How it ends: 96% of Big Corporations are quietly abandoning their climate commitments
By Jo Nova
And then the climate pledges evaporated
The Tech-Giants are backing away. Microsoft and Google have given up — they’re not bragging about their carbon neutrality anymore. Not now that their emissions have increased 29% and 50% respectively in the last four or five years. Over 500 companies pledged to get to net zero by 2040, but 96% of them are failing to stay on track. To distract us from talking about how the Climate Bubble has popped, some are blaming “AI”.
The world is facing mass death and boiling oceans, and wind and solar are still as cheap as they never were, but Big Tech are sneaking away from saving the world, wait, because Artificial Intelligence uses a lot of electricity? It’s like, these CEOs were saviors of Mother Earth not long ago, but the ice-caps be damned, there’s a race on to capture the AI market? Apparently, the planetary heroes just turned back into robber barons doing business.
Dr Jemma Green, who sells software for renewables markets, is trying to sell us a bad-luck story, as if it makes any sense. The truth is that if net zero technologies were cheap and useful, and the CEO’s ever cared about the planet, they wouldn’t be abandoning them. But they are…
Why Big Corporations Are Quietly Abandoning Their Climate Commitments?
Jemma Green, Forbes
AI’s energy hunger and corporate climate hypocrisy
…corporations like Google, Microsoft, and Shell once positioned themselves as leaders in sustainability, setting ambitious net-zero goals to align with global environmental efforts. However, the rapid rise of energy-hungry artificial intelligence is forcing these companies to reconsider—or even abandon—these commitments…
Corporate climate pledges surged recently, with over 500 companies globally committing to net-zero emissions by 2040. This momentum continued between June 2022 and October 2023, with a 40% increase in new net-zero targets. Yet, as the AI revolution gains traction, cracks in these promises are beginning to show. Recent analysis reveals that only 4% of these companies are on track to meet their goals, highlighting a disconnect between corporate rhetoric and reality.
Despite the headline, Jemma Green isn’t even trying to explain “Why” the end is here. After a few paragraphs blaming AI she laments how other giants like Shell, or Gucci, or EasyJet are stepping away too from their goals too, poking a hole in her thesis that it was only due to AI. It’s not like Gucci want to sell you AI programs to wear.
What she’s documenting is the corporate world quietly erasing their mistakes:
Shell, for instance, has abandoned its 2035 target of a 45% reduction in net carbon intensity, citing “uncertainty in the pace of change in the energy transition.” This target was a key milestone towards Shell’s broader goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
The same goes for luxury fashion house Gucci, which once committed to carbon neutrality through verified carbon offsets and in May 2023, quietly removed its claim of being “entirely carbon neutral” from its website.
The truth is that if the Earth was in danger, smart CEO’s and billionaires, who have to live on the planet too, would be pushing nuclear power like their children’s lives depended on it.
Instead it was all an intellectual fashion contest and a quick subsidy buck, and maybe a few even believed wind and solar power did something useful, but they don’t anymore.
