The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), the world’s most influential corporate climate watchdog, has quietly eased the rules on clean energy, offering relief to gas fuelled data centres.
The change in question sits buried in SBTi’s second consultation draft of its revised Corporate Net-Zero Standard, published in November 2025. The updated draft references “low-carbon” electricity and energy, rather than “zero-emissions” or “zero-carbon” sources, as was the case in the first draft. To a layperson, the distinction sounds arcane. To a data centre operator trying to justify a gas turbine powering an AI training cluster, it is the difference between a valid net-zero claim and a potential accusation of greenwashing.
The backdrop is not hard to understand. The AI infrastructure boom has arrived faster than the clean power grid can support it. Hyperscalers and colocation operators are signing power contracts for facilities that will draw hundreds of megawatts, and in the near term, a substantial portion of that power is coming from natural gas.
Where renewables and grid access are limited, many operators are deploying natural gas-based production today while exploring small modular reactors for future low-carbon baseload reliability. The SBTi’s original “zero-carbon” framing threatened to place a large portion of that capacity outside the boundaries of any credible net-zero claim.
“The first draft created a real problem for operators who are under enormous pressure to build capacity quickly,” says one senior sustainability director at a European data centre group, who asked not to be named because their company is mid-way through the SBTi validation process.
“You cannot always be fully renewable at the volumes of power we’re talking about. The ‘low-carbon’ framing gives us room to act responsibly without pretending we’ve solved a problem that literally no one has solved yet.”
A standard under pressure from all sides
The SBTi has been navigating choppy waters for well over a year. The overhaul of its flagship Corporate Net-Zero Standard was delayed in 2024 following controversy over the organisation’s stance on the use of environmental attribute certificates, such as carbon credits, to make emissions reduction claims. The revision process has drawn more than 850 stakeholders into consultation, and more than 320 companies have pilot-tested the new net-zero methodology.
But the evolution of the standard has not pleased everyone equally. Separately from the “low-carbon” shift, in late April 2026, the SBTi updated its Absolute Contraction Approach (the core methodology underpinning near-term emissions reduction targets) in a move that effectively made the bar lower for companies setting fresh targets. Under the old rules, a reduction of around 42 per cent in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 was required. That has now fallen to 21 per cent for some companies, according to sustainability consultants who have assessed the impact of the new rules. Existing targets are not retrospectively updated, so those companies on a much steeper trajectory understandably feel there’s no longer a fair playing field.
What “low-carbon” actually permits
The definitional shift matters at a granular technical level. The primary target method for Scope 2 is now an alignment target for low-carbon electricity, defined as below 0.024 kg CO₂ per kWh, replacing the previous “zero-carbon” framing. That threshold is tight enough to exclude average grid power in most markets, but broad enough to accommodate natural gas generation paired with carbon capture and storage, certain configurations of hydrogen blending, and high-efficiency combined-cycle gas turbines in regions with a cleaner grid mix.
For data centre operators, the practical implications run deep. The question is no longer whether gas is categorically excluded from a net-zero pathway; it is now whether the emissions intensity of any given gas-powered installation falls within the threshold. These different frameworks strongly influence whether natural gas with CCS, nuclear, geothermal, or battery-backed renewables are considered optimal for a site, and whether load flexibility has carbon value.
The SBTi’s revised Scope 2 framework is also bringing in new rigour on the purchasing side. From 2030, the largest consumers (those using 10 gigawatt-hours or more annually) will need to start matching electricity use on an hourly basis. That requirement, known in the industry as 24/7 carbon-free energy matching, goes substantially beyond the annual renewable energy certificates that most companies currently rely on. Google and Microsoft have pioneered hourly matching, but they remain outliers. For most of the sector, it represents a significant operational and procurement challenge.
“Hourly matching is the right direction,” says one energy procurement lead at a global colocation provider, speaking privately. “But the infrastructure to deliver it (the grid sensors, the dynamic contracts, the reporting systems) simply doesn’t exist at scale in most markets. We’re being asked to run before the electricity system has learned to walk.”
The credibility problem that hasn’t gone away
Independent climate researchers argue that changes to the SBTi standard have not resolved core concerns about the credibility of tech sector sustainability claims, with rising emissions and inconsistent accounting creating confusion.
As data centre emissions are set to triple by 2030, especially due to AI expansion, a more lenient standard on electricity and emissions targets appears misaligned with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal.
While the SBTi insists its long-term ambition is unchanged, critics question whether near-term flexibility will lead to genuine emissions reductions or merely delay meaningful action, leaving the sector’s climate legacy in doubt.
The era of climate pledges is fading and the era of climate delivery has begun. For those now operating under a more permissive set of rules, the task is to make sure the delivery actually follows.
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