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The Standards Are Moving. Your Net-Zero Plan Should Be Built to Follow

Avon Energy Partners · 4 August 2026 · 6 min read

2026 is shaping up to be the year the rulebook changes. The GHG Protocol, ISO and the SBTi are all revising foundational methodologies at once. Businesses that treat carbon accounting as a fixed exercise are the ones most exposed to rework, failed claims and reputational risk. Here's how to build a programme that bends without breaking.

For most of the last decade, corporate climate reporting could be treated as a compliance exercise. Pick a boundary, buy some emission factors and publish a number. That era is ending.

Several of the core standards underpinning carbon footprints and net zero targets are being revised at the same time. The direction of travel is clear: more granularity, more scrutiny and less tolerance for estimates dressed up as data.

That matters most in food and agriculture, where emissions are difficult to measure, supply chains are long and climate change is already affecting cost and availability.

If you lead sustainability or procurement, the question is no longer what is our footprint? It's will our footprint, and the decisions we've built on it, still stand up after the next standards update?

What's actually changing in 2026

The GHG Protocol, the accounting framework most organisations rely on, is revising its update timelines and strengthening its partnership with ISO. The signal is clear. This isn't a light refresh. It's a move towards tighter, more internationally aligned methodologies.

Its proposed Scope 2 overhaul illustrates the point perfectly. Initial proposals around hourly, location-specific electricity matching received significant pushback and are now being reworked. Even the direction of travel can change halfway through the process.

For food businesses, the bigger story is the Science Based Targets initiative reopening its Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) Standard for consultation.

FLAG governs how land-based emissions and removals are accounted for, arguably the most significant and most debated part of a food company's footprint. Any revision could influence how targets are set, how removals are treated and ultimately what counts as credible progress.

The takeaway isn't to wait until everything settles down.

It's to assume methodological change is becoming the norm and build data systems that can evolve alongside it.

Why credibility now depends on primary data

These revisions also arrive alongside a growing body of evidence questioning whether corporate net zero commitments are delivering the impact they promise.

A recent Nature Sustainability Perspective argues that while net zero pledges have become commonplace, many lack the scientific foundations needed to demonstrate credibility. The authors call for a far more robust framework that connects commitments with genuine emissions reductions.

At the same time, the Advertising Standards Authority has updated its guidance following a series of rulings against environmental claims, tightening expectations around what organisations can communicate publicly.

Together, these developments point to the same conclusion.

As standards become more demanding and claims face greater scrutiny, data quality becomes the limiting factor.

Spend-based estimates and industry-average emission factors have helped businesses get started, but they're increasingly difficult to defend. Primary data collected directly from suppliers and production processes is quickly becoming the standard for organisations that want confidence in both their reporting and their claims.

Climate has already become a sourcing problem

There's another reason this matters, and it's nothing to do with reporting.

For food businesses, climate risk is increasingly becoming a sourcing and commercial issue.

Research published in Environmental Research Letters shows that concurrent heatwaves across major wheat-producing regions significantly reduce both production and exports, particularly in rainfed systems. The result is disruption that ripples through global supply chains and affects ingredient availability and cost.

This is the "multi-breadbasket failure" scenario in practice. It isn't a distant 2050 risk. It's already influencing markets today.

You can already see the effects in company results. Tyson Foods continues to report pressure from cattle shortages, while cocoa price volatility has forced confectionery manufacturers into significant price increases that are impacting sales volumes.

The interesting point is that the same data helping you understand your carbon hotspots also tells you where your sourcing risk sits.

Increasingly, carbon data and supply chain resilience are built from the same information.

What good looks like

The organisations that will navigate this transition best are doing a few simple things well.

  • Measure before you reduce, and prioritise primary data. Focus on supplier-specific product carbon footprints for your highest-impact ingredients instead of relying entirely on generic averages.
  • Design for change. Separate activity data from emission factors, document methodologies and version your calculations so future updates require recalculation rather than rebuilding everything from scratch.
  • Treat targets as delivery plans, not marketing statements. A target is only valuable if it's supported by a credible pathway to achieve it.
  • Use your data more than once. The same information should support both decarbonisation decisions and procurement strategy.

The takeaway

Net zero isn't something you calculate once and forget.

It's a process of continuous improvement, supported by standards that are continually evolving as well.

The organisations that will succeed won't necessarily have the most precise footprint today. They'll have the data foundations that can adapt as methodologies evolve, withstand increasing scrutiny and help make better commercial decisions at the same time.

Build for a moving target, and you'll end up with something far more valuable than a compliant carbon footprint. You'll build a more resilient business.

Sources

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