Report: Climate strategies lacking

Nestle, other companies are cited for ‘low integrity’ of plans

BERLIN — Major brands are exaggerating efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new joint report released Monday by two European think tanks.

The research published by environmental groups NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch examined 24 companies, including KitKat manufacturer Nestle, French retailer Carrefour and automaker Volkswagen. The report found that only one company — shipping firm Maersk — had climate plans with “reasonable integrity” while the rest were assessed to be moderate to very low.

“For the majority of companies, we found their climate strategies to be lacking,” said Thomas Day, a researcher at the NewClimate Institute who co- authored the report.

Actual emissions cuts resulting from the companies’ plans would amount to less than half of those needed by 2030 to help meet the Paris climate accord’s goal of capping global warming at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the report found.

The researchers also questioned companies’ pledges to achieve “net-zero” emissions, arguing that most consumers would understand that to mean largely stopping the release of planet-heating gas into the atmosphere.

“These net-zero pledges, they actually amount to a commitment to reduce the emissions of those companies by just 36%,” Day said. Companies either claim that the rest will be removed from the atmosphere by artificial or natural means — called carbon offsets — or simply remove large chunks of their emissions from the tally.

This was the case for Carrefour, which excludes 80% of its stores from the net-zero target for 2040, according to the report. The company was among four corporations ranked as having climate plans with “very low integrity,” along with American Airlines, food processing company JBS and Samsung Electronics.

Carrefour leadership said the company disagreed with the report, adding that its climate efforts had been validated by independent experts — a position also taken by Swiss-based Nestle, whose targets were labeled as having “low integrity.”

“We will continue to pursue a holistic strategy of reducing our emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere through measures that deliver benefits to the millions of people connected to our company’s operations,” Nestle said in a statement.

Volkswagen, whose targets were also assessed as having “low integrity,” said it was committed to meeting the goal of the Paris accord, noting that it plans to invest $55.5 billion in electric vehicles by 2026.

“We support the NewClimate Institute’s concern to achieve the greatest possible transparency and comparability in the climate goals of large companies,” the company said.

The report’s authors said their findings highlighted the need for greater transparency and stricter regulation of corporate climate efforts to prevent companies from greenwashing their environmental impact, particularly when making net-zero claims.

“In many ways, carbonneutral products are similar to cancer-neutral cigarettes,” said co-author Gilles Dufrasne of Carbon Market Watch. “There is no robust scientific basis behind those claims, and most consumers are just completely confused about what those claims would mean.”

(AP) A man looks out of the window in December at an office building in Frankfurt, Germany. A new report says climate commitments by companies aren’t always as green as they seem.