Averting a worst-case global warming scenario will require the world’s largest institutions to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, and do it fast. Over the last decade and a half, a standard form has emerged in which governments and corporations have made their promise to do so: the net-zero target. This is generally a voluntarily self-imposed deadline, usually decades away, by which the institution’s emissions will not necessarily actually reduce to zero, but rather by which they will at least be ostensibly canceled out by carbon offsets.
As a strategy, the net-zero target has been criticized by climate advocates; at its worst, it can be a vague, unenforceable greenwashing program. But global efforts are underway to write standards for what makes a good one — and hold the target-setters to them. The net-zero targets that have actually been adopted display a surprisingly wide variety in terms of their substance: some refer to all greenhouse gas emissions, and others only to carbon dioxide; the strongest include sector-specific implementation plans and credible near-term targets, and cover all three emissions scopes up and down the value chain.
On Monday, the Net Zero Tracker, a collaboration between four climate organizations, released its most recent “Net Zero Stocktake” — a survey of the world’s climate pledges, including evaluations of how serious the plans are to actually follow through on them. Since the group began publishing such reports annually since 2021, it has found that, at the national level, after years of more and more countries setting net-zero targets, the growth of such pledges has now leveled off, with 147 countries, as well as the European Union, having now set a target. They include most of the highest-emitting countries. China, the world’s largest emitter, committed to carbon neutrality by 2060 in 2020 at the UN General Assembly. A significant exception is Azerbaijan, the oil-rich, gas-leaking host of November’s COP29 UN climate change conference, which has no net-zero target.
But net-zero targets continue to proliferate in subnational governments, especially at the state and regional levels, and in the private sector. In the 18 months since the 2023 report was published, the number of companies with net-zero targets has increased by 23 percent, and local regions by 28 percent. (Cities’ pledges only increased by 8 percent.)
The growth of regional targets is important because local governments play an important role in helping countries actually achieve decarbonization. “Subnational regions have huge responsibility for realizing net zero on the global scale,” said Sybrig Smit, a coauthor of the report, in a press briefing, adding that, in countries that have adopted national targets, “the credibility of those net zero targets simply increases when also on lower levels of government this ambition level is shown.” In the U.S., 19 states have net-zero targets — and five of them aim for an earlier deadline than the federal goal of 2050.
But the pledges vary widely in substance — and very few meet anything like a gold standard. “For all the subnational governments and companies, only a very small percentage of them actually meet all of the robustness or the integrity criteria” that were tracked in the report, said Takeshi Kuramochi, another of the report’s coauthors, in the briefing. For example, of the companies surveyed (the 2,000 largest in the world), only about half of those with net-zero targets covered all greenhouse gases, rather than just carbon dioxide. The metric that companies and governments alike scored worst on was clarity on the use of offsets: less than 10 percent of the net-zero targets set by companies, cities, and regions specify how much they will use offsets to achieve their goal.
While the overall landscape of net-zero targets appears plagued by insincerity, the report’s authors gave credit to those whose pledges were more substantive — and highlighted their role in leading by example, particularly as standards are formalized for net-zero targets. The report spotlights Costa Rica’s 2030 net-zero target, which covers all greenhouse gas emissions and includes sector-specific and interim targets. In the private sector, Google and the Volvo Group received special commendation in the report for covering all three emissions scopes — which means they can’t simply pass their emissions onto suppliers or ignore the footprint of their electricity usage.
Giving credit where it’s due — in the hopes of incentivizing better performance through public scrutiny — is part of the theory of change according to which setting best practices for net-zero targets might actually be an effective mechanism for climate action.
“Ultimately, a lot of things will need to be regulated, and that’s a positive thing,” said Catherine McKenna, a former Canadian environment minister who chaired a United Nations expert group on nonstate net-zero targets, in the briefing. “It creates a level playing field. It means there are consequences if you don’t do the work, and if you are doing the work then you can demonstrate that you are doing the work. We need to distinguish between those who are and those who aren’t, and [ensure] that the people who are doing the work feel really good.”
