An assessment of climate action by high-carbon global corporations

Simon Dietz (), Charles Fruitiere, Carlota Garcia-Manas, William Irwin, Bruno Rauis and Rory Sullivan
Additional contact information
Simon Dietz: London School of Economics and Political Science
Charles Fruitiere: FTSE Russell
Carlota Garcia-Manas: Church Commissioners for England and Church of England Pensions Board
William Irwin: London School of Economics and Political Science
Bruno Rauis: London School of Economics and Political Science
Rory Sullivan: FTSE Russell

Nature Climate Change, 2018, vol. 8, issue 12, 1072-1075

Abstract: Abstract Corporations are an important source of GHG emissions1–3 and important actors in mitigating climate change4. This paper presents and analyses a database of corporate climate action that provides an up-to-date assessment of companies’ carbon management practices, as well as systematically benchmarking companies’ emissions pathways against international targets. Our analysis covers 138 companies in 7 high-emitting sectors, accounting for 21% of emissions from all listed companies globally5. While most companies have implemented basic carbon management practices, we find that less than half of them have implemented more strategic practices. Further analysis indicates companies separate into those that hardly undertake any carbon management practices and those that undertake most. Perhaps surprisingly, most corporate emissions targets in our sample are aligned with the Paris Agreement goals, although most companies are yet to set quantified targets. Companies that have implemented more carbon management practices today are more likely to have set 2 °C-aligned targets. Carbon management and emissions performance are associated most strongly with where companies are headquartered and their size.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0343-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:8:y:2018:i:12:d:10.1038_s41558-018-0343-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0343-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().