200 global companies now signed on to Climate Pledge

SEATTLE—Amazon has announced that more than 200 companies have now signed The Climate Pledge, indicating their intention to adopt carbon-reduction policies.

Eighty-six new signatories of the pledge include Procter & Gamble, HP, Salesforce, ASOS and Nespresso, stated a Sept. 20 release. The pledge, co-founded by Amazon, has a net-zero target by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.

Among the signatories is Nova Scotia-based manufacturer CarbonCure, which has developed technology for the concrete industry that introduces recycled CO₂ into fresh concrete. Amazon announced last fall it will use CarbonCure concrete at its HQ2 building in Virginia.

Signatories to The Climate Pledge agree to:

measure and report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis;
implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through business changes and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy and materials reductions; and
neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable and socially beneficial offsets to achieve net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.

Pledge signatories in total have more than seven million employees across 26 industries in 21 countries. By achieving net-zero carbon by 2040, current Climate Pledge signatories are expected to collectively mitigate 1.98 billion tonnes of carbon emissions from a 2020 baseline, equivalent to 5.4 per cent of current global annual emissions.

The latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius or even 2 degrees Celsius will be out of reach.

“The recent report released by the IPCC is the starkest warning yet that the systems supporting human life are reaching tipping points and that the window of time to act decisively is narrowing,” said Christiana Figueres, the UN’s former climate chief and now founding partner of Global Optimism, in a statement. “This wake-up call from science must be faced with courage and conviction.”