Companies routinely set targets for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. But a new kind of environmental target is emerging that has been likened to paying reparations to victims of past injustice. The idea is to eliminate not only current pollution but also to account for and counteract climate damage from the corporate past.
The UK, for example, became the first country to adopt a target for zeroing out greenhouse gases by 2050, in part because of its past pollution. Despite making up only 1% of the global population today, the UK is responsible for between 2% and 3% of global temperature rise, according to the UK Committee on Climate Change. Some companies are starting to think along similar lines.
Accounting for the past is a tricky matter, with virtually no independent assessment at the corporate level. A project by the Climate Accountability Institute, a watchdog group, tracks the historical emissions of the world’s biggest oil companies. The group’s data, which goes back to 1965, ranks Saudi Aramco at number one with past emissions equal to nearly 60-billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell all rank in the top seven.
The final figure came to about four-million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in its historical operations and electricity use, known in carbon accounting terms as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. These estimates have been verified by the Carbon Trust, an organisation that tracks carbon footprints. Velux added a 25% safety buffer, assigning itself a total of 5.6-million tonnes through 2041.