Neste and Morrisons become latest firms to rethink climate targets

Finnish fuel producer Neste has ditched some of its climate targets, saying that meeting them in a credible way is “currently not realistic”.

The firm, which claims to be the world’s leader for renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), planned to makes its production activities carbon neutral by 2035, but will now aim to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 80% by 2040 instead.

It will delay its ambition to halve its overall emissions by 2030 by five years, to 2035.

“With these changes Neste focuses solely on absolute emission reductions in its own operations and removes the option of using emission compensation from its climate target setting,” the company explained.

It is retaining its commitment to halve the intensity of the emissions generated from using its products by 2040 under the new strategy.

Neste said the decision to reduce the ambition of many of its targets was “due to the company’s current financial position and streamlined investment portfolio”.

“Reaching the original climate targets by the previously communicated very ambitious target years would have required significant investments that are currently not realistic,” it claimed in a statement published on Monday.

It’s not the first company to drop its sustainability targets this year.

Last week, drinks giant Heineken retired a third of its goals, and UK supermarket chain Morrisons revealed on Friday that it would extend its net-zero deadline by 15 years, from 2035 to 2050.

Writing about the trend on LinkedIn, Elizabeth Carlson, the chief sustainability officer of Tricon Energy said sustainability experts “often have unrealistic expectations on achieving targets”.

“How many companies have missed their profit and cash flow targets?” she wrote.

“Most, all?”

“And then, what does a goal or target really mean? Consider something like a ‘zero accidents’ goal. I’ll never set a target of ‘two injuries next year’. Should we adjust the target ‘to be more realistic’ if an accident happens? No, we should learn from it and keep working. Zero accidents is always the goal, and we have to push as hard as we can to achieve that.”

It hasn’t all been back-pedalling, however.

Morrisons’ new strategy sees it commit for the first time to hit net-zero across Scopes 1, 2 and 3, with near-term and long-term validation from the Science Based Targets initiative.

The retailer has said it will reduce its absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 80% by 2035, compared with 2019, and 90% by 2050.

Given that 98% of its emissions come from its Scope 3 activities, it has also committed to a 40% cut in indirect energy and industrial emissions by 2035, and a 48.5% reduction in Forest, Land and Agriculture emissions – better known as FLAG – reaching 72% by 2050.

Scope 3 emissions would fall 90% altogether by 2050 under the new strategy.

Since 2021, Morrisons has cut its overall emissions by 22%, which it said was partly down to energy efficiency measures and closer collaboration with its suppliers.