TPI publishes ASCOR framework 

November 14th, 2023

The Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) has released its Assessing Sovereign Climate-related Opportunities and Risks (ASCOR) framework, which assesses countries on climate change.

The free, publicly available and independent tool evaluates how countries are managing the low-carbon transition and the impacts of climate change.

The ASCOR framework is organised in three pillars: emission pathways, climate policies and climate finance.

The emission pathways pillar assesses a country’s emissions trends, 2030 targets and net-zero targets, while climate policies pillar evaluates climate legislation, carbon pricing and work on the just transition.

Finally, the climate finance pillar explores renewable energy opportunities in the country and their transparency of climate costing and spending.

Countries are assessed based on binary questions about whether they have taken specific action within each area, while performance is contextualised by quantitative metrics.

The assessments are undertaken using policy research drawing on government websites, policy databases and UNFCCC document repositories.

Draft assessments are shared with each country’s environment ministry ahead of publication to collect feedback.

A TPI spokesperson said: “The project hopes to facilitate engagement and dialogue between issuers and investors and drive financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

“ASCOR will also enable countries to showcase their improvements on the transition to a low-carbon and resilient future by providing independent and open-source assessments of their targets and policies.”

The TPI centre published its Net Zero Banking Assessment Framework in September and called on banks to broaden their emission target coverage to include all material financing activities.