Weighted by annual revenue, net zero targets now cover nearly 80% of the world’s largest 2,000 publicly listed companies, up from less than 20% in 2020. The integrity and clarity of these targets are weak, but voluntary target-setting at the publicly listed level continues to reach new heights.
The picture at the private company level is starkly different. As the net zero world for corporates increasingly moves from being defined by voluntary efforts to mandatory rules, privately companies continue to trail behind their publicly listed peers by around half on net zero target-setting. They also trail behind on the integrity of their strategies to achieve these targets.
In this analysis, we compare the net zero targets and other mitigation efforts of the world’s largest 100 private companies with the world’s largest 100 public companies.
The analysis was led by John Lang and Camilla Hyslop. Substantive contributions were made by Frances Green, Frederic Hans, Nick Hay, Nadya Kamenkovich, Takeshi Kuramochi, Diego Manya, Sybrig Smit, and Steve Smith. The private and publicly-listed firm data collection was led by Camilla Hyslop and Nadya Kamenkovich.
Read more and explore the report methodology, data and insights on the Net Zero Tracker website.
Read Net Zero Tracker’s press release.
