New Report Exposes Greenwashing in Climate Plans of Leading Global Corporations

A new report from Carbon Market Watch, a not-for-profit association with unique expertise in carbon pricing and a track record of policy work in international organisations, says two dozen of the world’s largest and richest corporations are hiding their climate inaction behind the fig leaf of green-sounding ‘net zero’ plans.

The 2023 edition of the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor (CCRM) concludes that governments must stop their dithering and regulate robustly what green claims companies are permitted to make.

The 24 major corporations assessed in this year’s CCRM – a joint initiative from the NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch – are not only among the largest in the world but also claim to be climate leaders through their association with the UN-backed Race to Zero campaign.

With a combined revenue of over €3 trillion and responsible for some 4% of global emissions, the featured companies are drawn from a wide variety of countries and fall into seven main sectors: automobiles, retail fashion, supermarkets, food and agriculture, tech and electronics, shipping and aviation, as well as steel and cement.

Despite their net zero pledges and claims of climate leadership, the overwhelming majority of these corporations are simply not delivering the goods they promised. In fact, the main shortcomings of companies’ climate targets and plans are largely similar to those identified in last year’s edition of the CCRM.

“At a time when corporations need to come clean about their climate impact and shrink their carbon footprint, many are exploiting vague and misleading ‘net zero’ pledges to greenwash their brand while continuing with business as usual,” says Carbon Market Watch’s Executive Director Sabine Frank.

“This dangerous procrastination must stop. Since multinationals have both an oversized impact on the planet and the means to reduce their carbon footprint, they must take real action to clean up their act and not just their image by slashing their emissions.”

Not a single of the 24 corporations’ climate plans received a ‘high integrity’ score in this year’s CCRM. The report is available here.

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