In the context of increasing pressure on companies to act on the climate crisis, this year’s annual edition of the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor (“CCRM”), a report produced by NewClimate Institute in collaboration with Carbon Market Watch, analyses the transparency and integrity of 24 global corporations’ climate plans. All of these companies have set some form of “net-zero” target and consider themselves to be “climate leaders”. However, the findings confirm that nearly all of these companies’ current climate claims or future net-zero targets are exaggerated, false and misleading. Given the growing magnitude of this problem, we need urgent action to end this greenwashing.

Regulators must act to protect people from these false claims and to ensure that only true climate leaders are able to claim that mantle. If this is not appropriately addressed, people will continue to be misled by false climate claims and they will effectively be denied the opportunity to decarbonise their consumption and/or investment and play their part in limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Thus, it is imperative that policymakers, both at the EU and global levels, urgently act to remedy this pervasive problem of greenwashing.

This document sets out a series of recommendations to combat corporate greenwashing.