EmilyHolbrook
(Credit: Pixabay)
More than 300 companies have now signed The Climate Pledge, a nearly 600% growth in signatories over the past year. Among the nearly 100 new signatories joining this week are the world’s largest container shipping company, Maersk; the enterprise software developer SAP; the North American timberland company Weyerhaeuser; the largest residential solar company in the US, Sunrun; and the brand in connected car and audio services, HARMAN. Pledge signatories in total generate over $3.5 trillion in global annual revenues and have more than 8 million employees across 51 industries in 29 countries.
Signatories to The Climate Pledge must agree to:
- Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis.
- Implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through real business changes and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy, materials reductions, and other carbon emission elimination strategies.
- Neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent, and socially beneficial offsets to achieve net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.
Many of the new Pledge signatories are already making great strides toward reducing their carbon emissions:
- Maersk is providing sustainable customer offerings across the supply chain, including Maersk ECO Delivery, which targets emission reductions in ocean shipping. Amazon began participating in this service in 2020 and continues today. Amazon’s participation reduced emissions by approximately 20 KTonnes of CO2e (the equivalent of 50 million average passenger vehicle miles) in 2021.
- SAP recently accelerated its target for achieving net-zero carbon emissions to 2030—20 years earlier than originally targeted.
- Weyerhaeuser is sustainably managing forests and manufacturing wood products across North America to provide a sustainable supply of wood for homes and countless other products, while protecting wildlife habitat and serving as a natural climate solution through carbon sequestration and storage. Weyerhaeuser reforests 100% of its timberlands after harvesting, planting between 130 and 150 million trees each year.
The full list of signatories to The Climate Pledge can be found here.
