The Science Based Targets initiative's Corporate Net-Zero Standard Version 2.0, finalized June 11, 2026, did more than separate Scope 1 and Scope 2 targets. It rewrote the rulebook for the instruments that back the procurement side of a Scope 2 claim — the Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs), including renewable energy certificates (RECs), that companies buy to substantiate their clean-electricity use.
Under V2.0, a certificate's mere existence is no longer enough. To count toward a procurement-based Scope 2 target, instruments must satisfy a tightened set of quality criteria that energy-market participants are summarizing as "near, now, new." The change creates clear winners and losers in the procurement market — and buyers in the PJM region are positioned to win, provided they procure deliberately and understand which instruments actually qualify.
"Near, now, new" — defined
Each element of the new criteria closes a loophole the previous standard left open.
Near — geographic matching. Instruments must be generated in the same grid region where the electricity is consumed. The era of buying the cheapest available certificate from anywhere in the country and applying it to load on the opposite coast is ending. Certificates must now reflect clean generation that is physically relevant to your grid.
Now — temporal matching. Annual matching remains the baseline, but the standard pushes toward finer time resolution, with hourly matching becoming a reporting expectation for the largest consumers (activity pools at or above 10 GWh) and phasing in toward 2030. A certificate's timing, not just its existence, increasingly matters.
New — recent vintage. Instruments must come from generation facilities commissioned or repowered within approximately the past 15 years. The intent is to channel corporate dollars toward additional, relatively recent clean-energy capacity rather than toward long-depreciated legacy assets that would have operated regardless.
Layered on top of these is a threshold that defines what even counts as low-carbon electricity in the first place: generation at or below roughly 0.024 kilograms of CO2 per kilowatt-hour. This is the gate that separates genuinely low-carbon supply from supply that merely carries a certificate — and, as we'll see, it is the gate that many state-compliance instruments do not pass.
The new dual-target structure
V2.0 also changes the shape of the Scope 2 target itself. Companies must now set both a location-based Scope 2 target — reflecting the actual emissions intensity of the grid they draw from — and a procurement-based target, which can be structured as a market-based Scope 2 target or a zero-carbon electricity target. Running alongside is an alignment goal of reaching 100% low-carbon electricity by 2040. The location-based number keeps you honest about the grid you actually use; the procurement-based number measures the quality of what you buy to improve it.
What instruments qualify
The standard recognizes a range of eligible procurement mechanisms, provided they meet the quality criteria: physical and virtual power purchase agreements (PPAs); contracts with electricity suppliers for low-carbon energy or its attributes; unbundled EACs that convey low-carbon electricity attributes; and default delivered low-carbon electricity where the grid mix is already overwhelmingly clean. The common thread is that each instrument must trace back to generation that is near, now, and new — and that clears the low-carbon threshold.
The "near" criterion is the quiet game-changer. For years, companies could buy cheap, unbundled certificates from anywhere in the country and call their electricity clean. Version 2 closes that door. The certificate now has to come from the same grid region as the load. For a buyer operating in PJM, that turns regional sourcing from a nice-to-have into a requirement — and it favors partners who actually live in this market.
The distinction every buyer must understand
We are emphatic that organizations not confuse two fundamentally different markets — a confusion the new standard makes expensive.
State renewable portfolio compliance instruments exist to satisfy a regulatory obligation under state law. Pennsylvania's Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards (AEPS) program, for example, defines tiers of eligible generation, and obligated parties must retire credits to meet their statutory percentages. Tier II Alternative Energy Credits (AECs) — which can be generated by sources such as waste coal, municipal solid waste, large-scale hydropower, and integrated gasification — are valuable and necessary for meeting that compliance obligation. But many of those sources do not meet SBTi's low-carbon electricity threshold, and as a result, Tier II AECs are generally not interchangeable with the high-integrity, low-carbon certificates that V2.0 requires for a voluntary Scope 2 claim.
The instruments that do tend to qualify for SBTi purposes are the genuinely low-carbon attributes — solar, wind, and other generation that clears the carbon-intensity bar — that also satisfy the geographic and vintage criteria. In the PJM market, that means recent-vintage, region-matched low-carbon RECs, not compliance-tier AECs.
This is where companies get themselves into trouble. A compliance credit and an SBTi-qualifying low-carbon certificate are not the same instrument, and a sophisticated auditor will know the difference. Treating a Tier II compliance AEC as if it satisfied a science-based Scope 2 target is exactly the kind of claim that falls apart under assurance. Part of our job is keeping clients on the right side of that line — meeting state compliance obligations with the right instruments, and meeting an SBTi procurement target with certificates that actually clear the bar on geography, vintage, and carbon intensity.
Why PJM buyers have an edge
The geographic-matching requirement, which complicates life for national buyers stitching together certificates across regions, is an advantage for organizations whose load and supply both sit inside PJM. A Pennsylvania manufacturer or institution can source region-matched, recent-vintage low-carbon instruments without crossing a grid boundary — and a partner native to the PJM market is better positioned to find, vet, and contract that supply than a national broker treating the region as one line item among many. In a world where "near" is now a rule rather than a preference, regional depth becomes a procurement asset.
What comes next: time-stamped certificates
As hourly matching advances toward 2030, the market is moving toward time-stamped, granular certificates that can be matched to consumption hour by hour. We are tracking that evolution closely, and we see the ability to pair granular, region-matched low-carbon attributes with the circuit-level consumption data our metering service captures as the next frontier of credible procurement. Buyers who build the relationships and data infrastructure now will be ready when temporal matching becomes the norm rather than the exception.
What to do now
With V2.0 validation opening in February 2027 and becoming mandatory in 2028, don't wait to audit your current certificate holdings against the new criteria. The practical first step is to separate your portfolio into two buckets — instruments held for state regulatory compliance and instruments intended to support a voluntary Scope 2 claim — and to test the latter against the near, now, and new standards. Gaps identified in 2026 can be closed in an orderly way; gaps discovered during validation cannot.
Want help mapping your certificate portfolio against SBTi V2.0's criteria? Contact Emergent Energy Solutions for a complimentary procurement-readiness review for Pennsylvania and PJM-region organizations.
SBTi and the Corporate Net-Zero Standard are trademarks of the Science Based Targets initiative; Emergent Energy Solutions is not affiliated with or endorsed by the SBTi. This article is informational and does not constitute compliance, legal, regulatory, or investment advice.
