Assess Your Positive & Negative impacts

Reveal your societal and environmental footprint with our science-based tool — assess your performance vs. industry averages and peers with clarity and credibility.

PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk

Impacts organisations

PI’s Impact Accounting Framework 

Measure positive and negative impacts

Current and future impacts

Understand total current and future impacts

Materiality

How to use quantified indicators to measure impact materiality

Use cases

  • Impacts, risk and opportunity (IRO) identification
  • Strategy definition
  • Setting Policies, Actions & Targets (PATs)
  • Reporting (CSRD/GRI/IFRS)
  • (Re-)financing

What sets us apart

Our science-based, impact-washing-free Impact Accounting Framework helps you identify both positive and negative impacts. It directs attention to what’s truly material — so you avoid underestimating risks, overestimating opportunities, or wasting resources on what doesn’t matter.

PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk

our tools empower organizations to

Identify financial effects, risks and opportunities
tied to your material impacts
Measure current impacts on
Topics covered by PI's Impact Accounting Framework
FORECAST future impacts 
based on strategies, trends, and set targets
benchmark
against industry average and peers
cross-sectoral
applicable across all industries and value chains
ACT with confidence
based on data – not assumptions

The PI Impact Accounting Framework

Measuring your positive and negative impacts

Built on internationally recognized science and methodologies, the Science-based Targets Path® (SbTP) enables you to quantify both positive and negative impacts — not just in theory, but in actionable, measurable terms. It covers the issues that matter most: climate, water, biodiversity, health, social matters, and net tax.

The Science-based Targets Path®…

PI’s Science-based Targets Path® (SbTP) allows you to clearly measure positive and negative impacts and account for them. PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
  • The dashed line represents the science-based trajectory needed to meet global sustainability targets. Performance above the path delivers positive impacts, while performance below it results in negative impacts
  • Starting from today’s net global societal costs (a deficit), the path shows how we can move toward net societal benefits by 2050
  • Any organization can be mapped onto this curve — to see where it stands today, where it’s heading, and how to align with science-based targets across climate, people, and the economy

What's the added value?

The Science-based Targets Path® provides:

  • A science-based target value for six topics and 14 indicators
  • A clear trajectory from 2020 to 2050 (and beyond)
  • Full value-chain coverage — from operations to upstream and downstream impacts
  • Benchmark your performance against peers and industry averages — to see exactly where you stand and where to improve
  • CSRD alignment — enabling fact-based, auditable, and legally sound materiality assessments across short-, mid-, and long-term horizons

PI's Science-based Targets Path basis

PI’s Science-based Targets Path® incorporates targets and data from authoritative sources such as IPCC, UNEP, Stockholm Resilience Centre, UN Sustainable Development Goals, ILO, IMF and OECD

Why use the path? The standardization is what makes our tool powerful: it translates global sustainability goals into concrete thresholds for individual organizations, so you can track where you are today, forecast your future, and take action with confidence.

use cases

Intention:

Integrate material Impacts, Risks & Opportunities into reporting & communication

Challenge:

Pinpointing which Impacts are truly material — the ones that drive Risks and Opportunities

Solution:

> Use science-based impact quantification to identify material Impacts, enabling proper risk & opportunity assessment, clear strategy definition, and compliant reporting.

Intention:

Conduct a CSRD-compliant Double Materiality assessment

Challenge:

Lack of understanding of the double materiality concept, its constituents, and ability to use science-based thresholds

Solution:

> Use science-based thresholds for objective, CSRD-aligned materiality determination

Intention:

Uncover data gaps and prioritize material impacts across your operations

Challenge:

Incomplete data, e.g., on upstream impacts

Solutions:

> Identify and estimate data gaps in your organization, portfolio, or projects on the KPIs of PI’s Science-based Targets Path® using PI’s Advanced Data Modeling offering, helping you in addition to identifying those estimates that should be replaced by primary data in the future (in conjunction with Supplier Impacts)

> Impacts: Understand your Current Impacts by calculating the Impacts in % and in $ or € for the most recent year

Intention:

Understand how you perform compared to peers and industry average

Challenge:

Lack of holistic assessment approaches and incomplete data

Solution:

> Impact benchmarks: Compare your impact performance to industry average and peers with holistic, context-aware benchmarking.

Intention:

Set science-based/informed targets for climate and other material impacts

Challenge:

Set context-based targets for climate and other topics (that make sense)

Solutions:

> Integrated target setting: Evaluate how current targets align with science-based paths using Future Impacts (%, €/$), benchmarking to inform ambition-setting

> Desired Impact Ambition and Strategic Ambition: Determine the Ambitions for your organization or venture that fits both your business strategy and your risk/opportunity profile

Intention:

Integrate ESG into Business Strategy, Model and Processes

Challenge:

Lack of standardized approaches that fit different business strategies and models

Solution:

> Integrated decision-making: Use Impact Ambition levels to drive ESG integration across your business strategy and operations

Intention:

Integrate ESG Impacts into your Financial Risk & Opportunity valuation and management

Challenge:

Lack of understanding and ability to quantify ESG&F risks & opportunities

Solutions:

> Quantify ESG-related risks and opportunities to inform strategic decisions and their anticipated sustainability outcomes.

> Strategic actions: Evaluate identified actions on their expected contribution to your Future Impacts as well as to your non-financial and financial targets

Intention:

Monitor the contribution of activities to manage Impacts, Risks & Opportunities (IROs)

Challenge:

Lack of methods to monitor the contribution of actions

Solution:

> Track how your actions affect sustainability performance and both financial and non-financial targets over time

Intention:

Communicate the sustainability performance of your products/services to your customers

Challenge:

Presenting complex sustainability performance information in a concise, compelling manner

Solution:

> Communicate your sustainability performance clearly and convincingly to customers

Intention:

Understand how your suppliers perform compared to each other and the industry average to inform your purchasing strategy

Challenge:

Lack of holistic assessment approaches and incomplete data from your suppliers

Solution:

> Assess supplier impacts in context to guide sourcing decisions and drive supplier performance improvement

Intention:

Understand the impacts of your customers and your contributions to them

Challenge:

Lack of holistic assessment approaches and incomplete data

Solution:

> Understand your downstream (customer-side) impact and use it to inform offering strategies

Intention:

Obtain a premium (greenium) through ESG financing

Challenge:

Lack of holistic, context-based ESG Impacts valuations of Investments

Solution:

> Demonstrate ESG value to reduce cost of capital or unlock green finance through evidence-based impact valuation

Topics and indicators of PI's Impact Accounting Framework

Impacts are no longer abstract – they’re measurable

Regulations are evolving, stakeholders are watching, and climate urgency is real. Knowing your impacts isn’t just smart — it’s essential. Yet most tools stop at vague, qualitative insights that don’t drive decisions. Our Impacts Accounting Framework and Tool changes that without impact washing the results.

Whatever your sector or size, you gain a clear and comparable picture of where you stand, what’s required, and the path to creating positive impacts — turning impact data into real strategic action.

The topics included:

  • Climate
  • Water
  • Biodiversity (nature)
  • Health
  • Social matters
  • net Tax payments

In turn, each topic comprises of its own indicators (see slider right)

Indicators

PI’s Science-based Targets Path® (SbTP) for climate allows you to clearly measure positive and negative climate impacts and account for them.PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
PI’s Science-based Targets Path® (SbTP) for water allows you to clearly measure positive and negative water impacts and account for them. PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
PI’s Science-based Targets Path® (SbTP) for biodiversity (nature) allows you to clearly measure positive and negative biodiversity impacts and account for them. PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
PI’s Science-based Targets Path® (SbTP) for health allows you to clearly measure positive and negative health impacts and account for them. PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
PI’s Science-based Targets Path® (SbTP) for social matters allows you to clearly measure positive and negative social impacts and account for them. PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
PI’s Science-based Targets Path® (SbTP) for tax (net) allows you to clearly measure positive and negative tax impacts and account for them. PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk

Current and Future Impacts

Our tool assesses both current and future impacts — across climate, water, biodiversity, health, social matters, and tax.

  • Current impacts show the actual effects of your organization in recent years
  • Future impacts project performance based on trends, targets, and planned actions

All impacts are first quantified — in absolute values, percentages, or monetary terms (€/$) — and then translated into clear performance levels. This makes complex impact data understandable, actionable, and easy to benchmark.

PI's 4 Impact KPIs

CURRENT IMPACTS of your organization — in % and €/k€

Current Impacts show how your organization is performing today compared to the expected level for the current year — both in percentage and monetary terms.

They quantify how close your current operations are to full alignment with the PI Science-based Targets Path®. They:

  • Express performance as a percentage (−X % to +X %) and in monetary terms (€/k€), where 0 = full alignment
  • Weight impacts by their severity, so more significant outcomes (e.g. a fatality vs. an injury) carry greater influence
  • Translate impact gaps into time — “Progress Years” show how many target-years performance is ahead or behind (see next tabs)
  • Highlight strengths and gaps, helping you prioritize what matters most
  • Aggregate results across six topics: climate, water, nature, health, social matters, and net tax
  • Enable benchmarking across sectors, activities, products, and value chains
  • Uses an open-ended scale, capturing both positive and negative net impacts

After quantifying Current Impacts, your sustainability performance is classified into three Impact Ambitions — high, medium, or low.

These ambition levels reveal how your organization compares to the PI Science-based Targets Path® and to the global average, showing at a glance whether you are leading, aligned, or falling behind.

The CURRENT Impacts of the example organization show overall negative impacts of -44 €/K€ revenue (-41%), covering operations + upstream for all indicators of the six topics while estimating missing data to ensure a complete picture PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk

Climate Years left – for both current and future impacts

Climate Years Left shows how many years remain until the global 1.5 °C carbon budget would be used up — turning emissions into time. It:

  • Answers the question: How many years remain until the global GHG budget for limiting warming to 1.5 °C is used up if everyone had the same GHG emissions as your organization, or product?
  • Can be calculated for current impacts (if today’s emissions stayed constant) or for future impacts (based on projected trends and targets).
  • If global emissions stay at today’s level, the world would exhaust the 1.5 °C budget in ~8.5 years.

This KPI complements our Impact KPIs — showing how emissions translate into time left within the global 1.5 °C budget.

The Climate Years Left KPI translates corporate emissions into time left within the global 1.5 °C budget. The DAX 40 average from 2025 to 2050 is ≈ 1 year. The PI Impact Accounting Framework, Das PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung

Progress in Years – for both current and future impacts

Progress in Years shows how many target-years performance is ahead or behind plan — turning impact gaps into time.

Progress in Years — for current and future impacts

  • Current Impacts (Progress in Years):
    Show how far each indicator’s current performance is ahead or behind its annual target — expressed in “target-years.”
    Positive = ahead of time, negative = delayed.
    The overall result combines all indicators into one weighted average of Progress Years, weighted by their monetized impacts (€/k€).
    It shows how far the organization, overall, is ahead or behind sustainability targets in time.
  • Future Impacts (Progress in Years):
    Show the average time gap between projected performance and the target path over the forecast horizon (e.g., 2025–2050).
    Calculated as a simple, un-discounted average of annual Progress Years:
    positive = ahead, negative = delayed.

Together, these KPIs complement our Impact KPIs — translating performance and alignment gaps into time.

FUTURE IMPACTS (NPI®) — in % and €/k€

Net Present Impact® (NPI®) is a forward-looking KPI that projects your organization’s future impacts and expresses them in both percentage and monetary terms, discounted to today.
Similar to Net Present Value (NPV), it gives greater weight to near-term actions and less to distant targets without clear milestones. It:

  • Discounts future impacts (e.g. 2025–2050) to present values, aligning them with the PI Science-based Targets Path®
  • Expresses results in percentage (−X % to +X %) and monetary units (€/k€), where 0 = full alignment
  • Weights outcomes over time, rewarding consistent near-term progress and realistic long-term goals
  • Enable benchmarking across sectors, activities, products, and value chains
  • Supports target management — benchmarking ambitions, identifying gaps, and setting Impact Ambition levels (High / Medium / Low)
  • Uses an open-ended scale, capturing both positive and negative net impacts

By translating long-term performance into both time-weighted % and discounted €/$ values, the NPI® provides a credible and comparable view of expected future impacts — creating a clear bridge between sustainability performance and financial decision-making.

The Future impacts (NPI®) in % are calculated by dividing future impacts (NPI®) by the expected SbTP costs PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
NPI® of your products/projects (2024-2050, 3% discount rate) PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
Impact ambition levels

Once Current and Future Impacts are quantified, results are classified into three Impact Ambition Levels — High, Medium, or Low.

This makes it possible to measure, compare, and align your organization’s activities with the ambition level you aim for, providing a clear benchmark for strategy and performance.

In addition, the Product Impact Ambition Levels complement the approach, if downstream impacts matter to your business model.

Three Possible Impact Ambition Levels: High Impact Ambition (your impacts are net positive, your performance exceeds PI’s Science-based Targets Path®), Medium Impact Ambition (your impacts are net negative, but your performance is better than the global average/business-as-usual) and Low Impact Ambition (your impacts are net negative, your performance is below the global average/business-as-usual, but you are not the performance laggard of the respective industry); Existing Variations for No Impact Ambition: Impact-/Greenwashing (allegedly “positive” impacts) and No Impact Ambition (not known or don’t care) PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
Three Possible Product Impact Ambition Levels: High Product Impact Ambition (he impacts of your products are net positive: their net lifetime performance exceeds PI’s Science-based Targets Path®), Medium Product Impact Ambition (he impacts of your products are net negative, but their net lifetime performance is better than the global average/business-as-usual) and Low Product Impact Ambition (the impacts of your products are net negative, their net lifetime performance is below the global average/business-as-usual, but they are not the performance laggard compared to other products); Existing Variations for No Product Impact Ambition: Impact-/Greenwashing (allegedly “positive” impacts) and No Product Impact Ambition (not known or don’t care) PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk

Impact solutions

Contact us to discover how to measure, forecast, and improve your Impacts

Let's talk

Impact Materiality

Impact Materiality made measurable

Impact Materiality assessments are the basis of any sustainability strategy and governance. We combine quantitative approaches with feasible stakeholder input to assess the positive and negative impacts of your organization on society and the environment.

Our fact-based double materiality matrix shows how we can apply our science-based thresholds onto any impact materiality scale, giving you clear objective results on your impact material topics (C and A) as well as a fact-based process to determine your financial material topics (A and B). PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk
The example shows how our fact-based impact materiality assessment can turn perception upside-down, saving you money, avoiding over- or under-estimating risks and opportunities. PI Impact Accounting Framework, Impact Accounting Standard PI Value & Risk Framework, PI Strategy Framework PI Rahmenwerk zur Wirkungsbilanzierung, PI Wert & Risiko Rahmenwerk, PI Strategie Rahmenwerk

Our methodology includes:

  • Scoring on a scale that you choose, where we map our science-based thresholds for climate, water, nature, and social topics to your chosen cut-off
  • Integration of stakeholder perception and expert input
  • Tailored approach that best fits the maturity of your impact materiality processes
  • Alignment with CSRD’s double and a useful input for IFRS’s single materiality requirements

This ensures that your impact materiality assessment is not just compliant (if relevant), but meaningful. It helps you prioritize actions, allocate resources, and communicate with confidence.

Under CSRD, not only missing out material impacts, but also the reporting on non-material topics is non-compliant. We help you get it right – what to focus on – and go beyond.