Is there a role for carbon neutrality in 2026?

Carbon neutrality has something of a credibility problem. For some, the term has come to represent a pragmatic way for businesses to take responsibility for the emissions they cannot yet eliminate. For others, it has become shorthand for buying carbon credits instead of decarbonising.

These different interpretations exist because businesses have applied wide ranging and often loose interpretations of ‘carbon neutral’ to their use of the term in their green claims – most often as a clumsily applied compensation claim. But the emergence of ‘ongoing emissions responsibility’ (OER) in SBTi V2 and the climate finance contribution element of ISO 14060 (net-zero) both give us food for thought as we consider what role carbon neutrality can play.

In this article I argue that that role is limited to adhering to a high credibility compliance standard – the one provided by ISO. Under this credible carbon neutrality framework, businesses should be made more accountable for their ongoing emissions, not less – all while moving along their trajectory towards net zero.

How can carbon neutrality be credible?

We all agree that net zero is the ultimate destination – but the road to get there is going to be a long one for every business. 

Retrieving data from the SBTi Target Dashboard, I found that the mean net zero target year for companies with SBTi net zero targets is 2047 (the mode and median are both 2050, since two-thirds of companies set their net zero years as 2050 – the latest the SBTi allows). Whilst setting a net zero target is simple enough, a clear view is not the same as a short distance, and the 25 years between now and net zero will mean continued, ongoing emissions for all these companies.

That is why both the SBTi and (draft) ISO net zero standards incorporate mechanisms for addressing ongoing emissions with climate finance whilst on the road to net zero. Carbon neutrality can be one flavour of this: because it is a mechanism for taking responsibility for ongoing emissions, whilst you are working to reduce them.

Carbon neutrality only works if embedded in a net zero strategy 

Carbon neutrality has to sit alongside a credible transition plan, addressing the emissions that remain while that plan is being executed. Used instead as a substitute for reduction, it just delays the transition it is ostensibly supposed to support – taking valuable budget out of direct decarbonisation and sending it outside the business instead.

Buying credits to offset emissions you could otherwise have cut – whilst making no effort to reduce those emissions – is the opposite of ‘taking responsibility’, and it is rightfully what the market has come to reject. This is especially true if the credits used to make the claim are low quality. 

At the same time, consistently businesses tell us that there is no comparable claim that they can make that their customers and clients recognise as clearly as ‘carbon neutral’. Unfortunately, however more appropriate or accurate it is, saying that ‘we have achieved Advanced tier recognition under the SBTi’s Ongoing Emissions Responsibility framework’ isn’t going to displace a simple claim like ‘carbon neutral’ in the minds of customers any time soon.

What a credible carbon neutrality framework has to do

So, if carbon neutrality is going to contribute to the transition to net zero, it has to incentivise decarbonisation rather than offer an escape from it. A credible carbon neutrality scheme is therefore going to have to:

• Prioritise emissions reduction.

• Be transition oriented.

• Require demonstration of progress on emissions reduction.

• Take a value chain perspective, recognising that meaningful corporate Decarbonisation extends beyond operational emissions.

• Provide transparency and credibility, making clear what carbon neutrality means (and doesn’t mean) and how it has been achieved.

• Provide guardrails for use of carbon credits, without making them the centre of the strategy.

Why the ISO carbon neutrality standard fits these criteria

The ISO carbon neutrality standard is built around this set of principles, which is why becoming carbon neutral under a rigorous standard like ISO 14068 can function as a legitimate component of corporate climate action: not as a substitute for the transition to net zero, but as a structured and transparent way of taking responsibility for emissions while that transition is underway.

The recent (September 2026) update to ISO 14068 makes this even clearer: it is a standard which nests within the (ISO 14060) net zero standard and is supplemental to (not detracting from) that wider net zero strategy.

So, there is a significant risk for businesses of calling themselves ‘carbon neutral’ under other non ISO standards (or no standard at all) because doing so does not provide the same level of credibility, rigour or transparency that the ISO standard does. Having reviewed a number of proprietary ‘carbon neutrality’ standards over the years, we have seen all manner of dubious logics constructed to incentivise the fastest route to the client making claim – usually where the company that maintains the standard has a financial interest in selling the (often low-quality, to make matters worse) credits that will fulfil the claim. 

So, we have come to conclude that the credible route to calling oneself ‘carbon neutral’ is the ISO route only – and nesting it under ISO 14060 or SBTi net zero targets.  

 Cases when carbon neutrality may not be the answer

I have heard arguments that meeting the spirit of carbon neutrality ought to include a ‘removals only’ stipulation for the ongoing emissions being covered. This comes down to the propriety of using the word ‘neutral’ if the emissions haven’t been ‘neutralised’ with removals. I understand this critique and I don’t disagree with it per se – though I don’t see this as necessary in particular. 

The relevant factor is whether the claim being made is considered a compensatory one or a contributory one. Under both (the draft) ISO 14060 and the SBTi V2, these are contributory claims. The particular usefulness of OER thinking in my view is that it allows a business to separate out its (contributory) climate funding claims to be in a totally separate category to its direct reduction claims. Carbon neutrality (as defined by compliance with ISO 14068) is useful insofar as it provides structure, clarity, direction and specificity to a particular kind of contribution claim.

Of course, it still uses the language of older formulations of compensatory claims (the term ‘carbon neutral’ itself) which is – for the reasons above – neither wholly justified nor wholly unjustified. But what it does do is lend credibility and structure to the term by providing a full ISO standard a business can certify against – one which nests directly under the ultimate goal of net zero. The point is that the credibility of making the claim comes from certification against a comprehensive, high credibility international standard rather than the self-judged behaviour of the business against its emissions measurement and offsetting.

For that reason, I absolutely do see a role for carbon neutrality in 2026 – but only when certified against a standard, and that standard being ISO 14068.

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