The Race to Zero campaign has significantly raised the threshold that investors, companies, cities and sub-national governments must meet to credibly claim to be working towards net-zero emissions by mid-century, in a move that should, in theory, turbocharge the near-term decarbonization of corporate and investment activity around the world.
The group, an initiative from the United Nations climate convention, this week published new criteria that its 10,000 members must meet within a year or risk exclusion from the campaign.
The document focuses in large part on what is required of members to achieve the 50 percent cut in global CO2 emissions that leading climate scientists say is needed by 2030 if the world is to move on to a 1.5 degrees Celsius warming trajectory.
Members of the campaign must commit, at a minimum, to halting deforestation and “phasing down and out” all fossil fuels, by restricting the development, financing and facilitating of new fossil fuel assets. No new coal projects should be enabled through the activities of Race to Zero members, it stresses. Read more….