Corporate Net Zero Targets: Have They Achieved Anything?

Corporate commitments to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century have proliferated rapidly in recent years. These represent a novel form of corporate climate target, requiring deep decarbonisation under long horizons, uncertainty, and potentially emissions outside firms’ direct control. This paper examines whether adopting long-term net zero commitments is associated with observable changes in corporate climate action in the near term. We overcome measurement challenges by combining multiple datasets on emissions and climate governance, including several novel measures, and we exploit staggered variation in adoption timing using difference-in-differences methods with matching to address selection into treatment. We find little evidence of large or immediate reductions in emissions or of broad shifts in climate governance following adoption. At the same time, emissions estimates are generally negative and consistent with gradual reductions, and we observe selective improvements in more demanding, strategic management practices that often begin prior to formal adoption. Overall, the results suggest that long-term net zero commitments are neither purely symbolic nor immediately transformative, but are embedded within a gradual process of organisational change, with implications for how such commitments are interpreted and designed to support near-term action.