That was one of the central conclusions of Corporate Knights’ latest Earth Index* analysis, which found that G20 countries as a whole were not on track to meet their stated reduction targets from 2020 to 2021. The Earth Index revealed that the G20 actually saw emissions rise during this period by 23% of the reduction needed to meet their stated climate goals – a glaring “say–do” gap between their targets and actions.

If G20 countries meet their pledges, their collective emissions will shrink to 25.3 gigatonnes in 2030 (down from 38.1 gigatonnes in 2019), but these new findings do not instill confidence. Globally, emissions will need to decrease by 4% every year if the planet is going to reach net-zero by 2050. But early indications from the International Energy Agency are that emissions were up again in 2022. 

“If the G20 fully delivers on its commitments, the world would have a two-thirds chance of keeping the global annual temperature increase within a two-degree threshold,” says Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps. “Those aren’t odds any of us should feel great about, and this year’s Earth Index suggests we’re squandering the opportunity to reduce risk down to even that margin.”

While the G20 collectively lagged behind on its promises, the Earth Index found that high-income countries performed better, reducing their emissions by 44% of the level needed to reach their climate pledges. This was largely thanks to the pandemic-induced reduction in emissions from transportation and fossil fuel production.  Canada scored comparatively well with an Earth Index score of 93%, but still fell short of the pace it needs to set to meet its 2030 target.  

Read the full report.

Middle-income countries, however, saw emissions rise by 80% of the amount by which they would have needed to decline to be on track for meeting commitments. China scored the worst of these economies, with emissions increasing by 117% of the amount they would have needed to decrease to be on track for meeting the country’s stated net-zero commitment.  Mexico had the best score,  having reduced emissions by 184% of the reduction needed (although this is largely due to Mexico’s weak target of 22% below 2013 levels by 2030).  

The data show that while there was a dip in emissions during the early months of the pandemic, it was only temporary, as they rose again from 2020 to 2021. Corporate Knights head of research Ralph Torrie says that global leaders squandered the opportunity to chart a new course after the shutdowns of the early pandemic.  

“We continue to see half-measures and new commitments to pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure,” he says. “Time is running out to mount a true emergency response to climate change that would close the gap between what we know and say needs to be done and the effort we have so far been able to muster.” 

*The Earth Index measures G20 countries’ progress on emission reductions against their stated climate goals. Click here for a full explanation of its methodology. Click here for the full report. 

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A new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) reveals that global emissions rose in 2022. That means major emitters such as the U.S. and China are falling further behind in meeting their climate targets.    

“None of these countries are on track for meeting their stated emission-reduction targets,” observes Corporate Knights research director Ralph Torrie. “When the global pandemic hit in 2020, we knew it would cause greenhouse gas emissions to decline, but we hoped the emission decrease could be locked in as economies recovered.” 

Globally, emissions need to decrease by 4% every year if we’re going to reach net-zero by 2050. But in reality, emissions rebounded in 2021 and grew again in 2022 by 0.9%, reaching an all-time high of more than 36.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. “That puts us about where we were in 2019, with the ‘say–do’ gap persisting even as the clock ticks down for countries to hit their 2030 targets,” says Torrie.  

Last year, Corporate Knights released the Earth Index, a tool that measures the annual progress of G20 countries in achieving their 2030 emissions targets. The G20 is responsible for about 75% of global GHG emissions. The 2022 Earth Index revealed that most countries were far behind.

While there is clear evidence that growth in renewable energy and electrification are moderating global emissions, countries will have to redouble their efforts to decarbonize if they are going to meet their official emission targets.  

According to the IEA’s latest figures, the European Union is estimated to have achieved emission reductions of 70 megatonnes (Mt) CO2, or 2.5%, from 2021, which is less than half of the 150 Mt of annual reductions required to meet their 2030 target. The say–do gap is even wider for the United States, where 2022 emissions increased by 36 Mt, or 0.8%, compared to the more than 240 Mt, or 5%, of annual reductions they need to achieve to meet their own target. 

China’s emissions in 2022 were 6.5% above their 2019 levels, but the slight decline over the past year points to the possibility that China may yet be able to deliver on its stated commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. 

“Every year we fail to narrow the say–do gap, we increase the hardship and costs that will be faced in the future,” says Torrie.  

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But we didn’t.

Instead, pandemic-recovery stimulus packages totalling US$17.2 trillion provided more support for dirty industries than green ones in 15 of the G20 countries, including the world’s three largest economies – China, India and the United States, according to the Greenness of Stimulus Index calculated by consultancy Vivid Economics.

Not surprisingly, after energy-related global greenhouse gas emissions plunged in 2020 when much of the world hunkered down inside their homes, they surged back to record levels in 2021, with Chinese coal burning the biggest hole in our carbon budget.

Late in February, after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its grimmest report yet, the world’s top diplomat, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, was anything but diplomatic. He warned we are “sleepwalking to climated catastrophe,” describing the report as an “atlas of human suffering.” Nor did he mince words on who is culpable for “forcing the world’s most vulnerable on a frog march to destruction,” singling out the world’s biggest polluters and their underwriters for being “guilty of arson of our only home” and calling out the world’s leaders for their “criminal” abdication of leadership.

We can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 1988, at the first major climate summit (held in Toronto), world leaders said in their closing statement, “Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment, whose ultimate consequences are second only to global nuclear war.”

Speaking of which, the doomsday clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is at 100 seconds to midnight – the closest it has ever been to apocalypse, and that was before Russian President Vladimir Putin, his pockets bulging with billions in fossil fuel revenues (more so after his invasion spiked prices), decided to invade Ukraine on the doorsteps of several NATO countries.
Personally, I would rather avoid cooking the planet while lining the pockets of petroleum pugilists like Putin, reckless enough to play chicken with nuclear bombs.

Fortunately, there is a way. We can stop burning fossil fuels; not immediately in one fell swoop, but rapidly in one decade.

We can save two birds (civilization and a livable climate) by dropping one stone (fossil fuels).

I would rather avoid cooking the planet while lining the pockets of petroleum pugilists like Putin, reckless enough to play chicken with nuclear bombs.

The people in charge of countries (more than 130 leaders, including the entire G20), financial houses (US$130 trillion worth) and corporations (more than 5,000, with a collective worth exceeding US$23 trillion) say they want to, all having declared they’re going to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 or thereabouts.

The solutions to getting off fossil fuels are on the shelf. We can decarbonize the grid and electrify almost everything with renewable electricity, batteries, electric vehicles and heat pumps.
And we have the cash to put the solutions to work, with households, corporations and governments holding US$510 trillion in financial assets like stocks, bonds, pension funds, and cash and deposits. That’s triple the amount of 20 years ago, and more than five times global GDP.

So what is the problem?

It’s a combination of inertia and vested interests who are perverting our political systems to protect their profits, which they care about an awful lot.

Our political systems are marinated in oil and cooked by coal.

Swedish youth climate leader Greta Thunberg and her peers continue to inspire, and we need more people in the streets, but for this to change we also need the captains of industry on the winning side of the energy transition to care an awful lot.

These leaders already have more economic clout than the losers do, and now we need them to assert their political clout to break the inertia and cancel out the delay tactics of the losers.

They have the long-term interest, practical know-how and economic credibility to do this, and their leadership would help to create space for a new generation of political leaders with conviction and clarity on what needs to be done, and the courage to do it no matter what.

On the 52nd anniversary of Earth Day, we are launching Earth Index as a fundamental metric to keep score on whether countries are reducing emissions fast enough to get where they promised to be by 2030.

Starting this year, we will work the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World as a nucleus to illuminate this “say–do” gap revealed by Earth Index in the capitals of the G20, and what is required to close it.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres put it, “Now is the time to turn rage into action.”

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Germany has achieved major gains with its coal phase-out, an objective that was originally set for 2038 but has been moved forward to 2030. This, combined with the commitment to end nuclear power generation by 2022, has resulted in major government investment in renewables – boosted again with Germany’s recent decision to halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.

The new federal minister of climate action (and the vice-chancellor), Green Party member Robert Habeck, is currently revising the Renewable Energy Sources Act Law with an aim to significantly expand renewable energy production; solar capacity is slated to increase by more than threefold, and wind power will more than double by 2030. For the first time, the federal government is offering financial support for farmers willing to install solar panels on their land. The government is also raising solar subsidy rates and requiring all new industrial buildings to host solar panels. Meanwhile, Germany’s 16 federal states are being compelled to allocate 2% of their surface area to wind power installations. The government aspires to an 80% renewable grid by 2030, 100% by 2035.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, climate goals are inextricably tied to energy sovereignty, with Finance Minister Christian Lindner now referring to renewables as “Freiheitsenergie” (freedom energy). He has announced a $200-billion investment in industrial transformation that will expand the electric vehicle charging network (100,000 stations to be added annually), boost hydrogen technology and fill the fiscal hole that will result from the removal of the renewable energy surcharge (which has been added to consumers’ electricity bills since 2000).

Energy efficiency is also a key piece of the net-zero puzzle. Germany is working to reduce total energy consumption by 20 to 25% of current levels by 2030. A major focus here is on the country’s buildings, the majority of which were built before 1977, when thermal insulation requirements were introduced, and are still heated with oil or gas. Buildings currently account for 16% of Germany’s CO2 emissions.

In concert with the EU, which recently raised the standards of its Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in a bid to achieve carbon neutrality in Europe’s building stock by 2050, Germany is further raising the bar on energy efficiency requirements for buildings in legislation expected to pass in 2023. An incentive program run through Germany’s state-owned development bank calibrates subsidies, grants and interest rates for building and renovation projects to their energy efficiency.

While Germany’s 2019 Earth Index score of 136% (which is consistent with the previous three-year trend) suggests that the country is well on its way to net-zero, the current government’s attitude is anything but complacent. At his first press conference as minister, Habeck summarized the country’s climate performance thus: “We’re not standing on the starting line here; we’re way behind.”
He says the pace of change has to accelerate by a factor of three in order to reach the 2030 targets; while emissions sunk by an average of 15 megatonnes per year between 2010 and 2020, annual reductions will have to reach at least 40 megatonnes in this decade.

The hitch: while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should accelerate Germany’s renewable energy plans, Habeck also announced the creation of strategic coal reserves in an effort to reduce Germany’s dependence on Russian gas. As well, the country is building two new port terminals for liquefied natural gas.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer. She lived in Berlin for 12 years, working for Canadian and German media.

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The French consume more dairy products per capita than anyone else on Earth, and their dairy sector represented 7% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2017. Decarbonizing agriculture means overhauling a massive industry. Six different “low-carbon” food labels have been launched to certify projects that sequester or avoid agricultural emissions, including “ferme laitière bas carbone” (low-carbon dairy farm).

Fortunately, other sectors are less challenging. France’s nuclear-heavy power sector is ahead of schedule in decarbonization (though it controversially kept two remaining coal plants open through the winter), and in February, President Emmanuel Macron announced a 10-fold increase in renewable energy to 2050, as well as plans for a “nuclear renaissance.”

France’s aging buildings, most of them erected before the Second World War, have an enormous potential to slash emissions by switching from gas to electric heat pumps and district heating, particularly with a decarbonized power sector. The country has good plans for this, including large renovation subsidies and one-stop retrofit shops, says Adeline Rochet of climate-change think tank E3G. “But it will take a few years to see results.” Reticent homeowners should be spurred to renovate by recent energy price hikes. Those higher energy costs should also accelerate industrial-sector efforts to decarbonize.

In 2019, France was just below the EU average for recycling municipal waste. But in early 2020, three ambitious new 2025 targets were announced that should speed up the sector’s emission reductions: 20% reduction in single-use plastics, 100% recycling of plastic packaging and 100% removal of “useless” plastic packaging such as blister packs around batteries. Longer-term, all single-use plastics should be phased out by 2040.

Despite its world-famous electric high-speed trains, France’s transport emissions are proving more difficult to move. Electric cars have boomed in the last couple of years, which will help, but it will not be enough to overcome decades of building car-dependent sprawl. More promisingly, a green wave of municipal leaders was elected in 2020, pushing a pro-cycling agenda inspired by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. Freight emissions remain difficult to move, as almost everything travels on diesel trucks.

“There are some powerful lobbies, deeply rooted in national identity in some cases, that make it difficult to achieve targets in transport and agriculture,” says Rochet. She adds that decreasing single-passenger cars and meat-based diets can go a long way, but public resistance to change is likely. “France has clearly engaged in the transition over the past few years, but it is still not up to the challenge, especially with higher EU emissions reductions targets.”

Adrian Hiel is a Canadian writer who has spent the last 18 years in Brussels.

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It also helps greatly that the country’s climate policies are underpinned by the world’s first climate change law, introduced in 2008, and a Climate Change Committee (CCC) that holds the government to account on its targets and progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.K. aims to cut its emissions by 68% below 2013 levels by 2030, and currently it is 43% of the way toward achieving that target. To reach the 2030 goal, it needs to cut around 18,000 kilotonnes a year. In 2019, emissions fell by 13,566 kilotonnes, giving the country a 75% Earth Index score, according to new Corporate Knights report. Though the pace of cuts has accelerated.

The heavy lifting has come to date from the power sector, which has an Earth Index score of 330%. “The U.K. has made a concerted effort over the past decade to retire its coal capacity and replace it with low carbon power generation – principally wind (onshore and increasingly offshore),” says the CCC.

The pace of reductions in the power sector will inevitably slow, as coal has been almost completely removed from the energy mix, although the grid will continue to decarbonize as more renewables come onto the network – particularly offshore wind, where the U.K. is one of the leading markets globally and where costs have come down considerably in recent years.

Policy inconsistencies have meant that other sectors have been notably less successful to date in cutting emissions. The reversal of policies to encourage carbon capture and storage and more efficient buildings were particularly damaging for fossil fuels (which scores 26% in the index) and buildings (36%). The worst-performing sectors were waste, with a score of just 14%, and agriculture, with a score of –13%. Deep reductions in agriculture will happen only if the U.K. introduces “actions to change farming practices and consumer behaviour to release agricultural land for uses that reduce emissions and sequester carbon,” the CCC says via email.

With emission reductions well under way in the power sector, other sectors will have to play a bigger role in future, particularly industry, buildings and transport.

The U.K.’s net-zero strategy should provide a framework for whole-economy decarbonization, but it needs to be backed up by credible plans, according to the House of Lords. The U.K. carbon market will help to hasten the switch from fossil fuels to low-carbon sources, but in the short-term, the biggest contribution is set to come from transport, where emissions in 2019 fell at less than half the rate required (46%).

Progress is expected to accelerate after the government brought forward its plans to phase out the sale of petrol and diesel cars to 2030, from its original target of 2040, and although EV sales are rising fast, much still needs to be done to install new charging infrastructure.

The U.K. has made significant progress in decarbonizing its power sector, mainly by moving away from coal power to renewable sources. It now needs to do the same in other parts of the economy.

There is still a huge amount of work to do. The dangers of falling behind are illustrated by Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly calling for a temporary “climate change pass” for the gas industry in March, to allow the West to wean itself off Russian gas supplies. Others are calling for the U.K. to increase its offshore wind ambitions to bolster its energy security.

Mike Scott writes about business, finance, clean energy and sustainability.

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As global temperatures continue to climb, the increase in climate extremes is pushing nature and humans “beyond their ability to adapt,” the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in its late-February report. “Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, one of the report’s co-authors.

Climate breakdown is already causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people. Impacts include deadly heat waves and other threats to human well-being, ocean acidification and significant species loss.

“Half measures are no longer an option,” said IPCC chair Hoesung Lee.

If the world stands a chance of blunting the worst effects of the climate emergency, its largest economies must move to quickly transition away from burning fossil fuels. And the wealthiest countries must lead the way.

A new Corporate Knights analysis and accountability tool, Earth Index, has revealed that G20 countries, responsible for about 75% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, remain far off track from meeting their climate targets.

From 2016 to 2019, none of the 10 developed countries that are members of the Group of 20 nations managed to reduce emissions at a rate consistent with their 2030 targets, the index shows.

In 2019, only Germany and Turkey hit their marks. Canada was the worst performer of the developed countries. Its performance was second last to Russia – also a large oil and gas producer – between 2016 and 2019.

Corporate Knights is launching the Earth Index initiative to gauge whether G20 countries are living up to their decarbonization commitments. “We are not on track to meet these targets,” says Ralph Torrie, Corporate Knights director of research. “And for most countries, it’s not even close.”

Half measures are no longer an option.

–IPCC chair Hoesung Lee

In addition to the 10 developed countries, Earth Index monitors nine newly developed or developing countries that are members of the G20 but have different reporting requirements than the Annex 1 nations (which are developed countries and “economies in transition”) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They include China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia, and have a mixture of 2030 targets and net-zero goals for 2050 and beyond. Of the nine, only Argentina made enough progress in 2019 to be consistent with its nationally determined goals.

Organizations such as the International Energy Agency and the non-profit Climate Action Tracker initiative have concluded that targets announced last year at COP26, the UN’s climate summit in Glasgow, are insufficient to meet the goal of limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Earth Index adds to this analysis by assessing the “say–do” gap – the shortfall between what countries say they will achieve and what progress they are making toward those goals. “Along with targets that are fit for purpose, we need radical action to meet those targets,” says Corporate Knights co-founder Toby Heaps.

Time is running out for governments to get on the right track, says Rick Smith, chief executive officer at the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices. “There are only nine years to 2030 … we have a very short period of time to accomplish some significant changes.” Only in the past couple of years have key pieces begun to fall into place that will enable major emitters to meet their targets, Smith says. That includes the European Green Deal, a renewed commitment from the Biden administration to tackle emissions, and Canada’s own Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act.

The urgency of the transition was reinforced when energy powerhouse Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February, plunging commodity markets into crisis and driving oil and gas prices skyward. Fossil fuel producers like Canada and the United States faced calls to increase production to offset falling Russian supplies. European governments are embracing an urgent mixture of conservation and efficiency measures, switching from Russian oil and gas to renewables, looking to other global sources, and in some cases, extending the life of coal and nuclear plants.

Corporate Knights plans to publish the index annually with the intention of holding countries accountable for delivering on their commitments. While a one-year snapshot provides a limited picture in the first year, it will provide key data on the trend line over the coming decade, shining a spotlight on gaps both between countries and within them.

The inaugural Earth Index also allows users to survey national performance over four years between 2016 and 2019, the last year for which reliable data is available. It provides data for key sectors – power, the fossil fuel industry, transportation, industry, buildings, agriculture and waste. It does not include emissions from land use, land use change and forestry, which countries such as Canada rely on for significant emission reductions.

Along with targets that are fit for purpose, we need radical action to meet those targets.

–Corporate Knights co-founder Toby Heaps

For targets, Corporate Knights is using the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that countries submitted under the UNFCCC process last year ahead of COP26. Corporate Knights will adjust the index if countries come forward with more ambitious targets in future years.

Among the Annex 1 nations, Germany is by far the leader. In 2019, it reduced GHG emissions by 62% above what would be needed at an annual rate to achieve its target of 65% below 1990 levels by 2030. However, even Germany has ground to make up. From 2016 to 2019, it fell 15% short of the reductions needed to be on track, and preliminary 2021 data suggest it continues to fall behind. Recently, Germany announced it would spend €200 billion in an effort to eliminate dependence on Russian gas, but that doesn’t mean it’s shifting away from fossil fuels altogether anytime soon.

The EU also achieved more emission reductions in 2019 than its annualized target requires but made only half the cuts needed between 2016 and 2019 to be on pace.

The United States is the world’s second-largest emitter after China, and, despite former president Donald Trump’s open hostility toward climate policies, the country did make progress in 2019.

Driven by the power sector, the U.S. achieved 42% of the GHG reductions that were needed on an annualized basis to reach the 2030 target adopted last year by President Joe Biden.

U.S. emissions rose in the fossil fuel, industry, buildings and agriculture sectors. However, the power sector – which accounts for a quarter of the total – saw GHGs fall by nearly 10% as natural gas and renewable electricity replaced coal.

In Canada, by contrast, rising emissions in transportation, buildings and agriculture offset improvements in the power sector and resulted in a small increase in total emissions in 2019.

From 2016 to 2019, Japan and the European G20 members saw emission reductions, while Canada, the United States, Australia, Russia and Turkey increased GHG output. None of the 10 were on schedule to meet the target they adopted in 2021.

“When countries announce long-term goals but neglect the steps required to achieve them, trust plummets, alongside the likelihood that these long-term goals will ever be achieved,” says Heaps. Bending the climate trajectory will take monumental effort from governments and corporations, he adds. “Every person in every country and every sector must play a role, be willing to make compromises, and be willing to take bold action like never before to put the world on a fast track to a low-carbon economy.”

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