← Fortune Climate 500
Methodology
Version 2026.07 · dataset built 2026-07-11.
This page is rendered directly from the scoring code (pipeline/climate/metrics/methodology.py) —
the published methodology and the computed numbers cannot drift apart.
Principles
- No fabrication: every datum carries a source, URL, and retrieval date; extracted values carry a page number and verbatim quote from the company's own report. Missing data is displayed as missing — never estimated, never defaulted.
- Three independent axes (Ambition, Progress, Transparency), following the structure of the CA100+ Net Zero Benchmark, the New Climate Institute CCRM, and TPI's Management Quality / Carbon Performance split. Axes are never collapsed in the neutral data layer.
- The letter grade is editorial. It applies this site's published weights (below) to the axes and is always labeled as such.
Editorial grade
| Axis | Weight |
|---|
| Ambition | 30% |
| Progress | 45% |
| Transparency | 25% |
| Composite ≥ | Grade |
|---|
| 85 | A |
| 70 | B |
| 55 | C |
| 40 | D |
| 0 | F |
Companies with fewer than two scoreable axes get no grade ("insufficient data") rather than a default.
Ambition (100 pts)
| Component | Points |
|---|
has_target | 15 |
covers_s1_s2 | 15 |
covers_s3 | 15 |
net_zero_by_2050 | 15 |
interim_before_2035 | 15 |
sbti_validated | 25 |
Progress (100 pts)
| Component | Points |
|---|
gross_trend | 40 |
on_track | 40 |
independent_consistency | 20 |
- Gross emissions only. Offsets, credits, and removals never count toward progress (Probst et al. 2024 find under 16% of offsets deliver claimed reductions). They are shown separately.
- Scope 2: location-based is primary; the market−location wedge is displayed where both are disclosed (Bjørn et al. 2022, Nature Climate Change).
- On-track convention: Linear interpolation from (recalculated) base year to target year against the company's own target (SBTi absolute-contraction logic). Sector-pathway (SDA/TPI) alignment is not yet implemented — planned for a later version. A gap up to 5.0% above the path still counts as on track.
- Independent cross-check: EPA GHGRP facility roll-ups and Climate TRACE asset attributions flag order-of-magnitude inconsistencies (boundaries differ; a 3× band is tolerated).
Transparency (100 pts)
| Component | Points |
|---|
scope_disclosure | 25 |
assurance | 20 |
restatement_disclosed | 10 |
cheap_talk | 20 |
lineage_clean | 25 |
- Assurance: none 0 / limited 12 / reasonable 20 points.
- Cheap-talk index (Bingler, Kraus, Leippold & Webersinke): share of climate commitment language that is non-specific, measured with ClimateBERT classifiers over the company's own report. Transparency input only — never a progress signal.
- Restatements: base-year restatements above 5% (GHG Protocol ch. 5) must be disclosed.
Target lineage
Jiang, Kim & Lu (2025, Nature Climate Change) found roughly a third of corporate 2020 targets disappeared without acknowledgment. Every target is tracked across report years by (target year, scopes):
| State | Meaning |
|---|
active_promoted | present, no contrary signals |
active_quiet | presented in the report while SBTi lists the commitment as removed |
weakened | reduction % lowered or target year slipped between reports |
removed_unacknowledged | present in an earlier report, gone without acknowledgment |
Extraction accuracy
| Metric | Value |
|---|
| Companies hand-verified (gold set) | 3 |
| Emissions precision | 1.0 |
| Emissions recall | 1.0 |
| Targets precision | 0.633 |
| Targets recall | 1.0 |
Report-extracted numbers are produced by a constrained LLM pipeline (fixed schema, page-anchored quotes, verbatim-quote verification, registry cross-checks) and audited against a hand-verified gold set. The numbers above are that audit.
Sources & vintages
Climate TRACE data is CC BY 4.0. SBTi, CA100+, and EPA GHGRP data are used per their public terms with attribution. Company report excerpts are quoted under fair use for review purposes.
Known limitations
- Sector-pathway (SDA/TPI) alignment is not yet implemented; on-track math uses the company's own target linearly.
- GHGRP covers US facilities only; multinational totals legitimately exceed it.
- Scope 3 is assessed on coverage and method, not point precision (reported category totals are not comparable across companies).
- Companies without an extracted sustainability report are scored on registry basis (SBTi, Net Zero Tracker, CDP via Climate Data Utility, EPA GHGRP): only what those registries can attest earns points, report-only signals (assurance, cheap-talk, restatements, on-track) score zero and are listed as missing. Registry-basis grades are floors, not estimates, and are labeled as such.