In the last few years, the phrase ‘net zero’ has gone from being a somewhat obscure scientific concept to centre stage in discourse on halting climate change. Pledges to reach net zero emissions are everywhere – in governments’ economic development plans, corporate strategies, investors’ portfolio targets and the manifestos of regional governments and city councils. Net zero forms a major theme of this year’s pivotal UN climate summit in Glasgow.
This report presents the first systematic analysis of significant emitters and examines the robustness of net zero pledges as well as their scope. It further looks for entities have components of a credible plan in place, such as interim targets, a reporting mechanism and clarity on use of offsets. This report does not assess whether such plans are internally coherent nor compatible with a global trajectory to the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target.
This report is an ‘opening snapshot’ that will allow the anticipated strengthening of net zero targets to be tracked over time. In this report, the analysis shows that these commitments vary hugely in their quality. Already, 20% of existing net zero targets meet a set of basic robustness criteria. The proportions of entities whose commitments encompass measures such as interim targets (60%), a reporting mechanism (62%) and a published plan (44%) are reasonably high given how recently many of them made their net zero pledges.