Innovation Project of the Year: Frameworks and Standards

For new standards, labels, methodologies, data infrastructure or collaborative frameworks that improve how decarbonisation is measured, verified or coordinated.

The finalists

BSI

Creating the First Global Standard for Net Zero Transition Planning in Finance | ISO 32212

ISO 32212 is an international standard for net zero transition planning in financial institutions, developed under ISO with support from BSI. Where most existing initiatives concentrate on disclosure and commitments, this standard addresses the planning process itself, setting out the governance, systems and controls needed to embed transition planning into lending, investment and underwriting decisions, and covering climate adaptation alongside decarbonisation. Drafting engaged 59 experts from 13 national standards bodies and seven liaison organisations, generating more than 1,400 technical comments, and was completed in 23 months against the 30 to 36 months typical for standards of comparable complexity.

Measurabl

Free Solution: Open Data Infrastructure for Sustainable Real Estate

Measurabl has made the core functions of its real estate sustainability platform permanently free, on the basis that licensing costs had confined such software to large owners with dedicated teams while commercial property accounts for close to 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions. The free tier covers benchmarking, Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions calculation, carbon, water and waste tracking, data quality management and certification tracking, and synchronises in both directions with ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. Within four weeks of launch it covered more than 11,000 buildings; that has since grown to over 21,200 buildings across 44 countries.

Sustainable Energy First

Sustainable Energy Consortium (SEC)

The Sustainable Energy Consortium aggregates more than 100 UK renewable generators and a group of corporate buyers into a single portfolio-to-portfolio supply arrangement. It sits between green tariffs backed by unbundled REGO certificates, which face growing scrutiny over credibility, and corporate power purchase agreements, which demand large volumes, long commitments and substantial legal resource. Generation is matched to consumption every half-hour and supplied at a fixed price. The consortium supports around 245GWh of renewable generation a year, enabling participating organisations to cut over 41,000 tonnes of CO2e annually through market-based Scope 2 reductions.

The Change Climate Project

The Climate Label

The Climate Label is a certification scheme requiring companies to pay an internal carbon fee rather than simply set a reduction target, on the basis that fewer than one in ten of the 10,000-plus companies with climate pledges are meeting them. Certified firms commit $15m of funding to verified climate solutions for every million tonnes they emit, creating a dedicated transition budget they can spend inside or beyond their own value chain. In its first year the scheme verified 523 funded projects, covering 905,469 tonnes of emissions, and mobilised more than $22m in private-sector funding.