Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 30 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/iso-sbti-and-the-lcaw-verdict-on-corporate-net-zero-with-kay

TL;DR

  • ISO Net Zero draft + SBTi v2 launched same day at London Climate Action Week 2026; Axelsson worked on both, argues they’re complementary not competing.
  • Big CDR concern: SBTi doesn’t require removals purchases before 2035 — Axelsson calls this a cost-based decision, not a science-based one.
  • ISO does require 5-year removals milestones, which is stricter on near-term CDR procurement than SBTi. Useful distinction that hasn’t been widely surfaced.
  • Alleged SBTi communication flaw: merged short + long-term standards may let companies claim “net zero aligned” with only a short-term target. Worth watching.
  • Next fight: governance of commodity certificates (green steel, SAF, cement) — mass-balance and additionality risks echoing prior voluntary market failures.

Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme host Kaya Axelsson of Oxford Net Zero one week after the simultaneous 22 June launch of the ISO Net Zero draft standard and SBTi Corporate Net Zero Standard v2. Axelsson worked inside both processes for three years, and the episode is essentially her post-mortem: what converged, what didn’t, and where the corporate demand signal for durable removals actually lands.

The load-bearing claim for CDR practitioners: SBTi v2 does not require removals procurement before 2035, while the ISO draft requires five-year removals milestones from target-setting onward. Axelsson is blunt that SBTi’s timeline is “a cost-based decision rather than a science-based decision” — driven by fear of scaring companies off with removals prices rather than by any modeling of the removals gap. Her counter is the standard buyer-side argument: spreading procurement across time via offtakes is how you avoid the 2045 price shock, and delaying demand delays the scale-up the standard itself relies on. She name-checks the Höglund/Wig “create the world your net zero target relies on” framing. If you’re selling durable CDR, ISO-aligned companies are now a materially more interesting near-term buyer segment than SBTi-aligned ones.

The second useful thread is a claims-integrity concern. By merging its short-term and long-term standards into one document, SBTi has — in Axelsson’s reading — created a path where a company validated on short-term targets alone could market itself as net zero aligned without ever committing to a long-term neutralization plan. She wants SBTi to clarify that the “net zero” label requires a long-term target with a residual-emissions neutralization plan. This is a fixable communications problem, but until it’s fixed it undermines the durable-removals demand thesis that net zero standards are supposed to underwrite. She also flags the next governance battleground: commodity certificates for green steel, SAF, cement — where mass-balance accounting could reproduce the additionality problems that hollowed out earlier voluntary markets.

For context on how this lands in the buyer market, see prior CDR.fyi coverage of SBTi demand-side dynamics and the ongoing Frontier/Stripe offtake structures that already assume pre-2035 procurement. Robert Höglund has been on this podcast previously making the same 2035-is-too-late argument Axelsson echoes here. The ISO draft is in a 12-week public consultation via national standards bodies — the removals section is one place practitioner comment could actually move text.

Worth the 30 minutes if you’re a supplier trying to map which standard produces near-term offtake demand, or a policy person tracking how ISO becomes a green-procurement and trade instrument.