50% of the world’s largest public companies have net-zero targets

Here’s a note from Andreas Rasche:

Net Zero Tracker announced that now 50% of the world’s largest publicly-listed companies have net-zero targets. They assessed the 1,000th company with a net-zero target out of the overall list of the 2,000 largest firms worldwide.

This is great. However, at the same time quantity still rules over quality in net-zero target setting as the Net Zero Stocktake reveals.

▶ Only 4% of assessed net-zero commitments meet the UNFCCC “Starting Line” criteria (setting a specific target, coverage of all GHG across scopes, clear conditions for offsets, implement immediate emission-cutting measures, annual progress reporting)

▶ Only 13% of assessed net-zero targets specify quality conditions under which carbon offsets are to be used (implying that many low-quality offsets are included)

▶ Only 37% of net-zero targets fully cover Scope 3 emissions.

The distribution of targets across countries and industries is very uneven (see image below for country data). Around one-third of the world’s largest publicly-listed companies have not yet set any sort of emissions reduction target.

Good reminder ahead of COP28 UAE that it is not the mere existence of net-zero targets that matters but rather they way companies plan to reach net-zero.