Climate Neutral Certification is Now The Climate Label

At 2025 NYC Climate Week, The Climate Change Project (TCCP) launched The Climate Label. It’s an evolution of its earlier certification program, Climate Neutral Certified, which TCCP retired in 2024.

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The new version goes beyond net-zero targets and planning and only certifies companies with verified funding for the low-carbon transition.

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What is Climate Label Certification?

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While the older Climate Neutral Certified label focused on corporate carbon-neutral efforts, TCCP realized that consumers were losing faith in that. So it responded by launching The Climate Label(TCL), which focuses on corporate funding for the low-carbon transition. It focuses on the climate impacts of supply chains and verifies the investments that corporations are making to reduce those impacts.

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TCL certification focuses on companies and not individual products and certifies them for meaningfully investing in the transition to a low-carbon future, including efforts in transparency and advocacy.

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Through its "money-for-tonne" approach, it requires companies to adopt a standardized carbon fee that makes climate costs explicit in corporate budgeting and sets a minimum financial contribution threshold.

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A company that’s looking to get TCL certification must set a Climate Transition Budget based on its annual Scope 1-3 emissions to ensure that the level of funding matches the scale of its business.

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Right now, the certification process is reviewed by TCCP’s internal team and trained volunteers, but the goal is to transition to third-party verification as it scales.

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The TCL Certification Standard is reviewed annually by an independent advisory committee that includes sustainability and technical experts from organizations and companies such as B Lab, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Mars, Nike, The Nature Conservancy, and We Mean Business.

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The Climate Label standards for certification

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TCL standards focus on four actions within a corporation’s climate sustainability journey: measure, plan, fund and amplify.

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• Measure: Companies must report “cradle-to-customer” emissions for the prior calendar year (or a fiscal year with at least 6 months overlap), covering all Scope 1 and 2 plus 8 of 15 Scope 3 categories under the GHG Protocol. They’re encouraged, and sometimes required, to use high-quality activity/physical data, with verification requirements scaling by revenue and inventories reviewed by TCCP evaluators.
• Plan: Companies must submit at least two Reduction Action Plans (RAPs) detailing specific emissions-reduction actions for the next 12–24 months; if revenue is over $5M, at least one RAP must focus on Scope 3. Larger companies (>$100M) must also commit to net zero by 2050 and set near-term, science-aligned targets. To maintain certification, companies report annual progress (absolute emissions, emissions intensity, and RAP completion status).
• Fund: Companies calculate a Climate Transition Budget (CTB) by multiplying total GHG emissions by the annual carbon fee, which sets the minimum they must invest. A required portion must go to Value Chain Abatement (VCA). These are projects in a company’s own operations and supply chain that go beyond business-as-usual. The remainder can support Beyond Value Chain (BVC) funding (including high-quality credits or directly funded mitigation) plus “Other Contributions,” capped at 15% of the CTB.
• Amplify: Companies must be transparent and use their influence to support climate action. They report how they use the label, engage in climate policy advocacy, and build climate literacy, with re-certifiers providing at least one example of the label in use. They must also publicly disclose key data in the Brand Profile Directory, including Scope 1–3 emissions, targets and progress, and how CTB spending was allocated.

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TCL started with 16 brands in 2025 and now has around 200 certified brands in more than 10 categories. You can find all the certified brands here.

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As customers, we can help these brands continue investing in decarbonization by supporting them with our purchases.

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