TCAT’s Initial Pilot is Complete—Here’s What We Set Out to Learn

Over the past few years, corporate climate reporting has become more important than ever. But it’s also become more complex and ever-more-heavily scrutinized. Companies are navigating a rapidly evolving landscape of standards, guidance frameworks, and consumer and policy expectations — often while figuring out in real-time how to communicate a growing range of actions they’re taking to address their climate impacts in ways that are credible and strategically useful.

This constellation of challenges is what led to the creation of the Task Force on Corporate Action Transparency (TCAT) guidance.

What TCAT is designed to do

At its core, TCAT’s guidance – the Mitigation Action Accounting and Reporting Guidance (MAARG) and the Target Accounting and Reporting Guidance (TARG) – is intended to help companies:

  • Report on climate transition efforts in a way that is clear, consistent, and credible

  • Align climate reporting with real-world decision-making, rather than treating reporting as a purely compliance-driven exercise

  • Complement existing standards and frameworks, filling gaps where guidance on transition-related reporting has been unclear or fragmented

In meeting these goals, TCAT seeks to lower barriers to voluntary corporate climate action and grow the amount of finance flowing toward the technologies and activities we need to reverse warming. 

TCAT is not a replacement for existing standards. Instead, it is designed to help companies navigate how those standards intersect — particularly when it comes to progress tracking and transparency over time.

Why we launched a pilot

When TCAT publicly launched during Climate Week New York, we were clear: the guidance was developed in concert with practitioners working in the real economy; it needs to be tested in the real economy, and it needs to work in the real economy.

Rather than assuming the guidance worked as intended, we wanted direct feedback from companies that are actively engaged in climate reporting and transition planning. Specifically, we wanted to understand:

  • Completeness: Does the guidance cover the topics companies actually need to address?

  • Clarity: Is the guidance understandable and usable — not just for technical experts, but for cross-functional teams?

  • Feasibility: Can companies realistically apply this guidance given existing systems, data, and internal processes?

How the pilot worked

We worked with a diverse cohort of large companies that are leaders in climate action to apply the TCAT guidance to their own reporting contexts. These companies employ some of the best sustainability professionals in the world, practitioners who bring deep, applied experience — and who have been candid with us about what works, what doesn’t, and where further refinement is needed.

The pilot ran through the fall and wrapped up in December, providing a structured opportunity to pressure-test the guidance before its public consultation period and next scheduled revision (to be completed by EOY 2026). 

What comes next

We’re currently synthesizing feedback from the pilot companies and translating those insights into refinements and learnings that can benefit the broader community.

Highlights from the pilot — including what companies found most useful and where challenges remain — will be shared soon. Later this spring, we plan to launch our Phase 2 Pilot in support of releasing the next full version of our guidance later this year.

If you’re a company navigating climate transition reporting, a researcher tracking developments in corporate sustainability, or a policymaker interested in how guidance is working in practice, we encourage you to follow TCAT as we share what we’re learning.