ACT for Europe
ACT for Europe supports Europe's low-carbon transition by making corporate climate transition plans credible and actionable for decision-making.
ACT for Europe (supported by the LIFE programme) aims to play a central role in helping Europe's economy transition to a low-carbon future. It does this by turning company climate transition plans into practical tools that support decision-making. The project uses ACT methodologies—a clear, science-based framework—to assess the credibility of corporate climate transition plans. It supports three main kinds of actors of the climate transition of the European economy:
- Financial institutions and public funders, who will use assessments to direct capital towards companies that are transitioning in a credible and robust way.
- EU companies, especially Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), who benefit from credible assessments to improve their climate strategies, attract investments and gain new markets.
- EU policymakers, who will gain access to robust data to track corporate climate performance at scale
Three pillars of the LIFE ACT for Europe project
The project will assess the transition plans of 500 European companies, including 400 large companies and 100 SMEs. The assessments will be carried out in three publications: the 2026 Climate Benchmark campaign of the World Benchmarking Alliance, which is already available, and two additional publications in 2027 and 2028. Together, they will form the largest public database of its kind in Europe to date.
The assessments use the ACT Core methodology, which draws on ADEME's leading expertise in the design and assessment of climate transition plans. Learn more about the methodology here.
The priorities of the European economy are decarbonisation and independence, which the 2024 Draghi report identifies as two of the three main areas for action. Yet there is a clear climate finance gap, estimated by I4CE at €344 billion per year in 2023. Redirecting financial flows towards the transition is crucial, but the main tools for doing so are insufficient. As the Commission's action plan on financing sustainable growth stated: "Index providers have been developing ESG benchmarks to capture sustainability goals, but the lack of transparency regarding their methodologies has affected their reliability. More transparent and sounder sustainable indices' methodologies are needed to reduce greenwashing risks."
As research and practitioners' experience show, ESG ratings and financed emissions indicators fall short of enabling a truly forward-looking, sector- and company-specific strategy for financing the transition. Various methodologies have tried to address this need, but they do not guarantee sufficient transparency or scientific rigour. With its pioneering, open-access work on the design and assessment of transition plans since 2015, ADEME is one of the best-suited partners for European financial institutions, which increasingly need robust non-financial analysis to evaluate companies' resilience to climate change and energy dependence.
According to the European Platform on Sustainable Finance, SMEs "face significant challenges in securing external financing for sustainability efforts". In 2024, the Platform showed that 65% of SMEs that had invested in sustainability-related improvements financed the projects themselves rather than through external financing.
Assessing the credibility of a company's transition plan is a key lever for accessing additional sustainable finance flows, from both lenders and investors. However, exhaustive transition planning services are either beyond the means of SMEs, unsuited to their business realities, or both. ACT methodologies are standards for corporate climate transition planning and assessment that financial institutions widely recognise. For example, the SBTi Financial Institution Standard has adopted them as its only sector-specific methodology (see here).
This is why the project provides a tool that SMEs can use to self-assess the maturity of their climate transition planning. The tool builds on the strengths of the ACT methodologies, offering a simpler approach tailored to SMEs. SMEs can run this self-diagnostic for free, and the 100 most advanced will be offered a free, complete ACT Core review by ADEME and WBA climate transition analysts.
ACT Core Assessment
The Act Core Assessment evaluates the credibility and integrity of companies’ transition plans across six areas: emissions reporting and targets, transition planning, governance and policy, low-carbon investments, target alignment, and performance.
The ACT Core Methodology
This methodology sets out the metrics that we will use assess companies on the credibility and integrity of their transition plan. It assesses companies along six measurement areas; emissions reporting and target definition, planning for the low-carbon transition, governance and policy, low-carbon investments, current target alignment, and performance.
Designed for scalability, the methodology draws relevant common elements from the sectoral ACT Assessment methodologies while adding flexibility to assess companies across a wider range of industries, within a unified framework. It has been developed with the realities of public disclosure in mind, while preserving the performance-oriented approach of ACT assessments for key elements of transition planning.
About the LIFE programme
The LIFE Programme is the EU Programme for Environment and Climate Action. It is managed by CINEA, the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency. The Co-Pilot project is supported by LIFE programme from 2026 to 2028.
Since 1992, LIFE has been the European Union's dedicated instrument for environment and climate action. As such, it is one of the key contributors to the European Green Deal which aims to transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource efficient and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use. It further aims to protect, conserve and enhance the EU's natural capital, and protect the health and well-being of citizens from environment and climate related risks and impacts.
About ADEME
ADEME, the French Agency for Ecological Transition, is proactively engaged in climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as in preventing the depletion of natural resources. It empowers citizens, businesses and local authorities to progress toward a low-carbon, more frugal, just and harmonious society. The agency advises, facilitates and supports projects through funding, guiding initiatives from research to the transfer of solutions across areas such as energy, air quality, circular economy and waste management. It also provides expertise and forward-looking advisory services to government bodies and the wider public, helping them establish and strengthen their environmental action.
About the ACT Initiative
Formally launched in 2015 at COP21, the ACT initiative was founded by ADEME and developed in partnership with CDP. Now hosted by WBA, ACT is a pioneering international initiative that creates a “climate accountability” framework to evaluate companies‘ transition plans. Over the years, the ACT initiative has developed sector-specific methodologies and has significantly influenced many of the most recent transition plan frameworks and regulations. Rebranded as Accelerate Climate Transition, the initiative continues to provide tools and methods to assess the credibility of companies‘ transition plans. Since 2023, it has also introduced tools and methods to help companies develop these plans and assess their adaptation strategies.
About WBA
The World Benchmarking Alliance measures how the 2,000 most influential businesses are impacting people and planet. Its research is freely available so that, together, we can hold companies accountable for contributing to sustainable development. The benchmarks and methodologies serve as a roadmap for companies to understand the changes they need to put our planet, society and economy on a more sustainable path.
The independent, non-profit organisation acts as a centre for advancing corporate accountability. It supports its Allies, UN agencies, governments and other stakeholders in the broader corporate accountability ecosystem to understand how they can establish clear consequences for corporate inaction.
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Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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