Welcome back to between bells Over the past several years,
we've heard companies pledged to be net zero in the coming years,
but according to an analysis published monday by nonprofit organizations,
New Climate Institute and Carbon Market Watch found these
pledges from major multinational firms are just big talk.
The climate pledges of the world's largest companies
plan to reduce carbon emissions by just 40%.
On average,
not the 100% percent as they were suggesting by their net zero claims.
This news comes at a time when corporations are under immense
pressure to reduce their environmental impact for more on this.
We're joined by yield do Fran policy officer at Carbon Market Watch.
Welcome to the show yield.
The study assessed the transparency of each of the
firm's climate pledges and gave them an integrity rating.
How did the analysis score each of these firms and where
did some of them land when it comes to these ratings?
Thanks for for having me.
So indeed this this analysis looks at
the transparency and the integrity of companies.
So are they serious about taking action on climate change?
Are they serious about reducing their emissions?
Are they actually going to reduce their own emissions or
are they going to pay somebody else to do it?
That's quite a different strategy,
a different way of approaching it And beyond that.
How are they communicating this? What are they telling their consumers?
And basically our results in the end is to say, well,
the targets are a lot less ambitious than they seem.
But the companies are still saying that they are
basically on track to achieve very high ambition levels and
reducing a lot more than they than they actually
are kind of using various tricks to hide that,
that lack of integrity.
And I was, we were looking at the low integrity list, I mean,
there's some huge companies on there.
We're talking about amazon google Volkswagen, I think, you know,
level was very low in
integrity. Normally when we hear from a company, hey, we're going that zero.
You don't question it. You believe them. You even applaud the move.
But according to this analysis, none of the multinational companies,
we found out to have high integrity overall,
none of them. What is the defense of these companies? Jill
Well, you know,
they're going to argue that the criteria for the
assessment are quite strict and that's that's absolutely true.
The criteria is strict and its strict because we have no time left.
We, we need these companies to take serious action.
And these companies are saying that they're taking serious action.
And so if they want to say, we're on the path to basically tackle this climate crisis,
we're doing the right thing.
They should be doing the right thing.
If they're not on this trajectory,
they should stop basically lying to their consumers or misleading
them with these advertisements and and correct what they're communicating.
So that's why there are these two dimensions, that companies need to both
increase their integrity, increase their ambition.
They need to set targets that cover all of
their emissions and not just a small portion,
which is what many companies are doing and
they need to adapt the way they communicate
on these targets to make sure that what
they're saying is what they're actually doing.
So according to the report,
the 25 firms evaluated for roughly 5% of global greenhouse-gas emissions.
Again, global, that's a huge number, 5%.
How does this impact the near-term goals of so many climate
pledges that many of these companies and governments have made?
Well, you know, we hope that this can really act as a wake up call.
Um, the objective here is not to just, you know,
bash companies and say everybody's doing the wrong thing.
The objective is really to also provide positive lessons and
there are some companies that are doing the right thing,
not
in every front, but for each company or for most companies,
there are some elements that they're doing right.
And I think
companies can really take this report look at it and, and and kind of
take the good examples and learn from each other um,
and and correct what what they're doing at the moment.
So it's not a sort of kind of definitive assessment and of saying, yeah, well,
everything is going wrong.
Um,
it's really about learning from where we are taking
stock and and improving what we're what we're doing.
And so hopefully that's how companies are gonna are gonna be approaching it.
So almost all of these evaluated companies are likely to rely on carbon offsets.
Why is this move being criticized by so many?
Yeah, carbon offsets are quite, quite a controversial um, strategy,
basically a carbon offset means that the company
is gonna pay somebody else to reduce emissions
and count those reductions towards their own targets.
So if they say for example,
they're going to reduce their emissions by 100 tons of you to this year and
they only reduce 50 and then they're gonna pay somebody else to reduce 50.
So it's like being somebody else to do your to do your homework basically.
Um, and this is controversial because it's in the long term, it's not,
it's not the right solution, right?
We need everyone to address their own emissions to take responsibility
for their own emissions and would be a lot more transparent,
a lot more easy for consumers in the
public to kind of understand where companies stand if
instead of offsetting their emissions and communicating these
net targets that are very hard to understand,
companies would just kind of say,
these are my missions and this is how much I've
reduced and this is kind of my climate impact.
Instead of making these different um, accounting tricks, can we,
can we talk about that very briefly, because according to the analysis,
many of these pledges were undermined by like you
mentioned accounting tricks or hidden hidden critical information.
Do you think these climate pledges by these companies are
just smoke and mirrors or is there actual work,
good work being done here?
Yeah, there's a bit of everything. Um, honestly, there, there is good work as well.
It's not just bad news, the many companies are taking some some significant action.
The main issue is that a they're not doing enough and two,
they're exaggerating their impact.
So again, if the company says I'm not able to do more,
then they should not be saying that they're doing more
because this is really fundamentally incorrect and misleading the consumers.
It's like lying to their, to the public and to their consumers.
Um,
and so it's really important that the
companies do more but also communicate better.
And one of the tricks that we're seeing, for example, in in in the assessment,
As many companies setting targets of saying, yeah,
we're going to be net zero by 2050 for example.
And then when you look at The coverage of that target,
actually they're excluding like 94,
of their emissions.
So they set targets on the very,
very small amount of their climate impact and
then they focus on that for their communication,
which is very, very misleading
Jill I'm running out of time,
but I do want to ask you do these companies need to pivot and
actually commit to a 100% net zero emission plan to save the planet?
Yeah, I think companies definitely need to commit to a very high
climate target that addresses their own emissions.
So covering all of the emissions that
they are responsible for not excluding emissions,
not setting vague net target, not relying heavily on offset.
This is really a key for for the future
and learning from the mistakes that we're highlighting here.
She'll do Foreign Policy officer at Carbon Market Watch joining us from Belgium.
Thank you so much for your time, joe. We appreciate it.