Source: Sustainable Business Council
The Climate Leaders Coalition’s fourth annual Snapshot Report released today shows business focus and investment into climate action is proving resilient despite a challenging economic environment.
“Despite the challenges of strong economic headwinds, rising inflation, an uncertain geopolitical environment, and widespread supply chain disruptions, our signatories continue to make solid progress reducing emissions and remain committed to investing in climate action,” says Coalition CEO Steering Group Convenor and CEO of Spark Jolie Hodson.
“Almost all signatories have re-affirmed or increased their planned investment against last year’s collective commitment to invest $9.5 billion over a five-year horizon to reduce emissions. This shows signatories are doing the heavy lifting needed to deliver the types of emissions reductions we need to meet New Zealand’s emissions budgets and Nationally Determined Contribution.
“It also highlights how critical policy certainty will be for businesses who are making these capital investment decisions. With a General Election coming in 2023 we are signaling that whoever forms the next Government needs to be committed to effective climate policy so that the business community has the confidence and certainty we need to continue to invest in New Zealand’s zero carbon future.”
The Snapshot Report is the Coalition’s key transparency tool to demonstrate signatories’ individual and collective progress in delivering on the Coalition’s Statement of Ambition.
“This year’s emissions reduction trends continue to be strongly impacted by reduced economic activity resulting from Covid-19 lockdowns and need to be considered in that context. The report shows 57 signatories reduced their emissions on last year and attributed this to a range of measures including a reduction in employee land and air travel, reduced fleet size, fuel use and EV and hybrid uptake, and improved energy efficiency and use of renewable electricity.
“While this is positive, our new Statement of Ambition has set the bar high for business action on climate change in the years ahead, and we know achieving deeper emissions reductions will only get harder, with much of the low hanging fruit already picked. Therefore, future emissions reductions will require a focus on innovation, as well as effective collaboration within and between the public and private sectors.
“In 2023 we will be working closely with our signatories to support their transition to our new Statement of Ambition, which came into effect in September. We already have 35 signatories who are meeting the minimum requirements to be recognised as ‘early adopters’ but there’s much more work to do to help everyone meet the new bar we have set.”
Other key facts from the Snapshot Report include:
– 63% of signatories have an emissions reduction target that is consistent with keeping future warming within 1.5 degrees, while a further 3% are climate positive.
– 98% of signatories are supporting suppliers to reduce their emissions
– 99% of signatories are supporting their people to reduce their emissions
– 51% of signatories have assessed and disclosed their climate change risks, while a further 26% are working on it.
About the Climate Leaders Coalition
The Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) was launched in July 2018 with a mission of having business CEOs leading the response to climate change through collective, transparent, and meaningful action on mitigation and adaptation. Coalition signatories represent 34% of GDP, have a collective turnover of $126 billion and employ more than 210,000 people. The Sustainable Business Council provides secretariat support to the Coalition.
