Climate commitments among the Fortune Global 500 continue to grow, but greater ambition and scope of the targets is needed. Nearly 40% of companies have a net zero target, but nearly one third exclude Scope 3, or value chain, emissions. Emissions generated through the corporate value chain makes up an estimated 80% of the Fortune Global 500’s footprint.
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Companies have an essential role to play in delivering immediate and impactful climate action today while planning for a net zero future. Watch the video below to learn more.
Video: If not now, when? How are companies stepping up with the urgency required to deliver climate impact.
Why Fortune Global 500 companies?
We chose the Fortune Global 500 as a representative sample of the private sector. Fortune Global 500 companies are based across 33 countries and have combined annual revenues of $38 trillion[1]. (For reference, the total GDP of the U.S. is $23 trillion[2]). They employ 70 million people around the world and in 2021 profits totalled $3.1 trillion, an 88% annual increase.
In addition to the importance of climate action within their own operations, Fortune Global 500 companies have significant influence on their suppliers, customers and the wider world of business and government.
This does not diminish the value of many other businesses – small, medium, and large – throughout the world, who have also realized the urgency of our climate situation and are reducing their carbon emissions. Rather, the efforts taken by the companies highlighted in this report can provide a benchmark for broader changes in the private sector sustainability landscape, as smaller companies both engage with and learn from the Fortune Global 500.
[1]Taking out financial companies, for which revenue can sometimes be a misleading metric, the total revenue of the Fortune Global 500 is $29 trillion
[2]World Bank, 2022, GDP (current US$)
PREVIOUS YEARS' REPORTS BELOW:
42% of companies in the Fortune Global 500 have now delivered a significant climate milestone or are publicly committed to do so by 2030
The question is no longer if companies should rise to the challenge of climate change, but how, and perhaps more crucially, when.
