At UN’s COP27, a call for tighter net zero rules
Companies pledging to get their emissions down to net zero better make sure they’ve got a credible plan and aren’t just making false promises, U.N. experts said in a report Tuesday urging tough standards on emissions cutting vows.
Released at the the U.N.’s flagship COP27 climate conference in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm elSheikh, the group of experts set out a number of strict recommendations for businesses, banks, and local governments making net zero pledges to ensure that their promises amount to meaningful action instead of “bogus” assurances.
They called it a roadmap to prevent net zero from being “undermined by false claims, ambiguity and “greenwash.”
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed the group exactly a year ago at last year’s U.N. climate summit to draw up principles and recommendations aimed at clarifying the confusion around the growing number of net zero claims made by businesses and organizations. There’s been little transparency or uniform standards when it comes to net zero pledges, resulting in a boom in the number of hard to verify claims, the U.N. experts and environmental groups say.
“Using bogus ‘net zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible. It is rank deception,” Guterres said at the COP27 summit. “This toxic cover-up could push our world over the climate cliff. The sham must end.”
Since the Paris Agreement in 2015 set a global target of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) there’s been a groundswell of support for the concept of “net zero” — drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions and canceling out the rest — as the main way to meet that goal.
Among its 10 specific recommendations, businesses can’t claim to be net zero if they continue to invest or build new fossil fuel supplies, deforestation or other environmentally destructive projects. They can’t buy cheap carbon offset credits “that often lack integrity instead of immediately cutting their own emissions.”