UN experts urge stringent rules to stop net zero greenwash

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gives a press conference with Prime Minister of Pakistan Muhammad Shehbaz Sharifat the 2022 United Nations climate conference, COP27, in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, South Sinai, Egypt, Monday, Nov. 7, 2022. In a report released Tuesday at COP27, a group of experts, appointed exactly a year ago by Guterres, recommended tough standards for bodies making net zero pledges, to ensure that their promises amount to meaningful action instead of “bogus” assurances. (AP Photo/Thomas Hartwell, File)

Catherine McKenna, who led a group of many high-level experts on net-zero emissions, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Oil 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 the report. (AP Photo/Thomas Hartwell)

Catherine McKenna, who led a group of many high-level experts on net-zero emissions, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Oil 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 the report. (AP Photo/Thomas Hartwell)

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — 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 climate conference in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, 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. Countries are not included in the group's scope as their emissions-cutting commitments are set out in the 2015 Paris deal.

The group called the report 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.

So-called non-state actors include corporations, investors, and local and regional governments, which aren't covered by the Paris Agreement's requirements. Their voluntary carbon cutting pledges must be “ambitious, have integrity and transparency, be credible and fair,” the experts said.

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.”

Guterres said he was deeply concerned about lack of “standards, regulations and rigor" in the market for voluntary carbon credits. Climate experts say offsets can be problematic because there’s no guarantee they’ll deliver on reducing emissions.

Lobbying to undermine ambitious government climate policies is a no-no, the experts said. And companies can't focus only on emissions they generate directly from, say, manufacturing but have to include all the carbon dioxide spewed along the way in their sourcing supply chains for parts and raw materials.

“I think these are kind of no-nonsense, practical things that a regular person would expect,” Catherine McKenna, who heads up the group of 17 high-level experts that authored the report, told the Associated Press.

The guidelines would help consumers who “want to choose products that are good for the environment and mean that the company is tackling climate action” and young people looking for jobs who “don't want to work for climate laggards," McKenna said.

Business, environmental and corporate watchdog groups generally supported the proposals.

“This surge of interest from the corporate sector to zero out emissions is truly inspiring,” said Ani Dasgupta, CEO of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, cautioning that "any corporate net-zero targets with loopholes or weak guardrails would put our planet and billions of people in peril.”

In order to keep the Earth from warming less than 1.5 degrees, the U.N. says carbon dioxide emissions must peak by 2025, fall by nearly half by 2030, and to reach net zero by the middle of the century.

The only way to do that now is to reduce the amount of heat trapping greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere and balance out the remaining emissions by permanently removing them, through planting trees, or through technologies yet untested at scale such as capturing carbon emissions at sources such as factory smokestacks and storing them underground.

Along the way, net zero has become a corporate buzzword for companies and groups seeking to burnish their green credentials, though environmental activists worry it’s becoming greenwash.

McDonald’s has opened net zero restaurants in the United States and United Kingdom powered by solar panels and wind turbines. Airline group IATA set a long term goal for the aviation industry to reach net zero by 2050. Even oil companies have jumped on the bandwagon. Chevron touts its “net zero aspiration” and Shell flaunts its “drive for net zero emissions.”

Private equity firm Carlyle Group was an early adopter of net zero commitment, but did not include its largest oil and gas investment in a recent financial risk report on greenhouse gas emissions.

Organizers of this year's soccer world cup hosted by Qatar say the massive building spree of stadiums, highways and subway system for the event was all carbon neutral — a claim experts have cast doubt on.

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