In recent years the emission-cutting plans of major publicly-listed companies have received an increasing amount of attention. Much of this focuses on companies’ targets for net zero emissions, which is now the dominant framing that many entities, corporate and public sector, use for decarbonisation pledges and plans.
By comparison, the plans of major private companies receive very little attention. But private companies, accountable only to their owners, and with less regulatory scrutiny and oversight, make up a large share of the world economy: the aggregate annual revenue of the 100 largest private companies in the world amounts to over $4 trillion, almost 5% of the global economy.
In this report, we pull back the curtain on the world’s biggest private companies and ask how their pledges and plans for net zero compare to their publicly-listed counterparts.
