The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor evaluates the transparency
and integrity of companies’ climate pledges.
Companies around the world are increasing alert to the climate
emergency. They face calls from a growing range of stakeholders
to take responsibility for the impact of their activities. Most large
companies now have public climate strategies and targets, many of
which include pledges that, on the face of it, appear to significantly
reduce, or even eliminate, their contributions to global warming. The
rapid acceleration of corporate climate pledges, combined with the
fragmentation of approaches means that it is more difficult than ever
to distinguish between real climate leadership and unsubstantiated
greenwashing. This is compounded by a general lack of regulatory
oversight at national and sectoral levels. Identifying and promoting
real climate leadership, and sorting it from greenwashing, is a
key challenge that, where addressed, has the potential to unlock
greater global climate change mitigation ambition.
The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor assesses the climate
strategies of 25 major global companies, critically analysing the
extent to which they demonstrate corporate climate leadership
(Section A, summarised in Figure S1). We evaluate the integrity
of climate pledges against good practice criteria to identify
good examples for replication, and highlight areas where
improvement is needed (Section B, summarised in Figure S2).