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On 17 June 2026, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) opened a 12-week public consultation on its draft ISO Net Zero Aligned Organizations Standard (ISO 14060). The standard defines expectations for the development and execution of organizational net-zero targets and strategies — adding an accounting architecture to support the implementation of other corporate net-zero standards, like the SBTi’s final Corporate Net-Zero Standard Version 2.0 (CNZS V2.0), which was released the week prior.
ISO’s 14060 draft is significant for several reasons.
First, it represents the first independently verifiable, auditable framework for organizational net-zero. With the institutional weight that ISO carries, its draft standard is sure to influence regulation, public procurement, and market expectations.
Second, its content reflects important alignment with other standards, honing focus and reinforcing clarity on what credible corporate net-zero action should look like. Notably, as with the SBTi CNZS V2.0, the role of carbon credits is front and center.
This blog provides an overview of the ISO draft, key comparisons between ISO’s draft and SBTi’s stance on carbon credits and the standards as a whole, and, finally, some thoughts on the overall impact of these standards on the carbon markets.
ISO 14060 draft: How it’s structured and how it works
ISO 14060 sets out a common set of requirements for how organizations should set, implement, and substantiate credible net-zero targets — covering everything from governance and GHG accounting to transition planning, target-setting, mitigation action, and the counterbalancing of residual emissions.
To make a public net-zero claim, organizations work through 10 clauses of substantive requirements — top management leadership and governance, establishing organizational boundaries, GHG quantification, transition planning, target- and pathway-setting, net-zero action, counterbalancing residual emissions, monitoring and adjustment, reporting, and validation and verification.
Then, they may make net-zero claims according to ISO’s four claims stages: Net Zero Aspiration, Net Zero Aligned Transition Plan, Net Zero Aligned Progress, and Net Zero Achievement.
Each stage carries its own minimum requirements, permitted wording, and maintenance window (for example, a Net Zero Aligned Transition Plan claim can be held for up to five years before an organization must show it is meeting interim targets to progress to the next stage). Transition plans covering the 10 substantive clauses must be publicly available and updated at least every five years.
On an organization’s path to net-zero, three types of targets based on and compared to a verifiable base year GHG inventory are to be set:
- Net-zero target, the long-term target to reach organizational net zero by a date “consistent with science-based net-zero pathway,” like, for example, SBTi CNZS V2.0;
- Interim GHG emissions targets, the overall emission goals, with the first to be set within five years of adopting the standards, and subsequent targets to be set at intervals of no more than 10 years;
- Interim GHG emission reduction targets, the specific amount of emissions to be reduced, aligned with the organization’s net zero pathway. Separate emission reduction targets are to be established for Scopes 1-3, with Scope 3 targets covering proportionally significant sources of Scope 3 emissions.
“Net zero action” is the implementation of the organization’s transition plan. It spans action for scaling low carbon solutions, including the purchase of environmental commodity certificates; action beyond organization-level targets, including climate finance portfolios and policy engagement; and preparing to counterbalance residual emissions ahead of net-zero, including setting carbon dioxide removals (CDR) milestones separate but in line with interim GHG targets no later than five years after setting targets.
In-depth insight:
Read this article for more information on EACs and ISO 14060
Read this article for more information on EACs and SBTi CNZ v2.0
Read this article for more information about EACs and their commercial realities
At net-zero, organizations must demonstrate that residual emissions are consistent with the selected sectoral pathway by meeting two conditions:
- when all GHG emissions from sources within the organizational boundary have been reduced to residual levels consistent with an eligible science-based net-zero pathway;
- when all residual emissions have been counterbalanced by an equivalent amount of durable carbon dioxide removal and storage.
The second point of the definition is key. The required equivalent amount of carbon dioxide removal and storage can be either removals within their organizational boundaries or carbon dioxide removal credits outside them, as long as they satisfy the quality criteria, making eligible carbon credits mandatory from net-zero onwards.
The role of carbon credits in ISO’s draft
Carbon credits are pervasive throughout ISO’s draft — used before, at, and beyond net-zero — though never counted towards an interim or net-zero emissions reduction target itself. They remain an expected component of net-zero strategies well before an organization reaches net zero, and eligible removals become mandatory to qualify for and maintain net-zero.
Ahead of net-zero, ISO establishes several pathways:
1. Remedial actions for missed targets, when an organization misses an interim Scope 1 budget or either of its Scope 2 or 3 interim GHG emissions reduction targets. Eligible carbon credits are one of the available options to mandatorily address excess emissions.
2. Climate finance portfolio, which is a mandatory contribution to global net-zero. While the inclusion of carbon credits in the portfolio is not mandatory, eligible carbon credits are one of the available options to include in the portfolio
3. Interim removals milestones, which are required as a preparatory measure ahead of an organization’s net-zero year. Eligible ex-post CDR credits and advance off-take agreements for both tech- and nature-based solutions are two viable instruments in a portfolio, with progress to be tracked and reported in parallel with GHG targets. The share of removals is expected to increase at each milestone.
4. High ambition activity, an optional pathway allowing organizations to use any type of eligible carbon credit to address historical emissions, on top of their required net-zero pathway (see Annex B).
How ISO 14060 and SBTi CNZ V2.0 compare
Regarding carbon credits, both standards include them as an expected action on a company’s path to net-zero, and both focus heavily on long-term removals. Neither ISO nor SBTi allows organizations to count carbon credits towards interim emission targets before net-zero.
Carbon credit comparison: SBTi CNZS V2.0 & ISO 14060
Beyond carbon credits, the two standards have some key differences. SBTi CNZS V2.0 tiers its requirements by company size and geography — the full rule set applies to Category A companies (large companies globally, plus qualifying medium-sized companies in high-income countries), while Category B companies (small companies, and medium-sized companies from lower-income countries) face a proportionate set of requirements with more flexibility.
ISO’s draft, by contrast, applies its full framework uniformly to any organization making a claim, with dedicated guidance for SMEs (Annex A) rather than a formally lighter set of requirements.
While the two diverge on the scope of application and flexibility, they strongly align on much of their core format. Both require a verifiable base-year GHG inventory, separate targets across Scopes 1, 2 and 3, a published transition plan reviewed at least every five years, and independent validation and verification to support any claim made. Both avoid rigid Scope 3 coverage thresholds in favor of significance-based tests: ISO’s magnitude-and-influence criteria for determining significant Scope 3 emissions mirror the logic behind SBTi’s new materiality threshold for its largest reporting companies.
Together, the parallels between the two send a clear and strong top-down signal to the market.
What’s the impact of ISO 14060 on the carbon market?
The ISO draft is open to public comment until 9 September 2026. While the final ISO standard is not expected until 2027, the draft’s contents and its alignment with SBTi lay the foundation for corporate action now.
1. Demand for eligible carbon credits will increase
Both standards align on the expected use of carbon credits throughout an organization’s journey to net zero and in maintaining that status once achieved. This establishes durable demand for high-integrity carbon credits now, as stakeholder expectations shift to treat their purchase as standard practice rather than the exception.
On the SBTi side alone, Sylvera modeling shows a near-170% increase in SBTi-driven carbon credit demand by 2030 under even moderate adoption of the new claims tiers, rising toward 1.1 billion tonnes by 2035 in a more bullish scenario. ISO’s draft surely compounds this signal by incorporating carbon credits into the expected journey to net zero through the mandatory climate finance portfolio, interim removals milestones, and remedial action for missed targets.
Moreover, both standards encourage organizations to act now on a best-effort basis, even with imperfect data. SBTi explicitly states it in its guidance, while ISO’s transition plan requirements allow proxy metrics when full GHG data isn’t available, and organizations that miss interim targets can retain their claim through defined remedial pathways rather than losing it outright — removing a potential deterrent to early action.
2. Nature-based solutions receive aligned, formal endorsement
Nature is included in both standards’ definitions of eligible carbon credits. SBTi’s V2.0 definition of verified mitigation outcomes includes the “protection, restoration, and enhancement of natural carbon sinks.” ISO’s draft guidance on building a removals portfolio explicitly names nature-based carbon dioxide removals as a viable alternative alongside technology-based removals, noting they tend to have lower delivery risk and a wide range of co-benefits for nature and people.
In a market where NBS has been a recurring source of uncertainty, this alignment between two major standards matters for both the market and climate impact. NBS credits are now firmly rooted in defensible corporate climate action, provided they meet the defined quality criteria—a welcome, coalescing endorsement for a category of credits that also supports the restoration of natural environments instrumental in mitigating climate change.
3. ISO names ratings agencies as a quality benchmark
In its quality criteria for carbon dioxide removals (clause 12.4.1), ISO explicitly names ratings agencies — alongside the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s Core Carbon Principles, the Article 6.4 (Paris Agreement) Supervisory Body, and the EU’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation — as one of the bodies organizations can look to for assessing whether a removal meets its durability, additionality, and credibility bar.
That callout sits alongside and reinforces SBTi’s own minimum integrity criteria, which require companies to conduct documented due diligence at the project level before a verified mitigation outcome counts toward OER or neutralization. Independent, project-level assessment — the kind of analysis Sylvera’s Ratings provide — is what underwrites a high-integrity purchase.
What to do now
SBTi and ISO are mutually reinforcing demand catalysts, doubling down on a clear message to increase the use of carbon credits today.
With demand expected to tick up dramatically well ahead of current market supply, buyers and investors should seek to secure access to eligible and high quality supply now, rather than wait for final details to be ironed out. This is especially true for removals: both nature- and technology-based CDR require ample lead time to scale delivery capacity, so early, staged investment is key to nurturing the supply base the market will need. Sylvera's Project Catalog and Ratings make that easier today, surfacing high-integrity projects and giving buyers and investors an independent view of quality before capital is committed.
For suppliers, the priority is different but no less pressing: meeting the quality requirements both standards converge on will determine whether a project's credits are attractive to this new wave of demand already taking shape. Sylvera's Ratings and Pre-Issuance assessments set out exactly what that bar looks like in practice, giving developers a clear, independent benchmark to build towards before buyers ask for it.
