use for CarbonNeutral® certifications (Entity, Product, Activity) is also helpful here because some ‘climate positive’ targets apply to individual products not the whole business.
Climate Impact Partners’ research currently defines three main ‘climate positive’ archetypes for entities, products and activities to go beyond neutral greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
These are as follows:
Some businesses choose to focus on only one of the above archetypal methods, while others pick a range of actions to become positive. There is also variability as to how much the actions to become positive are integrated into the organisation’s wider sustainability plan.
The concept of net gain is attracting interest and with wider use is becoming better defined and understood. However, there is no working definition that - as yet - meets all the Principles that underpin The CarbonNeutral Protocol (see Introduction), especially the second principle of claims built on conservative estimation, best practice, transparency and continuous improvement.
For that reason, caution is advised in making public claims around climate positive.