“No offsets, no excuses:” The tiny handful of Australian companies aiming for real zero

Five years ago, companies of all shapes and sizes were setting net zero targets.

Reality has since caught up with a number of them, with Climate Integrity director Claire Snyder of the view some had little intention of ever following through on their promises.

“It’s very easy to set a net zero commitment target, it’s actually much harder to achieve it,” according to the head of the national advocacy organisation founded in 2024 to promote transparency, accountability and adherence to climate science.

Still, not all businesses are treating climate pledges as a marketing exercise.

Lendlease, IKEA and Fortescue have all been singled out by the not-for-profit research group for their “real zero” leadership, with the latter the only heavy-emitting industrial company in the world targeting no fossil fuels.

Distinct from “net zero”, which allows companies to neutralise emission by sinking money into growing trees and other carbon-cutting projects, “real zero” refers to decarbonisation through clean technologies – no offsets allowed.

Originally intended as a last-resort for sectors with no emissions-free tech options, offsets have since become a way for companies to make little effort to decarbonise while throwing money at green projects elsewhere.

While proponents argue offsets funnel funds into clean energy and revegetation, a host of reliability and permanence concerns have come to light and EnergyAustralia has recently been forced to apologise to customers for using them to spruik “carbon neutral” products.

For Ms Snyder, elevating climate leaders was pivotal at a time of ambition backsliding concentrated in the US where businesses are experiencing political and legal pressure to ditch environmental policies and activities.

While not entirely immune, she said Australian-based firms were able to create some distance and had produced fewer abandoned or watered-down climate commitments.

Lendlease head of sustainability Cate Harris said for her company, which has been chipping away at its decarbonisation targets for years, it was full-steam ahead.

“What sort of insulates us a little, particularly across our sector, is that the green building movement is now over 20 years old,” she told AAP.

The construction and real estate giant has an interim net zero carbon target by 2025 for scope 1 and 2 emissions, an offset-reliant commitment that is on track.

More ambitious is its long-term “absolute zero” plan, which will see the real estate giant eliminate emissions without offsets, including those produced in the making of building materials.

Cutting out what’s known as “embodied carbon” from steel, concrete, glass and aluminium remains a major challenge as it’s outside the company’s direct control and relies on suppliers investing in green production lines.

“They are actually probably four of the harder-to-abate sectors globally,” she said.

Ms Harris reported “green shoots” across all four materials and was confident the real estate company could meet its 2040 decarbonisation goals.

“No offsets, no excuses,” she said.

Ms Snyder said the corporate pursuit of emissions reductions remained a largely opt-in and voluntary affair, with the exception of the safeguard mechanism for big polluters.

Even that was dominated by offset use rather than actual decarbonisation, she said, and having “very low to moderate impact on emissions” based on the latest data.

She said regulatory regimes clamping down on greenwashing and climate information transparency should be compulsory. 

“Unless they’re mandatory, we’re not going to see the change that we need to see at the pace that we need to see it.”

Originally set up as a government-level commitment under the international Paris climate pact to limit warming to 1.5C or well below 2C, net zero was never intended to be adopted by corporations.

The pursuit of carbon neutrality by 2050 – that is, cutting emissions wherever possible and then countering sectors with no legitimate options for decarbonisation with reliable carbon dioxide removal strategies – is key to achieving Australia’s temperature goals.

Source: AAP