Carbon Performance assessment of paper producers: methodology note

Abstract

TPI’s Carbon Performance assessment is based on the Sectoral Decarbonization Approach (SDA). The SDA translates greenhouse gas emissions targets made at the international level (e.g. under the Paris Agreement to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) into appropriate benchmarks, against which the performance of individual companies can be compared.3 The SDA is built on the principle of recognising that different sectors of the economy (e.g. oil and gas production, electricity generation and automobile manufacturing) face different challenges arising from the low-carbon transition, including where emissions are concentrated in the value chain, and how costly it is to reduce emissions. Other approaches to translating international emissions targets into company benchmarks have applied the same decarbonization pathway to all sectors, regardless of these differences. Therefore the SDA takes a sector-by-sector approach, comparing companies within each sector against each other and against sector-specific benchmarks, which establish the performance of an average company that is aligned with international emissions targets.