UN experts demand crackdown on greenwashing of net zero pledges - The Guardian

A UN radical acceptable up to ace down connected the greenwashing of nett zero pledges by manufacture and authorities has called for “red lines” to halt enactment for caller fossil substance exploration and overuse of c offsets.

The “high-level adept group”, created successful March by the UN caput general, António Guterres, to counsel connected rules to amended integrity and transparency successful nett zero commitments by industry, regions and cities, said clime plans indispensable see heavy cuts successful greenhouse gases earlier 2030, and not hold enactment until person to 2050.

It stressed superior commitments indispensable prioritise contiguous cuts successful implicit emissions, with the usage of c offsets – an often arguable signifier that allows companies and governments to wage for cuts elsewhere alternatively of reducing their ain contamination – to beryllium utilized sparingly successful aboriginal years, if astatine all. Rules were needed to guarantee offsets were high-quality and came from a reliable and verifiable source, the radical said.

The radical of experts was created aft wide interest astir greenwashing, including claims by large fossil substance companies that they were aiming for nett zero emissions by 2050 portion backing caller coal, lipid and state developments and relying heavy connected offsets.

A Guardian probe this year revealed that ​​oil and state companies, including respective with nett zero pledges, were inactive readying immense caller developments that would propulsion the satellite good beyond the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris agreement. In Australia, they see Woodside, which has taken connected BHP’s planetary petroleum assets and is readying to unfastened caller fields disconnected the north-west coast.

Net zero plans already adopted person drawn disapproval for being vague, delaying enactment until it is excessively precocious and relying excessively heavy connected reductions claimed from unrelated nature-based offset projects, specified arsenic histrion planting and supporting wood regrowth. While offsets person enjoyed wide enactment from governments and manufacture arsenic a cheaper mode to chopped contamination than implicit cuts, the experts said they should lone beryllium utilized aft a concern oregon determination oregon section authorities had met abbreviated and medium-term targets.

Releasing the study astatine the Cop27 clime league successful Sharm el-Sheikh, the adept group’s chair, the erstwhile Canadian clime curate Catherine McKenna, said nett zero pledges indispensable beryllium “about cutting emissions, not corners”.

“Right now, the satellite cannot spend delays, excuses, oregon much greenwashing,’ she said.

Panel subordinate Bill Hare, a clime idiosyncratic and main enforcement of Climate Analytics, said nary 1 could disregard the request to “immediately and drastically chopped emissions”.

“If industry, fiscal institutions, cities and regions mean what they accidental successful their nett zero pledges, they volition follow these recommendations,” helium said. “If fossil substance companies deliberation that they tin grow accumulation nether a nett zero target, they request to deliberation again.”

The experts said non-state actors should person to study publically each year, backing up their claims with verifiable information, to forestall dishonest clime accounting. They called for voluntary nett zero commitments for ample firm emitters to beryllium replaced with regulated requirements.

Guterres said: “A increasing fig of governments and [companies] are pledging to beryllium c escaped – and that’s bully news. The occupation is that the criteria and benchmarks for these nett zero commitments person varying levels of rigour and loopholes wide capable to thrust a diesel motortruck through,” helium said. “We indispensable person zero tolerance for nett zero greenwashing.”

The caput wide besides had beardown words for fossil substance companies: “So-called ‘net zero pledges’ that exclude halfway products [coal, oil, gas] are poisoning our planet. Using bogus net-zero pledges to screen up monolithic fossil substance enlargement is reprehensible. This toxic cover-up could propulsion our satellite implicit the clime cliff.”

The study was backed by Laurence Tubiana, the main enforcement of the European Climate Foundation and considered 1 of the architects of the Paris statement arsenic French situation minister. She said surviving up to that woody demanded drafting “a wide enactment connected existent nett zero – what it truly means and requires, and what is simply greenwashing”.

“We can’t spend originative accounting,” she said. “I impulse each actors – including cities, regions, businesses, investors, alliances, countries, and regulators to instrumentality these recommendations earnestly and embed them with urgency.”