The S&P Global Carbon Efficient Index Series are designed to measure the performance of companies in an underlying index while overweighting or underweighting those companies that have lower or higher levels of carbon emissions per unit of revenue. Each index also seeks to maintain the respective industry group weights of its underlying index.

The indices in this series use a reweighting methodology to address concerns around a number of dimensions: relative corporate carbon efficiency within an industry, public disclosure (or lack thereof) of emissions information by companies, and the overall impact of various types of industries (and therefore the urgency with which they decarbonize). The combination of levels of emissions and corporate disclosure practices makes this design unique.

Additionally, the construction is innovative because a company's weight adjustment in an index is determined with respect to a unique global comparison of its carbon levels. This process creates a classification group within each industry group, known as the "S&P Carbon Global Standard". The S&P Carbon Global Standard was developed specifically for these indices and allows a company to be assessed in accordance with global industry levels.

The indices use environmental data from Trucost (part of S&P Global) as their primary input for constituent eligibility and weighting.