cff-version: 1.2.0
abstract: "Several studies have posed that international
cooperative initiatives lead by businesses could aid in mitigating
global warming in ways that are additional to national policies.
However, evaluations on their progress are rare due to many
informational issues. This research gap is worrisome since such
initiatives can also have negative effects on global commitment due to
effort fragmentation and greenwashing.
This thesis evaluates
progress in two initiatives that have featured prominently in the
literature: the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and RE100. The
group of companies evaluated was reduced to the Fortune Global 500, a
ranking of the largest firms by revenue.
Large datasets were
created with the targets set by these companies, their emissions and
energy use, among others. Progress was evaluated in four aspects: the
ambition of targets, the robustness of their disclosure of
sustainability metrics, the implementation of changes to their energy
profiles, and finally the substantive progress seen in their collective
carbon footprint.
It was found that among the two initiatives,
SBTi appears posed for larger emissions mitigation, while RE100 is
better at promoting more effective renewable energy purchasing
practices. However, direct emission reductions are mostly concentrated
on a reduced number of firms in energy intensive sectors, with the
remaining members focusing on reductions through indirect methods that
might not be additional at the global level. Similarly, it was found
that informational barriers remain high even in these firms, with a
plethora of inconsistencies that complicate year-by-year comparisons."
authors:
- family-names: Ruiz Manuel
given-names: Ivan
orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2288-6423"
title: "Dataset: Emissions, Energy Use and Climate Targets of Fortune G500 companies in the SBTi and RE100 initiatives"
keywords:
version: 1
identifiers:
- type: doi
value: 10.4121/16616965.v1
license: CC0
date-released: 2021-09-16