The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor evaluates the transparency and integrity of companies’ climate pledges.

Companies around the world are increasingly alert to the climate emergency. They face calls from a growing range of stakeholders to take responsibility for the impact of their activities. Most large companies now have public climate strategies and targets, many of which include pledges that, on the face of it, appear to significantly reduce, or even eliminate, their contributions to global warming. The rapid acceleration of corporate climate pledges, combined with the fragmentation of approaches means that it is more difficult than ever to distinguish between real climate leadership and unsubstantiated greenwashing. This is compounded by a general lack of regulatory oversight at national and sectoral levels. Identifying and promoting real climate leadership, and sorting it from greenwashing, is a key challenge that, where addressed, has the potential to unlock greater global climate change mitigation ambition.

The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor assesses the climate strategies of 25 major global companies, including many household names, critically analysing the extent to which they demonstrate corporate climate leadership. We evaluate the integrity of climate pledges against good practice criteria to identify good examples for replication, and highlight areas where improvement is needed.

Carbon Market Watch developed policy recommendations based on the findings of this report. These are available in the document titled ‘Regulating corporate green claims and greenwashing – policy recommendations‘.