Residual carbon emissions in companies’ climate pledges: Who has to reduce and who gets to remove?

Residual emissions need to be balanced by permanent emission removal to reach the goal of net zero, which has been defined as a balance of sources and sinks by the IPCC. To reach this goal, private sector action and a rigorous definition of residual emissions is crucial. To identify how residual emissions are currently used by the private sector, I have analysed 115 corporate climate pledges and their interpretation of residual emissions. The results show that the current ambiguity of residual emissions leads to low ambitions in the private sector. Fifty-five of the analysed companies mention residual emissions, but only eleven of them linked residual emissions to a specific process or product. From the companies that had a net zero target (69) only 22% aimed to reduce emissions to a residual level and compensate with removals. The residual emission levels in the target year is specified by 28 companies and ranges between 0-80% (mean = 19.6%, median = 10%, n=28). More than half of the residual emissions that exceed the mean of 10% are claimed by sectors that are not classified as hard-to-abate such as information technology or communication companies. The results call for a more rigorous use of the term “net zero” as well as “residual emissions” and a dialogue between politicians, civil society and industry regarding residual emission levels that I would like to contribute to in the oral presentation.