Corporate 'Net Zero' BS is all the rage. Top Net Zero Corporates for greenwashing revealed

Monday, December 4, 2023

Corporate 'Net Zero' BS is all the rage. Top Net Zero Corporates for greenwashing revealed

Influence Map study: Top 5 net zero greenwash companies

New InfluenceMap research published 28 November finds that corporate net zero or similar targets are rarely matched by support for government climate policy, with 58% of almost 300 companies from the Forbes 2,000 list found to be at risk of “net zero greenwash” due to their policy engagement.

Chevron, Delta Air Lines, Duke Energy, ExxonMobil, Glencore International, Nippon Steel Corporation, Repsol, Stellantis, Southern Company, and Woodside Energy Group Ltd are in the top ten dirty greenwashers. They are among the 21.5% of companies assessed to be at significant risk of “net zero greenwash” due to their policy engagement.

The High Level Expert Group on Net Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities released its report to the UN Secretary-General at the UN climate talks, COP27, in Egypt in November 2022. The Influence Map uses this as guidance and standards for assessing companies. Read the Climate Citizen report of the launch.

From the transcript available on the Just Have A Think website accompanying this video.

"Net Zero’s the new buzz-phrase isn’t it? Not sure what it means, or maybe don’t care? Yeah, fair enough. Well, I’ll tell you anyway, cos it’s a doozy! Apparently, over the next decade or so, the human species will have so effectively reduced its greenhouse gas emissions, and developed methods of removing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, that by twenty-fifty the net effect will be that our planet’s atmosphere is literally receiving zero additional greenhouse gases as a result of our activity. Net-zero is all the rage in the business community – I mean look at all these references to it on their glossy websites. And when researchers for this report delved into the action plans of nearly three hundred top companies from the Fortune Two Thousand list, they did indeed find that…“aarrgh!”
"COP28 is relevant to this video though, simply because, over the years, it has morphed into an important interface between global political leadership and global commercial governance. The general idea is that governments and corporations agree upon workable legislation that can drive forward climate mitigation and adaptation measures, in a fair and just way, with particular emphasis on assisting developing nations to leapfrog fossil fuels and build their new national infrastructures on renewable technologies like wind and solar in order to meet the legally binding commitments made by almost every nation on the planet as part of the Paris Agreement back in twenty fifteen which, in the words of the United Nations aims “to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to one-point-five degrees Celsius.”
"So, how’s all that going then? Are the world’s largest corporations embracing the enormity of their corporate responsibility to apply fundamental root and branch changes to their organisations that will illuminate a brighter, more sustainable, “NET ZERO” pathway for the myriad smaller businesses around the world to follow? You’re not idiots are you, so you already know that the answer to that question is ‘of course not!’. But just how far off the mark are they?"

The Influence Map report concludes:

This report shows that many of the world’s largest companies have been quick to announce net zero or similar targets but have not aligned their policy engagement activities with policy to deliver the Paris Agreement. In the context of the UN “Integrity Matters” guidance, unsupportive policy engagement puts companies with net zero or similar targets at risk of “net zero greenwash.”
The UNFCCC’s “Recognition and Accountability Framework” is a welcome step towards collating the data required by investors and civil society to robustly assess corporate progress towards net zero. As this report demonstrates, accountability for corporate policy engagement is an essential focus area for the framework.
In its November 2023 public consultation submission to the UNFCCC, InfluenceMap highlighted the following key considerations which can be accessed in full on the consultation portal:
1.The current trend of incomplete disclosures on corporate climate policy engagement.
2.The need for corporate climate policy engagement reporting to be based on Science-Based Policy principles.
3.The importance of combining high quality disclosures with independent verification, InfluenceMap's proposed disclosure template, and guidance on methodology to verify disclosures.

Time for more corporates to stop greenwashing and set in place governance to reduce there emissions, and transparently report on their progress.

Cooking the Planet should not be a business option.