SBTi Scope 3 requirements: emissions coverage, target setting and the 15 categories

Last updated September 2026. Four numbers decide almost every Scope 3 question a company brings to the SBTi: 40% is the threshold that makes a Scope 3 target mandatory, 67% is the share of Scope 3 your targets must cover, 5% is the most you may exclude from the inventory, and 5 to 10 years is the permitted target horizon. They come from the SBTi Corporate Near-Term Criteria version 5.3.1, in effect since April 14, 2026, which is what you submit under today.

A second document now sits alongside it. The Corporate Net-Zero Standard version 2.0 was released on June 11, 2026 with an effective date of February 1, 2027, and it replaces the 67% coverage test with a different rule entirely. Both are live facts, and which one applies to you depends on when you submit. This page sets out the current requirements first, then the ones arriving next, with the exact wording behind each.

Only if your relevant Scope 3 emissions are 40% or more of combined Scope 1, 2 and 3. Criterion C4 states that where Scope 3 clears that share, it shall be included in near-term science-based targets. Below 40% a Scope 3 target is optional. In practice almost every company clears it, because Scope 3 is typically 70% to 90% of a corporate footprint, so the 40% test excuses far fewer companies than they expect.

There is one group for whom the test does not apply at all. Companies involved in the sale or distribution of natural gas or other fossil fuels must set separate Scope 3 targets for the use of sold products regardless of the share those emissions represent. That is written into C4 as an unconditional requirement, and it catches fuel distributors and energy retailers whose own operational emissions look small.

The word doing the work in C4 is relevant. Relevance is not a judgment you make freely: it is assessed against the minimum boundary in Table 5.4 and the criteria in Table 6.1 of the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard. Our reference on the 15 Scope 3 categories sets out what falls inside each one.

At least 67%. Criterion C6 requires companies to set one or more emission reduction near-term targets, supplier or customer engagement targets, or a combination, that collectively cover at least 67% of total reported and excluded Scope 3 emissions, considering the minimum boundary of each category.

The phrase that matters is reported and excluded. The denominator is your whole Scope 3 inventory including the parts you left out, not just the parts you chose to report. A company that excludes a large downstream category and then sets targets over two thirds of what remains has not met C6, because the excluded emissions are still in the bottom of the fraction. This is the single most common structural mistake in a first submission, and it is only visible once you have a complete screening estimate of every category, including the ones you intend to drop.

Engagement targets count toward the 67%, which is the escape hatch for companies whose emissions sit with suppliers they cannot directly control. A supplier engagement target covering a large slice of category 1 can carry most of the coverage requirement on its own. What it cannot do is substitute for knowing the size of every category in the first place.

Not more than 5% of the total Scope 3 GHG inventory, under C5. The same criterion sets a separate 5% ceiling on combined Scope 1 and Scope 2, and the SBTi closes the obvious loophole in a footnote: total targeted Scope 1 and 2 emissions must be at least 95% of reported plus excluded Scope 1 and 2, which means you cannot exclude 5% from the inventory boundary and then exclude a further 5% from the target boundary. The two ceilings are not additive.

The SBTi is also explicit that size alone is not a reason to leave something out. Its position is that emissions perceived to be negligible are not a recognized rationale for not reporting them. An emission source you have not quantified cannot be shown to be under 5%, so the exclusion argument requires the estimate you were trying to avoid making. The practical route is a spend-based screening pass across every category, which is fast enough to run in days and precise enough to prove immateriality. The method sequence is set out on how to calculate Scope 3 emissions, and the documentation side on Scope 3 materiality assessment.

All relevant ones. Criterion C9 requires a Scope 3 inventory covering gross Scope 3 emissions for all relevant emissions sources, calculated in line with the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain Standard. SBTi does not publish a shortlist of mandatory categories, because relevance is company-specific and gets assessed against the GHG Protocol tables rather than against a fixed list.

Three specific rules override the general one, and each has caught companies out:

Well below 2°C, which is a lower bar than the one applied to your own operations. C18 requires near-term Scope 3 targets, whether they cover total required Scope 3 or individual categories, to align with methods consistent with keeping global temperature increase well below 2°C. C15 holds Scope 1 and 2 near-term targets to 1.5°C. The gap is deliberate, and it recognizes that a company controls its own boilers and electricity contracts in a way it does not control its suppliers.

The distinction disappears if you combine scopes. Under C20 a target that merges Scope 1, 2 and 3 into a single number must still deliver 1.5°C on the Scope 1 and 2 portion, so the easier Scope 3 ambition cannot be averaged across the whole footprint. Companies that model one blended reduction rate and submit it usually get sent back for this reason.

A base year no earlier than 2015, and a target year 5 to 10 years from the date of submission. C13 sets both, and adds that Scope 1 and Scope 2 targets must share a base year and that multi-year average base years are not accepted unless the relevant sector guidance says otherwise.

Scope 3 gets one piece of flexibility and one hard constraint. The flexibility is that Scope 3 targets are recommended, but not required, to use the same base year as Scope 1 and 2. The constraint sits immediately after it: base years across different Scope 3 targets must be the same. So you may set your Scope 3 baseline in a different year from your operational baseline, but you may not stagger your Scope 3 targets across several baselines to suit the data you happen to have for each category.

The 67% coverage test is replaced by a 5% significance test, and the flexible exclusion argument is replaced by a closed list. Version 2.0 of the Corporate Net-Zero Standard was released on June 11, 2026 with an effective date of February 1, 2027, and it consolidates and replaces both the earlier net-zero standard and the near-term criteria. Version 1 remains open for setting targets until the end of 2027, so there is a genuine overlap rather than a cliff.

Under CNZS-C14.1, near-term targets shall cover at least all Scope 3 categories that individually represent 5% or more of the company's Scope 3 emissions in categories 1 to 14, based on the physical GHG inventory. Category 15 sits outside that test. The practical effect is a shift from a single portfolio-level percentage you can satisfy in several ways to a category-by-category screen you either pass or fail per category, which raises the value of an accurate estimate for every category rather than just the big ones.

The exclusion list in C14.2 is worth reading closely, because it permits things the current criteria do not and forbids improvisation everywhere else. A company may exclude, regardless of whether the category is significant: cradle-to-gate emissions of second-hand goods in categories 1 and 2; category 3 where those emissions are already mitigated through energy reductions under Scope 1 or 2 targets, unless a sector standard requires otherwise; the whole of category 7, employee commuting; category 8 leased assets where the company has no operational control and no contractual or practical means to influence energy use; category 9 transport where it holds no direct means to influence fuel, route or mode; category 10 where downstream processing steps are unknown or there is no contractual relationship with the processor; and category 14 franchises operating independently under license or leasing space they do not control.

Employee commuting becoming an outright optional exclusion is the largest single change for office-based US companies, many of which spend disproportionate effort on commuting surveys today. Against that, C14.3 requires you to report for every excluded activity the condition relied on, why it applies to your circumstances, the excluded emissions in both absolute terms and as a percentage of categories 1 to 14, and what you intend to do about them. The exclusion is easier to claim and considerably harder to leave undocumented.

A third change sits in C15, which requires Scope 3 targets to use one of three eligible options rather than any defensible construction: an overarching absolute reduction target on a linear trajectory to a defined residual level, an overarching supplier or customer alignment target increasing the share of tier 1 counterparties in transition or net-zero aligned, or category and activity-specific targets. Where alignment targets use financial metrics, companies must set separate targets for upstream spend and downstream revenue.

No. C11 states that the use of carbon credits must not be counted as emission reductions toward progress against near-term science-based targets. Credits have two permitted roles: neutralizing residual emissions under the Corporate Net-Zero Standard, and financing additional climate mitigation beyond your science-based targets. Neither moves the number you report against a near-term Scope 3 target.

Avoided emissions are treated separately and equally firmly. C12 places them in a different accounting system from corporate inventories and rules that they do not count toward near-term science-based emission reduction targets. A product that displaces a more carbon-intensive alternative may be a real climate benefit and a good commercial story, but it is not a reduction in your Scope 3 inventory.

Not on ambition modeling, which is arithmetic once the inventory exists, but on the inventory underneath it. Every requirement on this page assumes you can produce a complete, gross, category-level Scope 3 figure with a documented method behind each line, no proxy years, and enough accuracy in the small categories to prove they are small. That is a bookkeeping problem before it is a climate problem.

The bulk of it is classification. Category 1 alone usually means assigning tens of thousands of accounts payable lines to a category and an emission factor, and that work has to be repeatable, because C13 forbids proxy data and C27 triggers recalculation at a 5% significance threshold whenever the business changes. Our carbon accounting software is built around that step: it reads the invoices and the AP export you already have, drafts a scope, category and factor for each line with a stated confidence, leaves the uncertain tail for a human, and keeps every reported tonne linked back to the source document. The boundary decisions, the materiality calls and the basis of preparation remain yours to make and document, and a tool that appears to make them for you has only hidden them.

If you are still deciding whether validation is worth the budget, the full published price list, by tier and organization type, is on SBTi validation fees. If you are choosing tooling, the capability checklist worth taking into a vendor call is in our comparison of carbon accounting software for SBTi target setting and on Scope 3 emissions software. Companies whose Scope 3 work is driven by a customer request or a statute rather than a target should start instead with Scope 3 emissions reporting requirements, and CDP responders should check how the same inventory scores against the CDP essential criteria, where a validated science-based target is one of two routes through the A List criterion EC-CC25.