Sustainability terms, in plain language.
Short definitions that say what each term means and why it matters, whether you met it in a report, a customer request, or your own reading. No jargon explaining jargon.
47 matches
Carbon Credit
A carbon credit is a tradeable unit representing one metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent reduced or removed by a project, recorded in a registry and retired when used for a claim.
Carbon Markets
Carbon markets trade allowances created by law or credits issued under voluntary programmes, giving covered emissions or verified reductions and removals a price.
Climate Bonds Standard
The Climate Bonds Standard sets the eligibility, verification, proceeds-control, and reporting requirements for debt instruments, assets, and entities seeking Climate Bonds Certification.
Climate finance
Climate finance is public or private capital directed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening climate resilience, or supporting the activities and systems needed to deliver those outcomes.
Climate resilience
Climate resilience is your strategy and business model's capacity to keep working, fund a response and change course when physical hazards or the shift to a lower-carbon economy affect the company.
Climate risk management
Climate risk management is the documented process for identifying, assessing, prioritising, and monitoring risks from climate hazards and the shift to a lower-emissions economy, then integrating them into your organisation's wider risk decisions.
Climate scenario analysis
Climate scenario analysis tests how your strategy, business model and financial performance could change under several plausible climate futures, including physical hazards and policy, market and technology shifts.
Climate Transition Benchmark (CTB)
An EU Climate Transition Benchmark starts with portfolio emissions per EUR million of company value, or total emissions for some corporate debt, at least 30% below its eligible pool and requires that measure to fall at least 7% yearly.
Climate VaR
Climate VaR estimates how climate-related costs and opportunities could change an asset's or portfolio's value under a stated scenario, time horizon, discount rate, and valuation method.
Climate-related financial effects
A climate-related financial effect connects a climate risk or opportunity to a specific consequence for financial position, financial performance, or cash flows in the reporting period or a defined future horizon.
Climate-related opportunity
A climate-related opportunity is a potential positive financial effect for your company arising from climate change or from efforts to mitigate or adapt to it.
Climate-related transition risk
Climate-related transition risk is the financial risk that policy, legal, technology, market, or reputation changes create as economies move towards lower greenhouse gas emissions.
ESG integration
ESG integration is the systematic use of financially material environmental, social and governance information in investment analysis and decisions to improve the assessment of risk and return.
ESG investment due diligence
ESG investment due diligence is a pre-deal review of material environmental, social and governance risks, opportunities, liabilities, controls and management capacity that could change an investment's valuation, terms, approval or ownership plan.
European Green Bond Standard
The European Green Bond Standard is the voluntary EU regime that reserves the EuGB label for bonds meeting taxonomy-linked allocation, disclosure, prospectus and external-review requirements.
EVIC for financed emissions
EVIC for financed emissions adds a listed company's year-end ordinary and preferred share market capitalisations, total debt and non-controlling interests without subtracting cash; PCAF uses it as a listed-company denominator in several attribution formulas.
Exposure to companies active in the fossil-fuel sector
Exposure to companies active in the fossil-fuel sector is the share of investments in companies earning any revenue from fossil-fuel exploration, mining, extraction, production, processing, storage, refining or distribution, including transportation, storage and trade.
Facilitated emissions
Facilitated emissions are the share of an issuer's GHG emissions attributed to a financial institution for arranging a primary capital-markets transaction or syndicated loan without holding that financing on its balance sheet.
Financed emissions
Financed emissions are the share of a borrower's or investee's gross GHG emissions allocated to a bank, fund or asset owner through the loans and investments it holds.
Green Bonds
A green bond is a bond whose proceeds are reserved for eligible projects with environmental benefits; the label applies to the financing, not automatically to the issuer's whole business.
Green loan
A green loan finances or refinances eligible environmental projects under deal-specific rules for project selection, proceeds tracking, allocation reporting, and impact reporting.
Green mortgage (energy-efficient mortgage)
A green mortgage finances an energy-efficient property or qualifying energy-performance improvements, with eligibility tied to the lender's stated building criteria and supporting property records.
Green securitisation
Green securitisation uses securities backed by pooled cash flows to finance or refinance eligible green assets, or allocates the proceeds to eligible green projects of the issuer, originator, or sponsor.
Impact investing
Impact investing commits capital with a stated intention to generate a measurable positive social or environmental outcome alongside a financial return.
Implied temperature rise
Implied temperature rise is a modelled estimate, expressed in degrees Celsius, of the warming associated with an entity's or portfolio's projected emissions path relative to a chosen climate benchmark.
Insurance-associated emissions
Insurance-associated emissions quantify the share of greenhouse gas emissions from insured customers or activities attributed to a (re)insurer's covered commercial, project, personal motor, or treaty reinsurance portfolio.
Internal carbon pricing
Internal carbon pricing assigns a monetary value to greenhouse gas emissions so your company can compare investments, budgets, products or business units using both financial costs and emissions in metric tonnes of CO2e.
Investment stewardship
Investment stewardship uses an investor's rights and influence, including engagement, voting, board oversight and manager accountability, to protect and enhance long-term value for clients and beneficiaries.
Paris-aligned Benchmark (PAB)
An EU Paris-aligned Benchmark is a regulated investment index whose emissions intensity, or total emissions for some corporate debt, starts at least 50% below its eligible pool, falls at least 7% yearly, and meets mandatory exclusions.
PCAF attribution factor
A PCAF attribution factor is the fraction of annual emissions allocated to a financial institution for a loan or investment, calculated with the numerator and denominator specified for the relevant asset class.
PCAF data quality score
A PCAF data quality score ranks the inputs behind financed-emissions estimates from 1, the highest quality, to 5, the lowest, based on whether data are verified, reported, physically measured or economically estimated.
PCAF Standard
The PCAF Standard assigns financial activities to methods for measuring and disclosing emissions associated with loans, investments, capital-markets facilitation, and insurance underwriting.
Physical climate risk
Physical climate risk is the potential for acute events or chronic climate shifts to damage assets, interrupt operations, disrupt supply chains, and change revenue, costs, cash flows, financing, or insurance.
Portfolio carbon footprint
A portfolio carbon footprint sums the GHG emissions attributed to investments and usually divides that total by portfolio value to report tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per million invested.
Portfolio climate alignment
Portfolio climate alignment uses a defined forward-looking metric to assess whether holdings, loans or underwriting activities are moving toward a stated climate pathway, with the method, benchmark, time horizon and weighting rule clearly disclosed.
Second-party opinion
A second-party opinion is an independent pre-issuance assessment of whether a sustainable-finance framework or instrument aligns with the principles or criteria it claims to follow.
Stranded asset
A stranded asset loses economic value or usefulness before the end of its expected life because policy, technology, markets, or physical conditions change.
Sustainability performance target (SPT)
A sustainability performance target (SPT) is a measurable result set for a key performance indicator by a fixed observation date, with financing terms changing according to whether the result is achieved.
Sustainability-linked bond
A sustainability-linked bond is debt whose financial or structural terms change according to whether the issuer meets predefined sustainability performance targets by specified dates.
Sustainability-linked derivative
A sustainability-linked derivative creates a KPI-linked cash flow either inside a conventional derivative or through a separate agreement that references one.
Sustainability-linked loan
A sustainability-linked loan ties its financial or structural terms to whether the borrower meets agreed, measurable sustainability performance targets for material key performance indicators within set testing periods.
Sustainable finance taxonomy
A sustainable finance taxonomy is a classification system that sets objectives and criteria for deciding which economic activities or financial products qualify as environmentally or socially sustainable.
Free help before you ever talk to us.
A calculator, plain-language articles, a glossary, and checklists, all free, all built to the same standard as the paid work.
What a Sustainability Consultant Does, and What It Costs
What sustainability consultants do, when to hire one, how pricing works, what Keslio charges, and the questions to ask before you choose.
Supplier GHG Reporting Checklist
Use this supplier GHG reporting checklist to collect Scope 1, Scope 2, relevant Scope 3 data, methodology notes, and evidence.
Service-Level GHG Accounting for Suppliers
Service-level GHG accounting helps suppliers allocate emissions to a customer, contract, product, or service when a company footprint is not enough.
Tell us what you need.
Bring us the sustainability request, reporting deadline, or strategy question you are facing. We will read it and suggest a practical first step, and the first conversation is free.