Our product helps customers cut emissions. Can that count toward our SBTi target?

No. C12 of the SBTi Corporate Near-Term Criteria V5.3.1 says avoided emissions sit in a separate accounting system from corporate inventories and do not count toward near-term targets. C11 says the same for carbon credits. Your target is judged on your own Scope 1, 2 and 3.

What does count

If your product uses energy, its use-phase emissions sit in your Scope 3 category 11, use of sold products. Selling a more efficient model lowers that figure for the same number of units, and that drop is a real change in your inventory. What you cannot do is subtract the gap between your product and a competitor's or an older design.

Where avoided emissions can go

• In a separate statement, next to the inventory, never netted from it.
• With the comparison stated: what product, what use pattern, what grid factor.
• In sales material, worded as an estimate for the customer, not as your reduction.

Under the Net-Zero Standard V2.0

V2.0, which applies from 1 February 2027, adds a voluntary recognition for climate action beyond the value chain. Footnote 64 to C41 says product-level avoided emissions from the use of sold products are not eligible for it either.

Example: an efficient pump

• 10,000 pumps sold, 900 kWh a year each, 10-year life, 0.675 kg CO2 per kWh
• Category 11: 10,000 x 900 x 10 x 0.675 / 1,000 = 60,750 t CO2, which goes in the inventory
• Old model at 1,100 kWh a year: 10,000 x 1,100 x 10 x 0.675 / 1,000 = 74,250 t
• Gap of 13,500 t: avoided emissions, reported separately, never subtracted
• If last year you sold 10,000 old pumps and this year 10,000 new ones, category 11 falls from 74,250 t to 60,750 t, and that fall counts

Example company. One grid factor (CEA, FY 2025-26) is used for all ten years for simplicity; real use-phase estimates follow the method you choose for category 11.

What Senseible does here

Senseible builds your own Scope 1 and 2 from bills and invoices and keeps Scope 3 purchase lines in a separate supplier evidence trail. It does not count avoided emissions as reductions. It does not set, submit or validate SBTi targets; SBTi Services validates them.

• How to calculate avoided emissions
• Can carbon credits count toward SBTi?
• What is Scope 4?
• Scope 3 supplier evidence

Sources: SBTi, Corporate Near-Term Criteria V5.3.1 (final, April 2026, in effect from 14 April 2026): C11, C12, SBTi, Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0, Criteria (final, June 2026): C41 and footnote 64, GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard: category 11, CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, version 22.0

Last reviewed 2026-11-01.