Listed companies in the world’s largest economies are expected to slow the pace of carbon emissions reductions this decade while decarbonization by their respective home countries is on track to accelerate, the COP28 edition of MSCI’s Net-Zero Tracker finds. Our interactive chart offers a look at G20 countries and companies.
The latest edition of the MSCI Net-Zero Tracker assesses progress toward a low-carbon future by listed companies and governments in 16 Group of 20 nations. The report:
- Assesses decarbonization by each of those countries and the listed companies based in them;
- Examines climate progress by the world’s listed companies; and
- Counts down the estimated time until the collective carbon budget for the world’s listed companies would likely be depleted, based on the goals of the Paris Agreement.
The report arrives in the final months of what is virtually certain to be the hottest year on record, driven chiefly by the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Annual change (%) in absolute Scope 1 emissions
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Five years to Dec 2021
Projected to 2030
Delegates at COP28 aim to produce a plan for closing the gap between current country climate commitments and the roughly 22 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions that would need to be eliminated to stay within the 1.5°C temperature-rise threshold for preventing the worst warming.1“Technical dialogue of the first global stocktake,” United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Sept. 8, 2023 Investors and other capital markets participants will play a critical role. Annual global investment in low-carbon energy would need to more than double, to 4.5 trillion USD within the next decade, to align with the 1.5°C target.2 “Net Zero Roadmap: A Global Pathway to Keep the 1.5 °C Goal in Reach,” 2023 Update, International Energy Agency, September 2023
“Companies have become indispensable actors in the collective endeavor to combat climate change,” James Grabert, director for mitigation at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, writes in a foreword to the report. “Their actions and commitments have far-reaching consequences, shaping our path toward a more sustainable and resilient world.” But, he adds, “we are short of action, and we are short of ambition.”
