The emissions line almost no one reports.

Most Scope 3 reporting covers supply chain, travel, and waste. Category 15, the financed emissions in your employer-sponsored retirement plan, is almost always missing. It is missing because it has rarely been measured, not because it is immaterial. The Intentional Investing Lens for Plans measures it.

Button: Measure your plan

Button: Try the employer preview

What it measures

Your plan's fund holdings finance carbon-intensive industries the same way a bank loan does. Under the GHG Protocol, those emissions belong on your disclosure. Investature measures them using the methodology of PCAF, the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials.

The Intentional Investing Lens for Plans returns two things: the plan's total financed emissions for Category 15 reporting, and the carbon intensity of every fund in the menu, using the Weighted Average Carbon Intensity metric (tonnes of CO2 per million dollars of revenue), so it is clear which options drive the number.

How an assessment runs

  1. Send the lineup. The fund menu and, where available, the allocation across it. We need no participant data.
  2. We load and calculate. Holdings data from Morningstar, emissions from reported figures where available and sub-industry averages where not, each fund scored on carbon intensity.
  3. You get the report. Plan total, per-fund intensity, and the comparison against the average fund in each category, in a format your verifier can use for CDP, TCFD or ISSB, SBTi baselines, or a board-level climate pledge.
  4. Decide what to do next. Roll the Intentional Investing Lens out to participants, take the lineup to the committee with Employer Sponsored Plan Review, or both (see below).

What one plan did with the number

Google's retirement plan went looking for a replacement for an underperforming fund and chose one with no fossil fuel holdings, because it was the better financial choice. Employees have since moved more than $710 million into it, and its financed emissions are more than 70% lower than an S&P 500 index fund's. (Fossil Free Funds, June 2025.)

How this connects to your commitments

  • SBTi. Quantify plan emissions in your Scope 3 baseline.
  • TCFD and ISSB. An annual financed-emissions report compatible with climate-risk disclosure frameworks.
  • Higher-education carbon commitments. Answer the question every university board asks: why divest the endowment and ignore the retirement plan?
  • Board-level climate pledges. Show that sustainability reaches employee benefits as well as operations, at no additional capital expense.

One employee at a time, or the whole plan at once

The plan's number opens two routes to action, and a plan can run both.

  • One employee at a time. Give participants the Intentional Investing Lens, and each one can see their own footprint and reallocate within the menu the plan already offers. No committee decision is needed. See the Intentional Investing Lens page.
  • The whole plan at once. Take the lineup to the plan committee with Employer Sponsored Plan Review, a professional services engagement that prepares the committee to review the menu and its lower-carbon options. One decision moves everyone in a changed fund. See the Employer Sponsored Plan Review page.

How the pieces fit together is on the Solutions page.

Try the employer preview

The employer preview is a public, self-guided walkthrough of the next version of the Intentional Investing Lens for Plans, built for four seats: sustainability, people, the P&L owner, and the investment committee. Pick your seat, load a sample lineup, and see how the plan total, the per-fund view, and the alternatives read from where you sit. It runs on sample data. The production tool runs on your lineup, with your own login.

Button: Open the employer preview

What the Intentional Investing Lens for Plans will not do

It does not tell the committee what to hold. It does not rank funds on anything but carbon intensity and data coverage; fees, returns, and the committee's other factors are covered in Employer Sponsored Plan Review. The figures are estimates built on reported and modeled emissions data and carry the limits that data carries today.

Button: Request an assessment