Guiding Principles
The AIM Platform Guiding Principles serve as the North Star throughout the development of standards and guidance
The AIM Platform Guiding Principles outline the core principles that underpin AIM’s work in developing the AIM Platform Standard and Guidance. AIM conducted a public stakeholder consultation from November to December 2023 on the draft guiding principles, after which the Governing Committee revised and adopted the final version.
While these principles provide valuable insight, the Governing Committee emphasizes that they do not address all questions regarding the final Standard and Guidance. To assist with understanding, the Governing Committee would like to offer a few additional notes upfront:
1) The term “intervention” is used to refer to any action taken by a company to address its scope 3 emissions, i.e., indirect emissions from its value chain, including, for example, monetary support for a discrete decarbonization project and the purchase of an environmental attribute certificate, regardless of the accounting approach implicated (i.e. project based or inventory accounting).
2) The concept of “within the value chain[1]” is used broadly to refer to the type of good or service contained in a company’s scope 3 GHG inventory, not necessarily to a specific value chain partner (e.g. supplier). Further clarity on when an intervention could be considered “within the value chain” will be provided in subsequent AIM Platform outputs.
The AIM Platform Standard and Guidance is being developed with the goal of driving value chain interventions that:
[1] Taking place “within the value chain” is expected to be the central requirement but not the only requirement that must be met in order for an intervention to count towards climate targets, according to the AIM Platform Standard and Guidance. Additional requirements will be elaborated.
[2] Including but not limited to targets validated under the Science Based Targets initiative.
[3] The term “market-based method” used here refers to the decoupling of a physical good or service from its environmental attributes to enable them to be purchased or acquired and accounted for separately. It does not necessarily indicate the trading of such units on an open market or exchange.
[4] A public GHG emissions report includes but is not limited to inventory emissions. The required and optional information for such a report is contained within Chapter 11.1 and 11.2, respectively, of the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard.
[5] While use of inventory accounting approaches aligns with existing guidance, the AIM Platform Governing Committee is exploring how and when project-based methods may be appropriate, and the implications of using such approaches on reporting results in relation to achievement of or progress towards a climate target.