Simon Jessop and Alison Withers
LONDON (Reuters) – Some of the world’s biggest companies, financial houses, cities and regions have joined forces to call on governments to increase their climate ambitions ahead of a February 2025 deadline to submit their emissions reduction plans to the United Nations.
The group joined a coalition called Mission 2025. It is being convened by Groundswell, a collaboration between non-profit organizations Global Optimism, Systems Change Lab and the Bezos Earth Foundation.
Corporate sponsors include a consumer products company. Unilever (LON:), the world’s largest furniture retailer IKEA and UK sustainable energy company Octopus EV. Others are represented through groups such as the We Mean Business Coalition.
While some fossil fuel companies have come under fire from environmentalists, other businesses are frustrated by what they see as short-sighted governments unwilling to regulate to bring about needed change as evidence grows that change climate is becoming more extreme.
The goal of Mission 2025 is to convince political leaders that they have strong support for bold action.
It was spearheaded by Christiana Figueres of Global Optimism, who oversaw the 2015 Paris Agreement, which led to the first truly global agreement under which countries would cut climate-damaging emissions.
Ten years after the Paris Agreement, the nearly 200 countries that agreed to it face a deadline to submit updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which set out a country’s policies to meet the global emissions reduction target.
More than two-thirds of the world’s largest companies’ $31 trillion in annual revenue is now tied to net-zero emissions ambitions, the coalition said in a statement, citing data from the independent Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. climate think tank.
Meanwhile, a UN-backed poll of public opinion on climate change in 77 countries this month found that 80% of respondents want their governments to take stronger action, even as some governments concerned about re-election and economy, retreated from previous promises. .
Figueres told Reuters that a “lack of leadership” and political noise were to blame for insufficient policies to stimulate clean technologies, which have proven to be cheaper, more efficient, faster to build and safer to invest in than their current competitors.
“Political economy makes it abundantly clear that decarbonization is the future,” she said.
More clarity from governments was needed on the direction of public policy to give companies and other real sector participants confidence that they could invest more in the transition to a low-carbon economy between now and 2035.
“We think governments are still very timid about what they’re going to put in their NDCs,” she said, citing opposition from companies and others involved in the fossil fuel economy, which she said smacks of despair.
UN climate change executive secretary Simon Still told delegates at the climate conference in Bonn this month that the NDC needed to cover “every sector and all greenhouse gases.”
To help governments go further, the Mission 2025 coalition will provide the data needed to inform policy changes, with a focus on the 20 largest economies responsible for the bulk of emissions, Figueres said.
“We will pay more attention to them. Not only because they have the ability to change more, but also because they have the means to do so.”