A target is one number. The path to it is the whole argument.
A company says it will cut emissions by some percentage by some year. That sentence fixes one point in the future and says nothing about the line that reaches it. Two companies can promise the same number for the same year and put very different amounts of carbon into the atmosphere getting there, because the atmosphere responds to the area under the path and not to its endpoint. This instrument draws the path, measures where you actually are against it, and prints the one figure that delay quietly changes: what the annual cut has to be from here.
01The pathway
Enter a base year and what you emitted in it, the year the target lands, and the annual rate. The default rate is the one the Science Based Targets initiative sets as the floor for a near term Scope 1 and 2 target aligned with 1.5°C, and it is a default rather than a rule: the note under section four says what it does and does not cover.
02Linear against compounding
Two ways of saying the same rate out loud. A linear path removes a fixed share of the base year every year, so the cut is the same size each time. A compounding path removes a fixed share of last year, so the cut gets smaller every year while the headline percentage stays the same. They are not the same commitment, and the gap between them is wider than the wording suggests. This panel runs both at the rate above and prints the difference.
03Where you actually are
Enter what you emitted in the years since the base year. Blank years are left blank rather than interpolated. Below the table is the figure that matters once you have slipped, and the one an endpoint target hides: the annual cut required from today's level to still land on the target year.
04Method, and what this cannot tell you
The arithmetic, written out
- Absolute contraction, a straight line from the base yearE(t) = E₀ · (1 − r · (t − t₀))
- Compounding, the same headline rate applied to last yearE(t) = E₀ · (1 − r)^(t − t₀)
- Intensity convergence, a straight line under the intensityE(t) = I₀ · (1 − r · (t − t₀)) · A(t)
- Cumulative budget, the area under the path rather than its endpoint∫ E(t) dt
- Required rate from here, to still land on the targetr′ = (E_now − E_target) ÷ (E_now · (t_target − t_now))
The one constant on this page
Science Based Targets initiative, Absolute Contraction Approach. The binding text is the SBTi Corporate Near-Term Criteria, version 5.3.1, April 2026 sciencebasedtargets.org checked 2026 08 25
The rate is a floor for a base year of 2020, and the criteria apply an upward adjustment to base years after it. This page does not make that adjustment. It also does not apply the separate and lower rate the criteria set for Scope 3. Treat 4.2 per cent as the default it is, replace it with the rate your own target was validated at, and read the criteria rather than this page.
What this page does not know
- Whether your target was ever validated, by anyone
- What is inside your inventory, which boundary it was drawn on, or whether the base year has been recalculated since
- Whether the reduction is real or the result of divesting, reclassifying or buying something
- Anything about removals, offsets or neutralisation, none of which appear anywhere in this arithmetic
- Whether a linear path is the right shape for your sector, which is a question the sectoral guidance answers and this page does not
Method behind it: the target path case study