Decision Useful Diagnosis — Frequently Asked Questions

The Climate Disclosure Watchdog is an independent program run by the Carbon Reduction Institute that reviews publicly available corporate climate disclosures and tests whether they give stakeholders information they can reasonably rely upon when making decisions.

A Decision Useful Diagnosis is a structured, rules-based assessment of a single organisation's climate disclosure for a defined reporting period. It does not score climate ambition or performance in the abstract — it asks a narrower question: can a stakeholder actually use what has been disclosed to make the decisions they need to make?

Each diagnosis is rated separately against the needs of five stakeholder audiences:

• Accounting and assurance professionals
• Institutional investors and lenders
• Retail investors
• The general public, customers and employees
• Regulators and policy makers

Different stakeholders make different decisions from the same document. An institutional investor modelling transition risk needs granular, comparable data; a customer needs a clear, honest summary of what the organisation is actually doing. A disclosure can serve one audience well and fail another entirely, so a single overall grade would hide more than it reveals.

• Red — the disclosure does not provide the information this audience needs to make its decisions.
• Amber — a positive result. The disclosure is above average and mostly useful, but material gaps remain.
• Green — the disclosure crosses the threshold required to be relied upon by this audience without material caveats.

No. A rating assesses the disclosure, not the organisation's underlying effort. An organisation may be making real physical emissions reductions and still receive a red rating because those reductions are not evidenced in a way stakeholders can verify or use.

No. A diagnosis makes no finding of illegality, misconduct or intent to mislead. It is an assessment of decision-usefulness against a published framework, not a legal or regulatory determination.

No. A diagnosis is not an audit, a limited or reasonable assurance engagement, or a certification of any kind. It is a desktop review of publicly available information and carries none of the standing of an assurance opinion.

Only information the organisation has made publicly available for the disclosure period — typically annual and sustainability reports, climate transition plans, regulatory filings, methodology notes and public data appendices. No confidential or non-public material is used, because stakeholders cannot rely on what they cannot see.

It means the claim may well be true, but nothing in the public record allows a reader to confirm it. The underlying method, boundary, base year, data source or calculation has not been disclosed in enough detail to be checked or reproduced.

No. Estimation is normal and often unavoidable, particularly for Scope 3. What matters is transparency about the estimate:

• the method and emissions factors used
• the boundary and any exclusions
• the proportion of the total that is estimated rather than measured
• the direction and likely scale of uncertainty

Volume is not usefulness. A report can run to hundreds of pages of narrative, frameworks and imagery while omitting the specific figures, methods and boundaries a stakeholder needs. Length can even reduce usefulness where material information is buried or fragmented.

A reported fall in emissions may reflect a genuine physical reduction, or it may reflect a change in how emissions were counted. Common accounting movements include:

• divestment or closure of an emitting asset
• changes to the organisational or operational boundary
• base year restatements
• a change in emissions factors or data sources
• a shift from location-based to market-based reporting
• reclassification of activities between scopes
• outsourcing that moves emissions from Scope 1 or 2 into Scope 3

None of these are improper, but a stakeholder cannot interpret the headline number without knowing which applies.

Intensity targets measure emissions per unit of output or revenue and can be met while absolute emissions rise with growth. The atmosphere responds to absolute tonnes, so a disclosure that reports only intensity leaves stakeholders unable to judge real-world impact.

For most organisations Scope 3 dominates the total footprint, and for financial institutions financed emissions dominate everything else. A disclosure that is thorough on Scopes 1 and 2 but thin on Scope 3 may be describing only a small fraction of the organisation's actual climate impact.

Credits and certificates are assessed as disclosed instruments, not as emissions reductions. Diagnoses look for gross emissions reported before any offsetting, the type, vintage and origin of instruments retired, and whether market-based claims are presented alongside location-based figures.

AI is used to help locate, extract and organise material from long public documents against a fixed rules set. Ratings and published conclusions are reviewed and confirmed by CRI analysts; the framework, not the model, determines the outcome.

Annexes carry the evidence trail — extracts, page references, method notes and the rule-by-rule working behind each rating — so that the summary stays readable while the reasoning remains fully inspectable.

1. Start with the five stakeholder ratings and the total score.
2. Read the rationale for the audience closest to your own decision.
3. Check the physical reduction versus accounting movement section.
4. Check the Scope 3 and target coverage findings.
5. Use the annexes to verify any point that matters to you.

Ratings are produced against the same published rules, so they can be compared with care. But sector, reporting maturity, disclosure period and regulatory obligation all differ, so comparisons are most meaningful within a sector and reporting period.

The NoCO2 Net Zero Standard is a freely published reference point that sets out what credible net zero claims require. Noting alignment gives readers a consistent benchmark rather than an ad hoc opinion about what good looks like.

Yes. Any organisation can contact CRI with a factual correction or point to public information that was missed. Where a correction affects a finding, the diagnosis is updated and the change is noted.

Yes. Requests are welcome and are considered alongside the published review schedule, which prioritises coverage across sectors and reporting obligations. Use the contact form below to suggest an organisation.

Each diagnosis is tied to a specific disclosure period. When an organisation publishes a new report, a fresh diagnosis is produced for that period and earlier diagnoses remain available so changes over time can be traced.