Stockholm (NordSIP) – According to a new report from the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI), 29% of the largest publicly-listed industrial companies are aligning their emissions with the 2030 pledges made by national governments at the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The TPI assessed the Carbon Performance of 72 companies across the four industries of paper, cement, steel and aluminium. TPI also evaluated the Management Quality on climate for 100 companies across those four sectors as well as chemicals. Together, these five sectors are responsible for 66% of direct industrial C02 emissions.
Although commitments are up from 24% in mid-2018, only 19% of the companies surveyed are aligned with a pathway to keep global warming at 2°C or below. Moreover, the report also found that the proportion of companies disclosing their emissions has increased from 61% in 2018 to 76%. Much of this improvement comes from companies listed in Asia – especially China – and Russia.
“Industrial sectors like steel and cement face tough challenges to decouple emissions from production, but make no mistake, these industries must transform themselves if they are to survive the low carbon transition and play their part in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Faith Ward, Co-Chair of the Transition Pathway Initiative and Chief Responsible Investment Officer at Brunel Pension Partnership. “Today’s TPI data shows it can be done – with 14 companies now aligned with a path to keep global warming below 2°C. Yet most industrial companies are significantly off-track on climate, and that is an abdication of corporate risk management that must be urgently corrected.”
The Chemicals industry was where most companies ranked high in terms of management quality, while Steel companies, we mostly ranked low on the same measure. Currently, paper has the best Carbon Performance in the industrials/materials sector and
the second-best Carbon Performance of all TPI sectors. Chemical companies are not included in the Carbon Performance assessment.
Image by Christian Supik (Fotografie) + Manuela Pleier (Design) from Pixabay
