Based on current reduction targets, the world's largest companies are on track to reach the scientifically recommended level of greenhouse gas cuts by 2089 - 39 years too late to avoid dangerous climate change - reveals a research report, The Carbon Chasm, released recently by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).
It shows that the Global 100 are currently on track for an annual reduction of just 1.9 percent per annum, which is below the 3.9 percent needed in order to cut emissions in developed economies by 80 percent in 2050. According to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), developed economies must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent to 95 percent by 2050 in order to avoid dangerous climate change.
The research report is based on data reported to CDP in 2008 to analyze how the world's largest 100 companies currently set greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and whether they are sufficient to combat long-term climate change.
Of those emissions reduction targets with a deadline, a majority (84 percent) are set up to and including 2012, which correlates with the final year of the Kyoto Protocol and suggests that businesses may be waiting to hear outcomes of the U.N. Conference of the Parties meeting in Copenhagen this December before they set longer-term reduction goals.
Paul Dickinson, CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project, an independent not-for-profit organization that holds the largest database of primary corporate climate change information in the world, said: "While 73 percent of Global 100 companies have set some form of reduction target, the majority need to be far more aggressive if they are to achieve the long-term reductions required. This is a time of huge opportunity for businesses to gain competitive advantage by reducing their own impact on the climate and benefit from associated cost savings, as well as sparking major innovation around the production of new, lower carbon products and services."
