It was announced in October last year that a significant milestone for the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI) had been passed. Over 1,000 companies had committed to set climate targets in line with the latest science. These companies span 60 countries, they include one-fifth of the Global Fortune 500, and have a combined market cap in excess of $15.4 trillion USD.
With President Biden hosting the Leaders Summit on Climate on Earth Day, involving 40 other world leaders, will we see another surge in companies making commitments to the SBTI? Following the October milestone, I took a look at the figures, which may also give us a hint as to which areas might see the biggest uptake after the events of the coming days.
Many of the first 1,000 businesses have huge up- and downstream impacts, so publicly making these commitments will have helped to create huge momentum within their industries and within business as a whole. At the same time, we all watched with bated breath as Joe Biden became the 46th President of the US, taking office at the start of 2021, and subsequently re-joining The Paris Agreement.
But did US industry, especially it's major global brands, ever really stop progression on climate action? The data below should help to give us some answers.
There are many great companies based in the US doing really positive work on climate impact reduction, not all of whom are SBTI members - we work with some - so this is not to suggest if a company isn't in the SBTI list then they are not progressing. It's just a useful sample to review.
Using information which is all publicly available on SBTI’s great website, I first took a general look at momentum of the SBTI as a whole.
Here is, tracked by date of commitment, or the date on which targets were approved:
