The emissions companies are ignoring
One common shortcoming with corporate pledges, Pineda said, is that they don’t account for all the emissions the company is responsible for. For example, Google has been “carbon neutral” since 2007, but that label only applies to the company’s offices, data centers, and employees’ commutes and business travel. Those activities make up just 27 percent of Google’s annual contribution to climate change, according to data the company disclosed to CDP in 2019. One major source of emissions that Google hasn’t “neutralized” yet are those associated with manufacturing and transporting products like the Pixel or Chromebook. These are part of a category called scope 3 — emissions that are still very much tied to Google’s business model, but that the company doesn’t have immediate control over. Scope 3 emissions make up the vast majority of most companies’ carbon footprints, so it’s essential that they are included in net-zero targets. While Google doesn’t own the mining operations, factories, or shipping companies that are essential to its work and produce a fair amount of these emissions, it can still ask them to set their own greenhouse gas reduction goals, change suppliers, or use different materials. Apple, for example, is investing in “low-carbon aluminum” to reduce the scope 3 emissions tied to its devices. Google is aware of this issue. In an environmental report last year, it said, “Our vision is for all our suppliers’ sites to source 100 percent renewable energy in every region where our products are made.” But unlike Apple, which plans to fulfill a similar goal by 2030, Google has not yet committed to its vision with a concrete target.Reducing is more important than offsetting
An even more common failure of net-zero pledges is that companies focus on going “carbon neutral” without planning to make deep cuts their emissions. It can be a lot easier, and cheaper, for companies to simply purchase carbon offsets than to make changes to their products, operations, and supply chains. But Pineda said that models for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C show that simply compensating for emissions, without reducing them, won’t work in the long run. “There are other planetary boundaries that are important besides climate,” Pineda said. Tree-planting and other land-based methods for removing carbon from the atmosphere have limits, and if every company relied on them, it could lead to negative spillover effects on biodiversity, displacement, food insecurity, and water. “When you consider all those boundaries, the conclusion is companies need to reduce emissions,” he said. It’s promising that some large companies seem to get this. On Monday, Walmart announced that it was going to get to zero emissions across all of its operations by 2040 without the use of carbon offsets. That means it will power all of its stores, offices, and warehouses with renewable energy, electrify its vehicles, and even transition to using climate-friendly refrigeration chemicals. It’s a major goal, but at the same time, Walmart’s operations represent only about 5 percent of the company’s total carbon footprint. While the company has several initiatives to reduce emissions from its supply chain, it has not set a net-zero emissions target that includes scope 3. SBTi isn’t the first to attempt to evaluate corporate climate pledges. A nonprofit called Climate Neutral offers a certification to companies that purchase offsets for all of their operational emissions and most of scope 3. It doesn’t mandate that companies set clear targets to reduce their emissions, but they do have to make a “reduction action plan” and repeat the certification process each year. Austin Whitman, the CEO of Climate Neutral, said the goal was to make evaluating corporate pledges easy for the average person. Climate Neutral also created its own tool that companies can use to estimate their emissions. Whitman said he wanted to make it easier for small companies with limited resources to measure their emissions without having to create a whole sustainability team or hire a third party. Too many companies get bogged down in the process of counting their carbon and don’t spend enough time doing something about it, he said. Ultimately, between SBTi and Climate Neutral, the goal is not just to define what net-zero is — it’s also to set standards for how to achieve it. A company can claim it is net-zero today, and even account for scope 3 emissions by purchasing carbon offsets, but that’s not going to work for the planet in the long run. On the flip side, a target without a roadmap is equally dangerous. “2030 is right around the corner. And so is 2050,” said Steven Clarke, the director for corporate clean energy leadership at the sustainable investing nonprofit Ceres, who applauded SBTi’s effort. “And unless most of these major companies get on those paths immediately, we’re not going to be where we have to be by 2030 or 2050, as an economy and society.”This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to make a net-zero pledge that actually means something on Sep 22, 2020.