We are building the open scientific infrastructure that sits beneath every net-zero commitment: the measurement standards, decarbonisation pathways, attribution methods, and residual emission thresholds that currently do not exist at the required scientific standard.
Scope 3 emission factors vary by more than 2x for identical operations depending solely on database choice. There is no shared, version-controlled, industry-specific reference standard.
No standard existsSBTi applies uniform cross-sectoral reduction rates. Industries like food and beverage span AFOLU, transport, industry, and power simultaneously. No science-based pathway accounts for this.
One size fits noneYear-over-year emission changes cannot be attributed to genuine climate action versus methodology shifts, acquisitions, or activity growth. Progress claims are structurally unverifiable.
Unverifiable by designCLARITY, COMPASS, the Progress Tracking frontier, and the Residual Emissions frontier are not software products. They are open scientific libraries: peer-reviewed, publicly accessible, and designed to be embedded into the frameworks that govern corporate climate accountability.
The same procurement, same geography, same technology can produce emissions figures that differ by more than twofold depending on which LCA database a consultant selects. CLARITY exists to make that choice irrelevant.
A five-phase harmonisation programme producing approximately 50,000 version-controlled emission factors, released openly at harmonized-factors.org with permanent DOIs and quarterly updates.
↗ Open to: LCA database partnerships, methodology peer review, F&B pilot companiesNo science-based, industry-specific decarbonisation pathway currently exists for sectors that span multiple IPCC categories simultaneously. Companies cannot set credible targets they do not have the scientific tools to derive.
The beta coefficient: an industry-differentiated accountability parameter derived from value-chain-weighted IPCC and IEA sectoral decline rates, enabling a three-tier classification from climate-compatible growth to absolute contraction.
↗ Open to: IPCC/IEA sectoral model partnerships, SBTi V2.0 methodology collaborationA company can report a significant change in emissions that is entirely explained by an acquisition, a methodology revision, or organic growth. Without decomposition, no one can tell. The current state of corporate climate reporting has no answer to this.
A universal decomposition framework that separates genuine climate action from activity effects, methodological shifts, and organisational changes. Target: reducing the unexplained residual from over 60% to below 10%.
↗ Open to: Corporate pilot data, CSRD reporting framework engagement, audit methodology reviewThere are no science-based, time-dependent, industry-specific thresholds defining when carbon removal is legitimate versus premature. Companies cannot determine whether CDR investment is a genuine last resort or a substitute for abatement.
Five gate-keeping criteria with dynamic, industry-specific thresholds that decline toward 2050, combined with a three-tier economic assessment comparing marginal abatement costs against marginal abatement benefits.
↗ Open to: CDR technology cost data, Oxford Net Zero Principles engagement, voluntary carbon market dialogueISIMIP and CMIP6 projections operate at 50km grid cells and sectoral scales. Corporate climate risk assessments need facility-level resolution, supply chain cascade effects, and financial translation. CATALYST bridges this gap.
Translates ISIMIP and CMIP6 climate impact projections into corporate financial exposure, quantifying supply chain cascade amplification and integrating with RF2 and RF4 to ground economic residual and adaptation thresholds.
↗ Open to: TCFD/NGFS engagement, insurance sector partnerships, Jupyter notebook co-developmentAll core methodologies are released under Creative Commons. The scientific infrastructure we build is a public good, not a proprietary product. Implementation services are separate and never a condition of access.
Approximately 50,000 harmonised emission factors at harmonized-factors.org, v1.0.0 launching 2026. Semantic versioning, quarterly updates, Zenodo hosting with permanent DOIs. Reproducibility is a requirement, not a feature.
All system dynamics model files (Vensim and Stella), Python and R damage functions, and decomposition algorithms are published on GitHub with DOI-linked Zenodo releases. Every result in every paper is reproducible from public code.
PhD and postdoc positions, student research projects using open databases, CATALYST Jupyter notebooks for seminar use. The training dataset from the foundational study is publicly accessible via Looker Studio.
The five frontiers form an interdependent system. Each closes a specific gap, connects to the others, and targets named institutional actors. Click any row to reveal the interdependencies.
Verification requires stable factors; stable factors require validation. Implement iteratively: early harmonisation enables early verification, which feeds back into factor refinement.
COMPASS materiality framework identifies which emission categories matter most per industry, directing where CLARITY should prioritise harmonisation effort first.
COMPASS pathway analysis provides the scientific basis for defining what constitutes a genuinely residual emission for each industry, feeding directly into RF4 gate-keeping criteria.
Empirically verified corporate climate action from RF3 provides real-world evidence to update and validate the feasibility assumptions embedded in COMPASS dynamic pathway models.
As RF3 generates verified empirical data on what genuine corporate climate action actually achieves, those findings feed back to update and recalibrate COMPASS dynamic pathway models.
Meaningful year-over-year attribution is only possible when emission factors are stable and comparable. CLARITY's harmonised factors provide the stable measurement baseline that RF3 requires.
When COMPASS shows marginal abatement cost exceeds marginal adaptation cost for a specific operation, that provides the economic basis for classifying the emission as genuinely residual rather than a choice.
CATALYST physical risk projections define what is technically versus physically residual: where climate impacts themselves constrain abatement options, that constraint must be distinguished from a commercial choice.
CATALYST projections update COMPASS dynamic pathway models where physical climate impacts affect the viability of abatement options, for example where water scarcity affects agricultural emission factor assumptions.
Distinguishing a commercially driven residual from one constrained by physical Earth system limits requires the facility-level climate impact data that CATALYST provides. Without it, RF4 thresholds cannot be applied fairly.
The Gigaton Project is an open scientific programme. We are actively building the collaborations, datasets, and partnerships that the research frontiers require to reach publication and real-world adoption.
The RF1 harmonisation algorithms, RF2 beta coefficient derivation, and RF3 decomposition validation are open for scientific scrutiny, critique, and co-authorship.
CLARITY requires bilateral data exchange protocols with potential partners including Ecoinvent, Agribalyse, WFLDB, and Sphera. Harmonisation requires access, not exclusivity.
10 to 15 representative companies per industry sector for supply chain network data and supplier validation. Pilot participation directly shapes the RF1 and RF3 calibration.
PhD and postdoctoral positions in active recruitment. Student research projects using open databases. CATALYST Jupyter notebooks available for advanced seminar and research use.
Whether you are a fellow researcher, an LCA database provider, a corporate pilot candidate, or a policymaker engaged in standards development: we would like to hear from you.