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Some 75 of the world's largest 112 fossil fuel companies have
now committed to reaching net-zero - the point at which
greenhouse gas emissions are negated by deep cuts in output
elsewhere and methods to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide.
That's up from just 51 a year ago, according to the assessment
of publicly available data by Net Zero Tracker, run in part by
the Britain-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit and the
University of Oxford.
But most targets do not fully cover or lack transparency on
Scope 3 emissions — which include the use of a company's
products, the biggest source of emissions for fossil fuel
companies — or don't include short-term reduction plans, the
report added.
That made them "largely meaningless", it said. The report also
found that none of the fossil fuel companies were making the
needed commitments to move away from fossil fuel extraction or
production.
As it stands, some 4,000 countries, states, regions, cities and
companies globally have now committed to net-zero. Last
November, the U.N. issued guidance on what a 'good' net-zero
strategy should look like to avoid greenwashing.
"We haven't yet seen a huge move from fossil fuel companies or
other companies on meeting those (guidelines), so there's still
a lot of work to do to come up to that level," said Thomas Hale
of the University of Oxford, who co-authored the report.
Daisy Streatfield, sustainability director at global asset
manager Ninety One, said "credible plans and meaningful
execution are not going to happen overnight", with many
companies doing a better job than national governments.
A study published last week in the journal Science found that
about 90% of countries' net-zero targets were unlikely to be
achieved.
(Reporting by Gloria Dickie and Simon Jessop in London; Editing
by Jan Harvey)
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