2,000+ firms have signed up for ‘net zero’ in the last year

Race to Zero saw thousands of new members despite high-profile departures

More than 2,000 companies have signed up to achieve net zero over the past year.

Despite high-profile backsliding by a number of large corporations and financial institutions, the UN-backed climate body Race to Zero has seen a boom in new members – especially smaller companies.

“Over the last 12 months, the number of Race to Zero members classified as SMEs has grown by 1,936, representing a 26.60% increase,” said a spokesperson for the organisation.

Over the same period, there was a net increase of 269, or 9%, large non-financial companies.

Race to Zero’s membership is made up of the entities that belong to one of its 26 subgroups, which include the Science Based Targets initiative and the SME Climate Hub.

The subgroups differ in their levels of strictness, but ultimately all require members to commit to reduce emissions in line with reaching net zero by 2050.

More than 70% of all the new recruits came from Western Europe, with the remainder mostly coming from the Asia Pacific region.

Some of the world’s largest and best-known companies have backed away from their public climate commitments over the past year, with many citing the difficulties of executing on a net-zero strategy when the world’s governments are not introducing supportive policies.

Last year, SBTi removed more than 100 companies from its ‘net-zero dashboard’ because they hadn’t set sufficient decarbonisation targets. Since then, big names like Deloitte, BlackRock and JP Morgan have left their respective net-zero bodies.

A report published last week by PwC found the median revenue of companies making climate commitments had decreased from $3.6bn in 2020 to $1.3bn last year.

“From 2020 to 2023, our research showed that large companies were leading the charge on climate commitments, with over 2 billion metric tons covered by new targets each year,” it said.

“But trends in 2024 reveal a new phase of decarbonisation and a shift towards small companies making commitments.”

PwC said the trend was driven in part by large companies seeking to address their Scope 3 emissions by encouraging their suppliers to decarbonise.