Navigating the bumpy road to net zero

Navigating the bumpy road to net zero

Salesforce, the cloud-computing company, announced in September that it had reached net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, even when counting its customers’ energy use. It was a proud day, said chief executive Marc Benioff, “but we cannot stop until we embrace every solution and get every business on board”. 

In committing to net zero, businesses resolve to cut their emissions to levels in line with the Paris Agreement and to offset the impact of those they cannot cut, typically by planting trees or carbon capture.

Mentions of “net zero” in US corporate press releases have risen fivefold in two years, according to Sentieo, a data provider. Such targets raise optimism but there is concern over how these far-off deadlines will be met.

In 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that the world must halve carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050 to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Now, business is under pressure to play its part.

That pressure is not only from governments and environmentalists. Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, summed up net zero’s importance to investors in January when he warnedthat no company in the asset manager’s portfolio would escape “profound” changes to its business model.

“Companies that