Climate Governance

Climate Active Is Closing. The Claim Isn’t.

Since 2010, Climate Active participants have surrendered more than 55.1 million carbon offsets. On 24 July 2026 the Australian Government decided to close the program that counted them. Submissions on how it winds down close 18 September 2026.

17 August 20265 min read1 view

Climate Active is closing: the claim, the inventory and the evidence trail that outlive the mark

At a Glance

▸ On 24 July 2026 the Australian Government announced it will close the Climate Active program and cease voluntary certification of climate claims through it

▸ The consultation does not ask whether certification closes. That is decided. Submissions close 18 September 2026

▸ Ending with it: the trade marks, use of the term “carbon neutral” for voluntary claims, the register of consultants, and the Climate Active website

▸ Under both options on the table, the department will no longer review or monitor any claims

▸ A decision is due before the end of 2026. The consultation paper describes a proposed 12 or 18 month transition, so the end date is not yet settled

▸ Stock already printed with the mark can be sold until supplies are exhausted. It does not need repackaging or recall

For sixteen years, an Australian business that wanted to say something credible about its emissions had somewhere to go. Climate Active supplied a method, checked the work, and issued a mark a reader could recognise.

On 24 July 2026 the Australian Government decided to close it. The consultation paper is unusually direct about what is settled. Certification will cease. The trade marks go. The consultant register closes. The department stops reviewing and monitoring claims made through the program.

The stated reasoning is not that the program failed. It is that the ground moved. Mandatory climate disclosure now reaches large entities through the Corporations Act, and the paper concedes that public support for “carbon neutral” has fallen where a claim rests mainly on offsets rather than direct reduction.

The temptation is to treat this as a brand migration. Take one logo off, find another scheme, carry on. That reading will cost somebody a lot of money.

What Climate Active Actually Was

Climate Active was four jobs bundled into one package. It supplied the method: what sits inside the boundary and which factors produce the inventory. It ran the review: someone other than the claimant checked the numbers. It permitted the mark: a government-backed trade mark that let a reader accept a claim without reading the workings. And it maintained the pathway: a consultant register, tools, a place to go.

Closing the program deletes none of those four jobs. It unbundles them and hands them back, separately, to the organisation making the claim.

A wrapper, not a control. Climate Active never made a claim true. It bundled the method, the review and the mark into one package, so a reader did not have to ask who stood behind the number. That question is now the reader’s to ask and yours to answer.

What Is Decided, and What Is Still Open

Decided	Still open
Certification of voluntary climate claims will cease after a transition	Whether the department retains selected voluntary standards, tools and guidance
The brand, trade marks and network member mark are discontinued	The final transition timetable and administrative arrangements
Use of “carbon neutral” for voluntary claims ends through this pathway	Which existing tools and standards remain available and maintained
The registered consultant pathway closes	The building pathway with NABERS and the Green Building Council of Australia
The department will no longer review or monitor any claims	Whether the transition runs 12 months or 18

One date needs care. Climate Active’s news page proposes 30 June 2027, but the consultation paper describes a 12 or 18 month transition and commits only to a decision before the end of 2026. Plan for closure. Do not hard-code that date into a contract or a packaging run yet.

The words are not becoming unlawful. What ends is the government-backed pathway that gave “carbon neutral” a defined meaning and a mark to prove it. The phrase survives in the language. The definition behind it does not.

The Responsibility Never Sat With the Badge

The ACCC’s guidance on environmental and sustainability claims asks that claims be accurate, truthful and supported by evidence, and warns that omissions and the overall impression can mislead even where each statement is defensible. For financial products, ASIC’s greenwashing guidance focuses on truth in labels, clarity of method and reasonable grounds.

Neither has ever said that holding a certification or obtaining external verification transfers responsibility away from the entity making the claim. A replacement scheme may define a method or supply a review. It does not own your product label, your tender response or your investor deck. You always did.

So What. Who Is Affected.

Currently certified organisations. A live licence agreement, a mark in circulation, and claims published in places nobody has catalogued. Every one of them is a statement you are still making.
Mid-market businesses in or approaching AASB S2 scope. The inventory under a certification is the same inventory a mandatory disclosure, a lender or a procurement questionnaire will ask for. It does not disappear with the badge. It gets read more closely.
ESG consultants. The register that told a client which consultants counted is closing, and the department will no longer review inventories. The capability is untouched. The credential is gone.
Procurement, marketing and legal. Contracts and tenders naming the certification need review, as do packaging, email signatures and the deck built in 2022 that is still circulating.

Most organisations cannot list where their own claim appears. That is not a governance failure. It is what happens when a claim is approved once and then travels. It is also the first thing to fix.

Five Controls to Build Before the Transition Ends

Build a live claim inventory. Every climate statement in public or client-facing use, with its owner, scope, period, method, evidence and next review date.
Separate the inventory from the claim. The calculation and the communication as linked but distinct records, so a claim can change without rebuilding its history from memory.
Record what independent review actually covered. Scope, criteria, period, conclusion and limitations, stored beside the claim they support.
Put approval with accountable roles. A named preparer, reviewer and approver, and re-review triggered when a material input moves.
Map the dependency before choosing a replacement. Which claims, contracts, tenders and models rest on the mark. Assess alternatives only after that, for the job they do rather than the familiarity of the badge.

How SustainQ Helps

SustainQ does not certify climate claims or provide legal or assurance conclusions. It makes these five controls repeatable.

Claim register. Every public claim in one place with its owner, scope, period and next review date.
Inventory and claim held separately. Change one without losing the history of the other.
Review scope recorded beside the claim. What an engagement covered, what it did not, and the limitations.
Named preparer, reviewer and approver. Approval captured against the version reviewed, with re-review triggered when an input moves.
Dependency mapping. What rests on a closing scheme, surfaced as one list rather than found one tender at a time.

SustainQ is the operating layer for sustainability management, built for the mid-market and the advisers who serve it. One science-based input layer that takes your data, evidence, methods and judgements once, and turns them into the outputs each obligation asks for.

The organisations that come through this well will not start by choosing a new badge. They will start by giving every claim an owner, every number a trail, and every review a stated boundary.