
What’s changing on the SBTi Target Dashboard?
28th Jan 2025
On March 11th 2025, we will release some important updates to our Target Dashboard. Taylor Frerichs, SBTi Services Senior Data Governance Manager, explains what is changing.
The SBTi’s Target Dashboard aims to provide up-to-date information about the corporates, financial institutions and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) setting science-based targets.
Updated every Thursday (apart from two weeks during the December holiday) to reflect the most recent information about businesses’ targets and commitments, it is an essential source of data for those looking for insight on the uptake of science-based targets across regions and sectors. It is widely used by businesses monitoring the progress of target-setting in their supply chains, by financial markets to guide investment decision-making, and by civil society and academia to monitor corporate climate action and accountability - among others.
The Target Dashboard provides information in two formats: a high-level interactive interface for stakeholders looking for a quick snapshot, as well as more detailed XLS file downloads for those wanting to perform more detailed analysis. Currently, there are two versions available: a by-target (known as the ‘Beta’) version which provides a more up to date design direction and granular data structure, as well as an older by-company (known as the ‘Legacy’ or ‘Companies Taking Action’) version with simpler data download. In response to feedback from many regular users, the SBTi has been working to roll out improvements to the Dashboard to enhance the clarity and usability of its data.
On March 11th, an updated version will be launched. In order to enable regular users of the data to prepare, details of these changes are set out below.
Watch: a walkthrough of the updated Target Dashboard
Design and performance changes
- Withdrawal of the Legacy Dashboard: the version of the Dashboard interface known as the ‘Legacy’ or ‘Companies Taking Action’ Table will be sunsetted, with an updated version of the Beta Dashboard interface becoming the single source of truth for SBTi target and commitment data. More details on the updated interface can be found below.
- Provision of by-company and by-target data downloads: It will still be possible to download the data either by company (similar to the current ‘Legacy’ download) or by-target (as with the current ‘Beta’ version) via the updated Dashboard. The new location links for these downloads are listed under ‘Resources’ below.
- Faster load speed: the load time for the Dashboard will reduce considerably compared to the current ‘Beta’ version.
- Updated summary stats: to increase clarity, the ‘total number of companies’ number will no longer include businesses that have had commitments removed. Additional stats for total companies with validated targets, net-zero targets and active commitments will also be included. These will be static numbers not impacted by any filters applied. Instead, a new value will be displayed showing the number of records that match the filter criteria.
- Additional information in the interactive interface: new SBTi IDs, commitment type, and reason for commitment removal or extension (where applicable) will be visible in the interface as well as in the data downloads.
- Bug fixes: a filtering issue in the ‘Beta’ interface, which causes companies with targets to show ‘committed’ status when filtered by commitment, will be resolved. An issue which causes the wrong data to be displayed in the ‘Target’ column of the interface will also be resolved.
Data changes
- New unique identifiers: New SBTi IDs will be introduced to identify distinct businesses in the data. Entry IDs for identifying a business’s individual targets and commitments in the by-target data download will also be available.
- Introduction of snake case to data download fields: to align with best practice, column names in the data downloads will use the snake_case convention, with spaces replaced with underscores and all letters written in lowercase.
- New validation route field: the by-target data download will include a new field to identify the validation route (corporate, financial institution or SME) a business has used - helping to clarify when a business classified as an SME has used SBTi Services’ corporate validation route, for example.
- Field name alignment: where possible, field names will be aligned between the by-company and by-target data downloads, resulting in some updates to the field names in both downloads. Further details are listed in the data dictionary and data update tables.
- Acceptable values formatting alignment: where possible, the formatting of values within fields will be aligned between the by-company and by-target data downloads, resulting in some updates in either or both versions. Further details are listed in the data dictionary and data update tables.
One frequently requested update, the development of an API, is not in scope for the next release. However, we are aware of the demand for this development and aim to revisit it when feasible.
The updates scheduled for March 11th won't be the last - we’re continually looking to improve the Target Dashboard and will roll out further improvements in due course. To stay up to date, join our mailing list or follow us on LinkedIn and X.
Resources
- Data sample - by-company dataset
- Data sample - by-target dataset
- New data download location link - companies (accessible on launch): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTn5UZIBmOxWKNFpmQGWWDczMvdBJ74l2_j0emUH9mxEKylHqh3oMLhu2FXtAV7-bqDxy9Yz_hkWzu8/pub?output=xlsx
- New data download location link - targets (accessible on launch): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRUls6LEAlOAGCEXuLdOZDNYiFmf_VJHh5Gz1cdKKoaLQQx832pyr9ynbFJDgJM3KorP5u97ODewQmx/pub?output=xlsx
- Data dictionary
- Data update tables
A summary of data updates for the by-company and by-target datasets can be found below. For a full overview of the data values, download the data update tables.