Author
Listed:
- Jessica F. Green
- Thomas N. Hale
- Aldrick Arceo
Abstract
Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, a growing number of states and firms have adopted targets to reach net zero emissions. These pledges vary significantly both in the timing of adoption and in robustness – measured by whether they adopt procedural best practices. We introduce a novel time-series dataset measuring the uptake and robustness of net zero targets of states and the world’s largest listed firms between 2015 and 2023. The new data allow us to identify patterns that speak to a key debate in the literature: what explains the rapid uptake of net zero targets by firms and countries? Descriptive inference yields several insights. First, the timing of net zero adoption by both states and firms strongly tracks international mobilization efforts, highlighting the importance of the United Nations (UN) process for target setting. Second, on average, firms set targets before countries. Third, there is an increase in some best practices for companies, such as setting interim targets and including Scope three emissions in targets, alongside a lack of progress in others, such as safeguards on the use of offsetting. Importantly, we do not find significant variation in timing or robustness of net zero pledges across firms in different sectors. For countries, early adopters tend to have more robust targets from the beginning than late adopters, suggesting the latter may be adopting more symbolic targets. In sum, our results show the rapid growth of the net zero wave, but also its limits in driving robust targets.The timing of the adoption of net zero targets by both firms and countries closely mirrors the multilateral negotiations of the Paris Agreement, highlighting the importance of international organizations for target setting.While the adoption of some best practices grows over time, including setting interim targets and including all emissions, others, such as transparent use of offsetting, do not.Additional focus on these areas is therefore needed, for example: clear guidance on the use of offsets in target-setting frameworks.The UN and non-governmental organizations should use the requirements of the Paris Agreement to increase ambition to further define best practices for net zero, and incentivize states to submit more robust pledges, moving beyond targets to specific plans for how to operationalize and implement them.
Suggested Citation
Jessica F. Green & Thomas N. Hale & Aldrick Arceo, 2025.
"The net zero wave: identifying patterns in the uptake and robustness of national and corporate net zero targets 2015–2023,"
Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 642-655, April.
Handle:
RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:25:y:2025:i:4:p:642-655
DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2024.2405221
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:25:y:2025:i:4:p:642-655. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tcpo20 .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.