SBTi Scope 2 Hourly Matching: What the New Net-Zero Standard Means for Your Electricity

What changed on 11 June 2026

On 11 June 2026 the Science Based Targets initiative published version 2.0 of its Corporate Net-Zero Standard, the first major rewrite in five years. The change energy buyers need to understand is SBTi Scope 2 hourly matching, a new way of judging how clean your electricity really is. For years, renewable power has been counted once a year. The new standard starts to count it hour by hour, and that single shift can turn a confident “100% renewable” claim into something much lower. Here is what it means, in plain English.

Why annual renewable accounting hides a problem

Until now, green electricity has been counted across a whole year. You add up the renewable power you bought over twelve months, set it against what you used, and if the two balance you can claim to run on 100% renewable energy. It is simple, and it has helped fund a great deal of wind and solar. But it hides something important.

Picture a factory that runs hard through winter nights. On paper it buys enough renewable certificates to cover every unit it draws. In reality, a chunk of those certificates come from solar farms generating on summer afternoons, when the factory is quiet. Hour for hour, the clean supply and the real demand do not line up. Measured properly, that “100% renewable” site might be closer to 60% genuinely matched. Closing that gap is exactly what hourly matching sets out to do.

What actually changed in version 2.0

Three things matter for the way you buy power.

Targets are now anchored to the grid, not to certificates. Previously you could measure your target against your market-based figure, which credits the green contracts you hold. Now the target is measured against the physical, location-based emissions of the grid your sites actually sit on. Green contracts still count towards progress, but they are reported separately from your real grid emissions. In short, buying certificates no longer changes the number your target is judged against.

Market instruments face a higher bar, summed up as “near, new, now”. Clean power should be local enough to plausibly serve your sites (near), come from newer projects that genuinely add capacity rather than recycle old supply (new), and increasingly be matched to the hour you use it (now). This is where careful flexible energy procurement starts to matter more than ever.

Hourly matching arrives, but gently. This is the part the headlines focus on, so it is worth being precise about what is required and what is not.

SBTi Scope 2 hourly matching: required, reported or rewarded?

There are three separate things happening here, and they are easy to muddle.

For target progress, hourly matching is not yet mandatory. You still meet the requirement by matching your clean power to your usage across a twelve-month period, just as before.

Reporting it is mandatory for larger users. Any business using 10 GWh or more of electricity a year in a single region must publicly report how much of that power was matched on an hourly basis. Smaller operations, and any site under 100 MWh a year, are left out for now.

Doing it well earns recognition. A voluntary programme rewards companies that hit rising thresholds: 50% hourly-matched now, 75% from 2030, and 90% from 2035. Think of it as a leaderboard rather than a rule, at least for the moment.

The direction of travel could not be clearer. What is voluntary and reported today tends to become expected and required tomorrow, and the SBTi has already said it will gather more evidence to firm up the rules in a future version. Hourly matching is the destination, even if the route there is being taken in stages.

Why this matters even without an SBTi target

Most mid-sized businesses do not set their own science-based target. The catch is that your customers might, and your Scope 2 is often their Scope 3. As the larger companies in your supply chain start reporting hourly figures, they will begin asking how clean your power really is, hour by hour, not just on paper. Strong annual cover that looks weak hourly could become an awkward question in a tender, which is one reason carbon reporting for tenders is rising up the agenda.

There is a cost angle too. Power bought to match your demand hour by hour sits closer to when the grid is actually short, which is where price risk lives. Understanding your hourly profile is as much a procurement decision as a reporting one, and it feeds directly into any credible net zero strategy.

What we suggest you do now

You do not need to overhaul anything this quarter. A sensible order of priorities looks like this.

Know your number. Get a rough sense of how your annual renewable cover translates into an hourly figure. The gap is usually the surprise.

Check your threshold. If any single region of your operations uses 10 GWh or more a year, hourly reporting will land on you first.

Look at your contracts. Older certificates sourced from distant grids are the weakest under the new rules. Newer, more local, better-timed supply is the direction to move in as contracts expire.

Treat it as a procurement question. When and where you buy clean power now affects both your carbon claim and your exposure to price. This sits naturally alongside your wider sustainability planning.

How Catalyst can help

Hourly matching sounds technical, but the underlying question is simple: does your clean energy line up with how you actually use power? We help UK businesses answer that, read their contracts against the new standard, and plan procurement that holds up under scrutiny rather than just on an annual spreadsheet. If you would like an honest view of where you stand, get in touch with our team and we will talk it through.