Are corporations fighting climate change the wrong way?

We will reach soon the milestone of 1,000 companies committing to a science-based target to cut their emissions in line with a 1.5C future, but is this strategy effective? I suggest that there is one critical piece missing from this strategy that needs to be addressed or else we lose the war on climate change.

Senate Democrats unveiled last month their plan to tackle climate change. The 255-page report paid close attention to the connections between politics and business. One of the key points in the report could be found on its last page: “The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has pointed out that corporate America’s most powerful tool in the fight against climate change is its political clout. Internal corporate sustainability measures alone will never avert the crisis.”

This sentiment was also echoed in a 2019 report of the watchdog group InfluenceMap, which assessed the impact of influential companies on climate policies worldwide. It suggested that “corporation’s influence over policy and regulations may have a far more profound impact on climate change than physical emissions associated with operations, suppliers & products”.

The point these two reports make about the climate impact of companies is very important as companies’ response to climate change focused so far mainly on reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. According to a 2020 GreenBiz report more than 90% of the companies addressing climate risks have GHG emissions reduction projects in place. A growing number of these companies pursue ambitious net-zero targets as part of an overall effort to shift to a zero-carbon economy. The ‘gold standard’ of all of these corporate efforts is considered to be the pursuit of a science-based target (SBT), which is aligned with the latest climate science. To have their SBT approved companies need to follow…