A decade ago, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) was launched with the goal of mobilising the private sector for climate action.

Today, it stands as the largest and most influential validator of corporate climate targets, having confirmed the 2030 goals of around 5,000 companies.

Yet new analysis reveals a leniency within the initiative. According to the 2024 Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor (CCRM), the emissions reduction commitments of 51 major global corporates are falling short of what’s needed at the global level.

Surprisingly, most of these companies received SBTi validation for their targets to be aligned with the 1.5ºC warming limit backed by governments in the Paris climate agreement. 

What explains this discrepancy?  

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Currently, the SBTi’s 2030 target validations often overlook substantial shares of companies’ full value chain emissions by excluding upstream and downstream value chain emissions, known as “scope 3”. Scope 3 emissions account for the majority of corporate greenhouse gas footprints, sometimes exceeding 95%.  

The SBTi requires companies to set a near-term target for scope 3 emissions, but only when those emissions account for more than 40% of their greenhouse gas footprint. However, these targets do not have to cover all scope 3 emissions and only need to be aligned with global warming of 2ºC or well below 2ºC, not 1.5ºC.  

While the SBTi checks whether companies have set a scope 3 target, the initiative does not provide a temperature classification for these scope 3 targets – only for companies’ scope 1 and 2 targets, which apply to direct operations and their energy use.

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This important nuance is often missed by the public, as many companies nonetheless prominently advertise their scope 3 climate targets as science-based.  

Take Fast Retailing, owner of clothing chain Uniqlo, for example. The company pledges to reduce its operational emissions (scope 1 and 2) by 90% by 2030, which represent just 5% of its total emissions.

It also commits to reduce its emissions from procured goods and materials (scope 3) by 20% by the end of this decade. However, upstream emissions in the fashion sector need to be reduced by around 40% to be aligned with global warming of 1.5ºC.

Whereas the SBTi validated the target for operational emissions as “1.5ºC temperature aligned”, the initiative did not provide a temperature classification for the scope 3 target.

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Yet Fast Retailing also describes this target as “science-based”. This pattern is not unique to Fast Retailing but common across companies validated by the SBTi. 

As a voluntary organisation primarily funded by third parties, the SBTi relies on the voluntary participation of companies. Its methodologies need to accommodate the perspectives of various stakeholders.

This may explain why the SBTi’s methodologies for 2030 targets are not necessarily always aligned with the scientific consensus on limiting global warming to 1.5ºC.

However, addressing the lack of stringency in scope 3 targets is key to ensuring that the SBTi can effectively drive corporate climate ambition. 

Offsetting controversy 

Despite the large degree of leniency that already exists in scope 3 standards today, there is a significant risk that the rules will be loosened even further.

Just this week, the SBTi Board of Trustees issued a unilateral and possibly illegitimate decision to revise scope 3 standards to allow for carbon offsetting.

This decision is not based on scientific insights but comes after a lot of pressure on the SBTi from supporters of carbon markets. SBTi staff have already reacted strongly to voice their discontent with the decision and the process. 

Introducing offsetting in the SBTi scope 3 standards could effectively nullify already insufficient targets, reversing years of incremental progress that SBTi and its member companies have fought so hard to achieve. 

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Allowing companies to offset their emissions could also deprive their suppliers – who are often located in the Global South – of much needed financial and technical support for their own emissions reduction efforts. 

Climate target-setting has become standard practice in the corporate world – progress the SBTi helped foster over the past decade. But the recent decision by the SBTi Board of Trustees on offsetting could bring any further advances to a halt.

Reversing this decision and tightening the rules for scope 3 targets would be the next step to propel corporate climate ambition forward. 

This article argues that the SBTI’s rules are too lax. We have also published a comment piece arguing they are too stringent.

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It must be said: it is impossible to imagine Nigeria’s path to decarbonization without imagining it being fully lined with trees. There is a critical need to address deforestation, transform agricultural practices, and harness nature-based solutions like afforestation and reforestation if Nigeria were serious about reaching net zero by 2060 – a commitment the Nigerian government made at COP26 in Glasgow.

Nigeria is an oil giant in Africa, and unsurprisingly, most of its plans on decarbonization focus on the transition to renewable energy. Previously, Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan had not considered the country’s emissions from the agriculture, forests, and land-use (AFOLU) sector.

However, our new report, which looks at different pathways for Nigeria to reach its net-zero-by-2060 goal, found Nigeria’s AFOLU sector has contributed the largest sectoral emissions at 30%, compared to the oil and gas sector at 29%. So while it is good that Nigeria has set its eyes on transforming the energy sector, it is also true that only in a renewable energy scenario that also transforms the AFOLU sector can Nigeria achieve its commitment of net zero by 2060 which will allow Nigeria’s economy to grow alongside reaching its sustainability goals.

“Two steps forward, two steps back” – Governments off course for forest protection target

One of the main drivers of Nigeria’s AFOLU emissions is land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF). The last decade has seen relentless deforestation in Nigeria, with Global Forest Watch data revealing that from 2010 to 2019, Nigeria lost 86,700 hectares of tropical forest. Alarming as this may be, without immediate action, an additional 25% of our remaining forests could vanish by 2060. The cause of deforestation is a confluence of different factors, including the population’s lack of access to electricity and increasing poverty rates.

The stark reality is that nearly one in three people in the country lack access to electricity. This energy disparity leads many to rely on traditional, polluting methods for energy generation, such as burning wood. Additionally, less than a quarter of Nigerians have access to “clean cooking,” forcing the majority—primarily women—to rely on inefficient and polluting cookstoves, using wood for fuel.

This reliance on wood for energy generation and fuel is a significant driver of deforestation in Nigeria, and is also a major contributing factor to residential emissions. Improving access to clean cooking is not only pivotal in reducing emissions but also a crucial step towards mitigating deforestation.

According to the World Bank, four in ten Nigerians – or about 80 million people – were living in poverty in 2019. A report by Mongabay revealed that with lack of available jobs, Nigerian forests are being lost to farming and logging. Here, the message is clear: we can only save our forests and be truly on our way to net zero if we address poverty and social inequalities.

Reversing deforestation is not an impossible feat, but it demands a commitment to reforestation efforts – a 2.3% annual reforestation rate – and addressing other root causes of the problem including access to electricity, job creation, and a reduction in poverty.  With reforestation efforts, Nigeria can not only halt the degradation but also bolster its carbon sink capacity, a crucial element in achieving the net-zero goal by 2060.

The commitment to net zero is not just an environmental pledge but a blueprint for economic growth and prosperity that aligns with our broader sustainability goals. It is time for Nigeria to seize the opportunity and lead the charge towards a greener, more resilient future.

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The European Union has sought to be a climate leader and Germany has set itself more ambitious targets than the bloc as a whole, but in many countries politics and the economic crisis have pushed the climate crisis down the agenda.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, aims to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 65% by 2030 compared with 1990. Last year its CO2 levels were already 40% below the 1990 level, but the new reports said that was not enough.

“The expected overall reduction is probably overestimated,” Hans-Martin Henning, the chairman of a council of climate experts that advises the government said in a statement on Tuesday.

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Failing net zero plan

The German government has ordered 130 measures in various sectors. The buildings and transport sectors in particular are failing to implement them, the council of government climate advisers’ report said.

The buildings sector is expected to be 35 million tonnes of CO2 short of target by 2030, while the transport sector is expected to have excess emissions of between 117 million and 191 million tonnes compared with the government target.

Tuesday’s advisers’ report coincided with another from the UBA that found Germany cannot become climate neutral by 2045 on the basis of planned and existing government climate policy.

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It drafted two scenarios, one for current policy and one for planned, that found only 82% and 86% of targeted emissions cuts compared to 1990, would be achieved.

“According to the current status, Germany would still emit 229 million tonnes of climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions in the target year 2045,” the UBA report found.

Government promises

The economy ministry said policies it has implemented since the current government took office in late 2021 would cut around 80% of the surplus CO2 emissions it said were a legacy of policies by the previous government. It also said the coalition government would examine the council’s findings to try to get the country on target.

Under pressure from the pro-business FDP party, the ruling coalition in June agreed to dilute a bill to phase out oil and gas heating systems from 2024. The changes would contribute to the building sector missing its targets, the report found.

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The transport sector accounts for two thirds of the emissions remaining to be cut, the UBA report showed.

The council said assumptions made by the transport ministry on the effectiveness of the planned and already implemented measures, such as a discounted national rail ticket, a CO2 surcharge on truck tolls and increased working from home, were also optimistic.

“Private vehicle individual transport is not addressed, so to speak. And that is ultimately a gap in the transport programme,” Brigitte Knopf, deputy chairwoman of the council, told a news conference presenting the report findings on Tuesday.

The transport ministry was not immediately available for comment.

In response to the reports, non-profit group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) said an emergency climate programme was needed, especially for the transport sector.

It said it would take legal action to try to enforce a speed limit on German motorways, which currently have no limits on how fast motorists can drive, and to reduce government subsidies that harm the environment, such as tax relief for company cars.

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At COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, we proposed a clear set of principles for delivering on net zero pledges. The Hleg ‘standard’ seized on existing progress while also addressing the areas that badly need cleaning up.

The goal was to fix what was broken while energising what works. Its a challenging dual task, but what in the world of climate action isn’t double-sided in this way?.

Companies cannot claim, for instance, to be aligned with net zero while being a driving force for long-lived new fossil fuel infrastructure.

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Nor can they be seen to have a credible commitment if they pack carbon offsets into their near-term emissions calculations. 

Our recommendations can be boiled down to two core principles: absolute emissions need to fall right away, and businesses, financial institutions, cities and regions need to use their significant influence outside of direct emissions to enable a just and sustainable pathway to achieve nearly zero emissions in just a few decades. 

No, it isn’t a small task. But we’re firmly past the mid-point of 2023, and I think it is fair to say that something feels different about corporate climate action. There’s next phase for net zero, and we’re seeing it take shape.

The first notable trend is the continued coalescence of what has previously been a broad and sometimes daunting array of differing standards, guidelines, alliances and initiatives around the solid centre of gravity provided by last year’s Hleg report.

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For instance, the ‘Race to Zero’ campaign, which has successfully brought a vast number of companies to the startling line, was recently announced as due to fold into the UNFCCC’s ‘Recognition and Accountability’ framework, with the details due to be announced soon. 

The coalescing of standards was a key finding of Oxford University’s 2023 update of their sizable net-zero-tracking database. “The [net zero tracker] also evaluated the evolving voluntary standards landscape, particularly the convergence of the ecosystem of voluntary standards, guidelines and accountability frameworks, which have emerged to steer targets and plans toward the requirements of science”.

We are not at the net zero singularity quite yet – they also found inconsistencies among those who judge the quality of net zero targets, particularly around issues of offsetting, equitable target setting, financing and corrosive lobbying.

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A report just released by authors at Columbia University digs into financing and lobbying. Bottom-up design of voluntary initiatives have resulted in an inflated perception of climate action.

Metrics and targets are misaligned from what we know is needed to limit warming. Their findings are a dire listing of missed opportunities and fabricated success. We can’t afford those indulgences when heat records are broken four days in a row. 

The Columbia report also lays out a pathway for those in control of large amounts of capital to both align internally with net zero commitments but to also use their incredible power and influence to move beyond the spreadsheets and the megatonnes. They can move, if they want to.

As we move into the second half of the year, a clear narrative around offsets has emerged. There is a growing trend of companies opting to focus on real emissions reductions rather than carbon offsets.

Last year, an investigation by Bloomberg listed companies moving away from carbon offsets, including Lyft, Vattenfall, Etsy, Delivery Hero and Credit Suisse. Other examples include British construction company BAM, Airlines Easyjet and JetBlue, Ben & Jerrys, Lendlease, Ikea, Australian property fund manager EG, the global copper industry body, and major tech company Atlassian. 

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Just recently, Nestle announced they’ll no longer lean on claiming to be ‘carbon neutral’, and that they’ll move away from offsets too. Though companies like Nestle still secret their offsetting within their own value chain (‘insetting’), these are still positive steps towards a situation where we can look at the task of rapid emissions reductions more squarely in the face.

And another  signal of the shifting tide was the recent release of Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI)’s Claims Code, which essentially bars the use of offsets to falsely claim the neutralisation of ongoing company emissions.

“Carbon credits purchased and retired to make a VCMI Claim are not used for offsets”, Ana Carolina Szklo, VCMI’s Technical Director, told Environmental Finance. 

The number of legal cases over alleged corporate greenwash is on the rise (Grantham Institute)

The standards are tightening and the loopholes are dissipating. And those digging their heels in face regulation and legal action against greenwashing that doubled in 2021 and 2022. 

Are we in the next phase of net zero? We can’t say it with confidence quite yet. But the game has changed in a material way since the release of our guidelines last year.

What we know with high confidence is that the burden now falls onto companies to enact change that results in immediate, noticeable reductions in their climate footprint, while they pay increased attention to the way they wield their power outside of the company.

The cheats corporations have used to avoid facing the problem head on? They’re on the chopping block – that, we can say for sure.

Amanda Starbuck is Program Director at the Sunrise Project, and was a member of the UN Secretary General High-Level Expert Group on Net Zero Pledges. 

The post With corporate climate cheats on the chopping block, net zero is growing up appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UAE has been discussing an initiative, provisionally named the Global Decarbonization Alliance, alongside a group of company executives.

The alliance is expected to set a goal to reach net zero emissions from extracting oil and gas by 2050, according to a leaked letter from Cop28’s energy transition lead reported by the Financial Times.

But Romain Ioualalen, a campaigner at Oil Change International, told Climate Home the initiative was just a “recycling” of similar programmes which he says have not amounted to much action.

Most emissions ignored

Campaigners have also criticised the focus on just the emissions from producing oil and gas rather than the much larger emissions from the use of fossil fuels.

Roughly 80-95% of the oil and gas sector’s emissions are from the use of their products but the initiative would only target those from extracting them.

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Producing fossil fuels damages the atmosphere as gas leaks into the atmosphere or is burned as a waste product. Many of the vehicles and machinery used in the industry are polluting too.

Similar existing alliances have the same focus. These include the US-led net zero producers forum (NZPF), the energy importers and exporters on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and the industry-run oil and gas climate initiative.

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Ioualalen said the proposed alliance is another example of a “tried and true tactic” of the fossil fuel industry to carry on business as usual.

“They are talking about everything but the one thing that really matters in driving down emissions, which is reducing oil and gas production,” he said. “As long as these are not the terms of discussion, it can’t be described as a legitimate effort”.

The International Energy Agency has found that fossil fuel production should drop by a factor of nearly four between 2020 and 2050 if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5C.

Denmark and Costa Rica have led an effort to get governments to end oil and gas production but only a handful of fossil fuel-producing nations have signed up.

No announcement

The Financial Times reported the alliance would be discussed in a workshop taking place this week in the UAE.

On Wednesday the Cop28 president-designate Sultan Al Jaber hosted a meeting with executives from fossil fuels, financial and tech companies in the UAE.

Al Jaber called on the oil and gas industry to work collectively to reach net zero by 2050 and net zero methane emissions by 2030.

On the sidelines of #UAEClimateTech, #DrSultanAlJaber chaired a decarbonization roundtable.

The President-Designate highlighted the importance of collaboration on the decarbonization pathways and discussed tangible solutions to address the urgent need for emissions reduction. pic.twitter.com/lk4wG7jhIW

— COP28 UAE (@COP28_UAE) May 11, 2023

He also remarked on the importance of “building up an integrated creative partnership”, but stopped short of launching a formal alliance.

According to a source with knowledge of discussions, the plans are still being developed with no clear timeline for an announcement.

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The Cop28 chief has repeated several times that the oil and gas industry should be invited to the negotiating table.

Launching his agenda last week, Al Jaber said that he sees a role for fossil fuels “in the foreseeable future”, calling for a phase-out of “fossil fuel emissions” rather than “fossil fuels”.

That opens the door to the continued use of fossil fuels as long as their emissions are captured by carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Industry’s involvement

The Cop28 team has been developing plans for the initiative with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a group of over 200 companies including some of the largest oil and gas producers.

Peter Bakker, the group’s CEO, wrote last week that “WBCSD has been in close contact with the UAE Cop28 team to help shape the agenda”.

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He added the organisation’s efforts focused on a “big push for decarbonization action in the oil and gas and hard-to-abate sectors through the Global Decarbonization Alliance”.

The WBCSD told Climate Home the Cop28 team is currently in the process of developing plans to ensure a comprehensive approach.

The Cop28 team said it would not comment on leaked reports.

Deja-vu

The leaked outline of the proposed Cop28 alliance bears many similarities to existing net zero initiatives for the fossil fuels industry.

In April 2021 the United States launched the Net-Zero Producers Forum, alongside major fossil fuels-producing nations Canada, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The initiative aimed to “develop pragmatic net-zero emission strategies”. This could include stopping methane leaks and flaring, deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies, and diversification from reliance on hydrocarbon revenues, according to the original statement.

Underwhelming outcomes

After the initial announcement, the initiative went quiet for nearly a year. Energy ministers from the five participating countries re-launched the forum again in March 2022, when they held an inaugural meeting in Houston, the USA’s oil and gas capital.

Fossil fuel executives from Chevron, Saudi Aramco and Equinor also attended the meeting. The main outcome was the creation of a working group to find solutions to phase out unabated fossil fuel emissions.

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Two months later the United Arab Emirates joined as the sixth member of the initiative. There has been no public mention of the activities of the Forum since then and its lead, the US Energy Department, did not respond to a request for comment.

Another country-led coalition took shape at Cop27 last November. The US, European Union, Japan, Canada, Norway, Singapore, and the United Kingdom committed again to reducing emissions associated with fossil energy production, with a particular focus on methane.

Industry’s own alliance

The fossil fuel industry has separately been working on its own alliance. In 2014 twelve major oil and gas companies set up the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative.

Like the Cop28 initiative, it sets signatories a target of reaching net zero emissions “from operations under their control”. But it does not set a target date.

Gas flaring in an oil extraction plant. Photo: (blake.thornberry)

The emissions from producing oil and gas can be significant. Recent satellite data reported by the Guardian revealed that Turkmenistan’s oil and gas infrastructure leaked more greenhouse gas than the whole of the United Kingdom in 2022.

While some campaigners dismiss it as a distraction, others like Clean Air Task Force’s methane director Jonathan Banks, support action to reduce oil and gas’s direct emissions.

He told Climate Home News last April: “Reducing oil and gas methane is by far the simplest and biggest thing we could do in the next few years to dramatically reduce global warming. It’s not rocket science. We don’t have to build any fancy new technology. It’s basically plumbing.”

The post Cop28 moots oil and gas initiative despite greenwash accusations appeared first on Climate Home News.

But the island is important in its own right too. It is the 22nd biggest emitter in the world and is highly at risk from storms and sea level rise.

Taiwan’s government has made two big moves on climate recently, but these might not guarantee success unless the country cleans up its biggest source of emissions: industry.

Key moves

First, on December 28, it allocated US$30 billion for climate investments up to 2030.

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Known as the 12 key strategies, this money will be spent on renewable energy, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, energy efficiency, mobilising lifestyle change and making the energy transition fair to workers.

Then, on January 10, the government passed the climate change response act. This made Taiwan the 18th country to set a legally binding net zero target. It aims to reach that target by 2050.

It introduced a carbon levy, bulked-up the country’s institutional capacity to adapt to cliamte change and established governing structures and funds for a just transition.

Industrial footprint

This is all progress. But it’s still insufficient to ensure that Taiwan meets its climate pledges.

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The biggest failure is that the 12 key strategies do not have a coherent action plan to decarbonise industry – despite the sector producing more than half of the country’s emissions.

Instead of a specific strategy, measures to cut emissions in difficult industries are just scattered across plans on hydrogen, energy efficiency, carbon capture and other areas.

On top of this, the funding isn’t guided by mission-oriented principles. It should focus on speeding up the market readiness of hydrogen – but it only provides $150m for the technology.

There’s flaws in the climate change response act too. It doesn’t set up an independent advisory body on climate, like the UK and at least 21 other nations have.

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It makes companies pay only part of the social cost of their emissions through the carbon levy. The proposed reforms of fossil fuel subsidies were scrapped because of the energy crisis and the finance ministry blocked broader tax reforms.

Finally, the introduction of climate litigation was blocked because of the judicial and administrative system’s lack of familiarity with the concept.

Carbon pricing

But there were wins for climate campaigners too. The criteria for carbon offsets were tightened in the carbon levy scheme and the share of revenues which goes back to large emitters was limited.

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The European Union’s proposal to tax polluting goods at the border from countries without carbon prices helped Taiwanese climate campaigners.

Taiwan is reliant on exports and the EU is a major customer. So polluting industries softened their traditional opposition to carbon pricing.

But industry is still lobbying for low levy rates, loose offset rules and subsidies.

So the government must develop more policies – like carbon contracts for diference and purchase commitments – to help industry transition to climate-friendly technologies.

The G7 group of big, wealthy countries is trying to speed up the cleaning up of industry through what it calls a climate club.

Those countries must set up hubs to help share knowledge with big manufacturers like Taiwan.

The post Taiwan’s failure to clean up industry endangers its net zero pledge appeared first on Climate Home News.

With very few governments updating and improving their climate plans in 2022, the Mexican government’s initiative was celebrated at Cop27, with US climate envoy John Kerry even saying the document was “one of the most outstanding contributions among the G20 countries”.

During a public event with the Mexican delegation, Kerry called it a “huge significant shift from where Mexico was even last year at Cop26 in Glasgow” and later told the closing plenary that the country is “significantly strengthening its 2030 target”.

But a new analysis from Climate Action Tracker (CAT) now suggests the plan will still lead to more emissions than the previous government’s nationally determined contribution, which was published in 2016.

Political risk analyst Carlos Ramirez told Climate Home that the country’s foreign affairs minister, Marcelo Ebrard, was trying to position himself as climate-friendly in order to try and secure his party’s nomination for the next presidential election.

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Mexico, a country of 130 million, and Indonesia are the only two G20 countries not to have set net zero targets. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policies have favoured state-owned oil company Pemex over private renewables companies.

Accounting trick

CAT analyst Maria Jose de Villafranca Casas told Climate Home that the new plan was “slightly better” than a 2020 version, also published under Obrador’s government.

But the 2020 version was revoked by a judge for being less ambitious than the 2016 version. The judge ruled that, as Mexico has enshrined the Paris agreement in its domestic law, each plan must be more ambitious than the last.

The new 2022 plan is still less ambitious than the 2016 one, de Villafranca Casas said.

At first glance, it looks more ambitous. The 2016 one targets a 22% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The new one aims for 30-35% cuts. Both reductions are against an estimate of what emissions would be if no action was taken, called a ‘business as usual baseline’.

But the baselines are different. The 2016 one targets emission cuts from a lower baseline. This makes it harder to reduce emissions compared to it.

In absolute terms, the 2016 plan aims for lower emissions than the new one. The old target was 757 MtCO2e by 2030 while the new one is 786–863 MtCO2e. Both plans envision emissions rising from today’s levels until at least 2030.

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Da Villafranca Casas also accused the government of “creative accounting”. She said the new plan leaves forests, which suck in carbon, out of its baseline. This makes it higher. But it allows these forest carbon sinks to be included in its emissions figures. “While technically allowed, this approach is not transparent,” she said.

She said there was “a good possibility” that the new climate plan will be challenged in the courts like the 2020 one was.

Bid for popularity

Political risk analyst Carlos Ramirez told Climate Home that foreign affairs minister Ebrard was promoting “propaganda” to increase his popularity.

“[Ebrard] went to [Cop27 to] promise a seires of goals which look great on paper but when you come back to Mexico and see what they are doing, there’s no action”, he said.

“The president doesn’t care about climate change. He doesn’t care about the environment. He’s an old guard politican who sees oil as the main energy source and has basically cancelled all options for renewables”, Ramirez added.

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Kerry has made several visits to Mexico to push climate action. Cop26 president Alok Sharma has also been to Mexico to call for it to improve its climate plan. “Kerry can come 100 times,” Ramirez said, “at the end of the day, what I’ve seen is nothing on climate change”.

There is a presidential election in 2024. Current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is very popular. He is not allowed to run again but his chosen successor is likely to win.

The two front-runners, Ramirez said, are Ebrard and the mayor of Mexico City Claudia Sheinbaum. She is a physicist and contributor to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. In Mexico City, she has promoted rooftop solar and cycle and public transport infrastructure.

Ramirez said Sheinbaum may make Mexico more devoted to climate action. But it would be difficult to overturn Lopez-Obrador’s pro fossil fuel policies, particularly as he will remain popular and powerful even after stepping down as president.

The post Mexico’s new climate plan is worse than its old one, analysts say appeared first on Climate Home News.

After months of consultations, the 16-member anti-greenwashing group chaired by Canadian former environment minister Catherine McKenna found that “net zero is entirely incompatible with continued investment in fossil fuels”.

Thousands of big businesses and cities have declared commitments to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement climate targets.

“Too many of these net zero pledges represent little more than empty slogans and hype,” said McKenna at a packed launch event at Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. “You cannot be a net zero leader while continuing to build or invest in fossil fuel supply.”

UN secretary general António Guterres said he had “a message to fossil fuel companies and their financial enablers”.

“So-called ‘net-zero pledges’ that exclude core products and activities are poisoning our planet. They must thoroughly review their pledges and align them with this new guidance,” said Guterres.

“Let’s tell it like it is. Using bogus ‘net-zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible. It is rank deception. This toxic cover-up could push our world over the climate cliff. The sham must end.”

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Oil majors like Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and Eni claim to be aligned with net zero but continue to drill for more hydrocarbons.

A senior UN official said that “sometimes” fossil fuel firms’ net zero pledges were “part of marketing efforts or communication efforts”. They added: “If you’re going to say that, you better make sure it’s true.

Stop funding fossils

As well as fossil fuel companies, the taskforce said that anyone who invests in new fossil fuel production is not net-zero aligned. That includes cities, regions and finance firms.

This is a stronger line than the UN’s Race to Zero, which only says “corporations and investors must restrict the development, financing, and facilitation of new fossil fuel assets”.

In June 2022, the Race to Zero said that this “includes no new coal projects” without mentioning oil and gas. Under legal advice this could expose members to competition lawsuits, it removed even this stipulation from the website.

Krista Halttunen researches oil company strategies at Imperial College London. She said that no fossil fuel company has agreed to stop investing in new fossil fuels, so none met the net zero criteria.

She told Climate Home that these guidelines “will be a good test. Which are the companies that are ready to transition?”

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In May 2021, the International Energy Agency found that no new fossil fuel projects were compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C. An update to its net zero by 2050 scenario last month noted that reduced Russian oil and gas output might make space for some limited investment in infrastructure with a quick payback, but did not radically change the picture.

In March 2022, the Science-Based Targets Initiative stopped accepting climate commitments of fossil fuel companies for validation. A spokesperson said this was a temporary move, while it works on criteria that the industry and scientists can accept.

Lobbying limits

The McKenna taskforce’s recommendations covered all businesses, cities and regions. It said that net zero plans should include interim targets every five years starting in 2025 and count emissions from the end use of products (scope 3). Firms should align their lobbying with climate commitments.

Halttunen said that lobbying was particularly important. For example, Shell and BP are members of the American Petroleum Institute (API), which lobbies against climate policies in the USA.

InfluenceMap’s Will Aitchison said this was a “watershed moment when it comes to corporate lobbying on climate policy, which has long stymied action from governments”.

“These recommendations break new ground in setting expectations not just for companies, but also for powerful third parties like industry associations,” he said.

The taskforce said that carbon offsets should be of a high quality and should only be used as a last resort, after a firm’s own emissions have been reduced.

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This early failure in the global race to net zero emissions (a balance between CO₂ emitted and absorbed) may foreshadow backtracking by other target-setters, indicating that pledges to cease contributing to climate change demand greater scrutiny.

Since 2012, when Copenhagen launched its plan to become the first carbon-neutral city in the world by 2025, the city has enjoyed international recognition and a significant branding boost. It expects to reduce emissions by 80% by, for instance, switching its power and district heating systems to biomass, wind and solar, renovating buildings to make them energy efficient and improving public transport.

The remaining emissions were supposed to be mopped up by installing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at the local waste-to-energy plant. This would remove CO₂ from the smokestack before it is emitted to the atmosphere, isolating it for later underground storage.

But at the beginning of August 2022, the semi-public utility Amager Resource Center (ARC) which manages the plant announced it was ineligible for national CCS funding. This funding, it argued, would otherwise have enabled them to capture CO₂ generated by burning the city’s waste. And so, Copenhagen has given up on its pledge.

Cities such as Glasgow and Helsinki, countries like Sweden and the UK, and companies including IKEA and Apple have made similar pledges to be net zero by 2030, 2045 or 2050. This gives the impression that sufficient measures to address climate change are in the pipeline.

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Yet various reports and studies suggest that these pledges often skimp on important details, by failing to include progress reports or specify the emissions they target. Critics have warned that the idea of net zero may only serve to greenwash reputations and diminish the urgency around decarbonisation.

Copenhagen is unlikely to be the last to renege on its net zero pledge. The city’s example of relying on immature technology and external funding indicates how similar climate plans might disintegrate in future.

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Faith in technology

Copenhagen’s experience highlights two problems which could scupper other net zero strategies. First, the city’s reliance on immature technology.

Copenhagen’s plan to reach net zero emissions did not always include CCS. When the city announced its 2025 goal in 2012, the Danish parliament had just rejected an application from Swedish energy company Vattenfall to deploy CCS at its coal power plant in northern Jutland. Danish politicians wanted to monitor experiences with CCS abroad before allowing it in Denmark.

Instead, in 2012 Copenhagen’s net zero plan relied on the expectation of reducing the energy-to-waste plant’s emissions by recycling more plastic waste and increasing the ratio of organic waste (since it would count as carbon neutral). But when the third and final road map for Copenhagen’s transition was presented in 2021, it included a shortfall of 430,000 tonnes of CO₂.

Alongside other measures, CCS was – in line with new national policy – supposed to be installed at the plant to bridge the gap by cutting 390,000 tonnes of CO₂. The utility managing the plant suggested the technology could capture up to 500,000 tonnes.

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Copenhagen is not alone in including CCS in its climate strategy. Neighbouring capitals Oslo and Stockholm expect to reach net zero with it too. Denmark’s national climate strategy expects CCS to cut between 3.5 million tonnes and 8 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2030.

Despite the faith invested in it, carbon capture technology has a poor track record. A new study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis think tank found that CCS projects tend to underperform on their emission reduction targets.

Dedicated investment in carbon storage technology has been sluggish too. As a result, CCS is largely used to extend the shelf life of fossil fuels, as captured CO₂ can be injected into oil wells to extract additional oil. These and other issues were reported to municipal leaders in Copenhagen as substantial risks to the 2025 goal.

Lack of accountability

The second problem concerns the question of accountability. Who is ultimately responsible for Copenhagen’s failure to meet its net zero target? When the utility ARC first announced its plan to deploy CCS at its waste-to-energy plant in 2021, it counted on external funding and a supportive policy framework to do so.

Now, the head of the city’s technology and environment committee criticises national politicians for knowingly setting financial criteria which the utility cannot meet, hindering the city’s road to climate neutrality. And so, the baton of responsibility is passed.

Emissions targets must be based on credible measures which are within the powers of those pledging them. There must be clear ways to assign accountability if those plans fail. When organisations boast of pledges which ultimately depend on the actions of others to succeed, the public is right to question their validity.

Copenhagen’s mayor suggested the city may still reach climate neutrality in 2026, 2027 or 2028. Yet this case shows how easily net zero plans can fall apart.

It reveals the dangers of the current uncoordinated approach to reaching net zero, in which every organisation is free to set its own eye-catching pledge without fully accounting for its success. What we need is for political and corporate decision-makers to present credible plans for the necessary deep decarbonisation of society.

This article was produced by The Conversation and republished under a creative commons licence.

Kirstine Lund Christiansen is a PhD fellow in political ecology at the University of Copenhagen. Inge-Merete Hougaard is a postdoctoral fellow in political ecology at Lund University.

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According to Net Zero Tracker, only South Sudan has a more ambitious net zero date than 2035 and, as a developing country, its 2030 target is highly dependent on international finance.

The target was set based on analysis by a group of independent economists from the Finnish climate change panel. They worked out what Finland’s fair share was of the 420 GT of carbon dioxide that the world can emit and still have a two-thirds chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

The panel based this fair share on Finland’s share of the global population, its ability to pay to reduce emissions and its historic responsiblity for causing climate change. It is believed to be the first target to have been set in this way.

Finland’s environment minister Emma Kari told Climate Home it was “very important” that the target was set with researchers and people from the climate science community. She added: “High income countries have to take a progressive and active role when it comes to tackling climate change.”

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Most developed countries including European Union (EU) and the USA have set 2050 net zero targets. The Finnish analysis found that Germany and the EU should reach net zero in the early to mid-2030s.

Asked if the EU should set an earlier target date, Kari said targets “should be based on climate science, on the Paris agreement… if the target is not compatible with the Paris Agreement… then we have to turn it up”.

Kari described Finland’s target as “ambitious but achievable” and said that it has broad cross-party support in Finland. Kari is a Green Party minister in a coalition of five centre-to-leftwing parties.

Whether Finland meets its climate targets will largely depend on its forests, which cover three-quarters of its land area. Last week, Statistics Finland released figures which showed that these forests had, for the first time, released more greenhouse gases than they absorbed.

Finland’s emissions without land use, land use change and forestry (blue), with it (orange) and emissions just from it (purple). (Photo: Statistics Finland)

Emissions from deforestation have been rising over the last decade, cancelling out emissions reductions from energy as the country moves away from fossil fuels. This was due to trees being cut down faster and planted slower, Statistics Finland found.

Finnish logging companies turn its trees into pulp and paper and sell them to be burned for energy, which is often controversially advertised as climate-friendly and renewable.

Global Forest Watch data shows tree cover loss (pink) and tree cover gain (blue) happening side-by-side across most of Finland. (Photo: Global Forest Watch)

Kari told Climate Home the ministry of agriculture and forestry was working on its first ever climate plan.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sped up Finland’s energy transition, Kari added, as the government pushed ahead with wind power and making buildings more energy efficient and less reliant on fossil fuel heating.

The target will be met without relying on international carbon offsets, Kari said, where one country pays another to reduce emissions on its behalf.

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