How Corporate Emission Reduction Pledges Mislead

Major companies largely fail net zero climate pledge test

7 February 2022 (New Climate Institute)

“…[Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor found] the climate pledges of 25 of the world’s largest companies in reality only commit to reduce their emissions by 40% on average, not 100% as suggested by their ‘net zero’ and ‘carbon neutral’ claims…While none of the pledges have a high degree of integrity overall, Maersk came out on top, with reasonable integrity, followed by Apple, Sony and Vodafone with moderate integrity…

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Many company pledges are undermined by contentious plans to reduce emissions elsewhere, hidden critical information and accounting tricks…[T]he headline pledges of Amazon, Deutsche Telekom, Enel, GlaxoSmithKline, Google, Hitachi, IKEA, Vale, Volkswagen and Walmart have low integrity and those of Accenture, BMW Group, Carrefour, CVS Health, Deutsche Post DHL, E.ON SE, JBS, Nestlé, Novartis, Saint-Gobain and Unilever have very low integrity…Offsetting approaches are also undermining integrity. 24 of 25 companies will likely rely on offsetting credits, of varying quality. At least two thirds of the companies rely on removals from forests and other biological activities, which can easily be reversed by, for example, a forest fire…

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Promising examples of climate leadership were also identified. Google is developing innovative tools to procure high quality renewable energy in real-time; this is being picked up by other companies. Maersk and Deutsche Post are making major investments in decarbonisation technologies for transport and logistics. There is still ample potential for companies to replicate and scale up these emerging best practices…” click here for more

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