FAQs

How do you select which publicly listed equities to include in your analysis?
Corporate company selection for all TPI products is undertaken in a sector-agnostic manner based on company market cap and an assessment of scope 1 & 2 emissions (disclosed or estimated). For MQ, this is done in association with our data partner FTSE Russell. Unfortunately, we’re unable to increase company coverage to fulfil requests from specific companies or investors.

How do you classify which companies are considered as high impact?
The MQ assessments undertaken by TPI originally focussed exclusively on economic sectors with high direct or value chain emissions: Oil & Gas producers, Cement producers, Automobile manufacturers, etc. Since 2023, given the high coverage of companies from these sectors and the opportunities to increase coverage substantially, companies have been added to the MQ universe in a sector agnostic manner, weighting companies by both market capitalisation and Scope 1 & 2 emissions. The result of this has been an increase in coverage of high market cap companies from sectors which don’t necessarily have high emissions, such as Financial Services or Consumer Goods and Services. In short, the tool is being used to cover a greater percentage of global listed companies, and as such it is at the users discretion to decide which they consider to be high impact.

If we want to request a change of industry for our company in Management Quality, how do we do this?
The sector a company is placed in is derived from FTSE’s ICB classification of the company. If the company can tell us which sector better fits the nature of the business we can look, with FTSE, at reclassifying the company to a sector which is more appropriate.

When looking at a given company via the CP & MQ Tool, I can see on the pathway whether an intensity datapoint is reported or targeted/estimated. Is there a way to see whether a datapoint on the pathway in the Company Assessment CSV file is based on reported or targeted data as well?
Within the Company Assessment Excel (CSV) file, there is a column indicating the History to Projection cutoff year for each company. 

In your methodology, it is stated that companies’ emission intensity paths are “compared with each other and with the relevant sectoral benchmark pathway”. How are companies' performance compared to the industry benchmark?
The TPI Centre employs the Sectoral Decarbonisation Approach (SDA) to assess companies' CP. This approach involves the following steps:

We typically compare company pathways against three key scenarios: 1.5°C, Below 2°C, and National Pledges. For more details on how this comparison is applied, you can refer to our methodology report and airline sector CP note

When is the CP data on your platform expected to be updated?
Please refer to the document for further information on the complete delivery for the 2025 assessment cycle.

Are the CP assessments for oil & gas companies based on your new net zero standard?
The assessments for oil & gas companies will continue to be based on the same methodology. The introduction of the new net zero standard does not affect how CP assessments are carried out.

Do you have a defined a decarbonisation pathway for the consumer goods and other industrials sectors? If not, is this something you’re working on/have plans to do?
The team is currently working on a methodology which is sector agnostic and can be applied to companies outside the 11 sectors currently covered on CP. The research is still preliminary and subject to resources and other project priorities. However, it is certainly something on our radar.

Do you factor in the impact of a company's pension scheme assets in your CP assessments?
Our assessments are based on sector specific activities of companies rather than on their financial assets, so at this stage we do not include companies pension scheme assets.

How are emissions scopes determined in CP?
Emissions scopes are determined based on the most material emissions in each sector and intensity denominators are similarly sector specific.

What does it mean when a company has multiple CP assessments?
Some companies operate in more than one sector assessed by TPI: we conduct a sector-specific assessment for each of the sectors in which a company operates. For example, a company may produce both crude steel and aluminium. In this company’s steel assessment, TPI would evaluate only the emissions and production data from steelmaking and compare the company's steel-specific pathway to TPI's steel-specific benchmarks. Other activities undertaken by this company, for example aluminium production, would be assessed separately considering only the emissions and production data from those separate activities. Targets adopted by the company that are specific to a particular activity are incorporated into TPI's appropriate sector-specific assessment. We take a case by case approach to the interpretation of company-wide targets to evaluate whether targets can reasonably be assumed to apply in proportion to the emissions of the activity under consideration. Investors may want to consider all sector-specific assessments of a given company to understand its overall CP. Multi-sector companies can be easily identified in the dropdown list or in TPI's downloadable file.


GENERAL

The data for the management quality assessment is provided by FTSE Russell, one of the world’s leading data providers for investors. Data for the carbon performance assessment is gathered from publicly available information.

How did TPI come about?

TPI was initiated by a group of asset owners, including National Investing Bodies (NIBs) of the Church of England which, in its May 2015 Climate Change Policy had committed to developing a tool to assess the progress of companies’ transition to the global low carbon economy. These organisations are recognised as responsible investors and regard the issue of climate change as one of the most pressing of our times, seeking to support investors’ understanding of climate change risk and opportunity. The Environment Agency Pension Fund (EAPF) and Church of England Pensions Board co-founded the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) in 2016 to provide information on transition risk for free to investors. In 2021, the TPI turned from a voluntary initiative by asset owners into a not-for-profit limited company, which oversees the research by the LSE. EAPF is the vice-chair and Treasurer of the new limited company.

TPI identifies gaps in data that companies should be disclosing to enable their shareholders to make informed, robust decisions about transition risk. Better disclosure is key to enabling investors to make decisions about companies’ quality of management, and is necessary for the performance assessment. Companies owe it to their investors to give them the full picture, and this tool enables that to happen.

No. TPI is a way of assessing companies’ performance against internationally agreed benchmarks. Any action asset owners wish to take is a decision for them, and not in any way mandated by TPI.

Many data providers hold information on companies’ progress on carbon reduction, however, TPI’s framework, as devised by the LSE, means the data can be used to inform engagement and bring to life in a clear and public way future individual company performance. This fills a knowledge gap for asset owners, providing a robust framework within which companies can be assessed, compared to their peers and, if appropriate, engaged with.

Can we use the TPI logo on our webpage and in publications?
Official supporters that are listed on the TPI website are allowed to use the TPI logo in their publications and on their websites. Companies assessed by TPI are prohibited from using the logo, but are free to discuss and present their assessments. We would encourage reference to both Management Quality and Carbon Performance assessments were applicable as these analyses provide complementary information on corporate progress on climate.