Over 10,000 companies now hold validated science-based targets, with new target-setting rising by 40% in 2025 alone. Around 25,000 firms disclose to CDP, mapping up to 90% of their carbon footprints down to the decimal. However, looking past the scoreboard reveals some interesting data.
The Illusion of Progress | The Reality of Delivery |
Commitment: "Staying the course" remains the popular corporate narrative. | Retreat: Major firms quietly pushed back their net-zero dates or softened targets in 2025. |
Trajectory: Massive adoption of net-zero targets globally. | Outcome: Only 38% of listed companies are on a 2°C path; 1 in 3 large firms with targets have no plan to reach them. |
Reporting: Vast improvements in data collection and supplier tracking. | Metrics: Better Scope 3 data often increases reported emissions, masking real-world progress or hiding backsliding. |
We have built an expensive instrument that while we know requires a level of accuracy for accurate disclosure, has driven teams to hyper-focus on aspects that create analysis paralisis. Making reporting to consume the vast majority of sustainability budgets and crowding out the actual work of reduction. Teams are fully occupied measuring the 75% of their footprint they cannot yet touch.
The Anatomy of Action: Four Levers That Work
If measurement isn't driving reduction, what does? CDP’s analysis of 6,800 companies (representing two-thirds of global market value) reveals that frontrunners share a specific operational playbook. Firms successfully hitting their targets consistently pull four levers:
Executive Compensation: Tying leadership pay directly to climate outcomes (78% of frontrunners vs. under 50% of laggards).
Transition Plans: Developing concrete, actionable transition strategies (64% vs. 36%).
Internal Carbon Pricing: Assigning a financial cost to carbon within the business (41% vs. 20%).
Supplier Engagement: Actively working with the value chain to reduce upstream emissions (nearly 90% of frontrunners).
The common thread is that none of these are measurement improvements, they are mechanisms of transferred consequence. Emissions drop when non-sustainability staff are paid, priced and contracted to change them.
Of the four levers, supplier engagement dominates. For most firms, upstream emissions account for 11 to 20 times their own direct footprint. Research from BCG and EcoVadis shows that serious supplier engagement improves a company's odds of hitting its targets by nine times.
Yet, current engagement strategies are largely self-defeating. Suppliers are drowning in mismatched, incompatible survey requests from multiple buyers. Getting a form returned is just more counting; it does not equate to a single tonne of carbon reduced. Successful programs skip the endless surveys and change the commercial relationship outright, making carbon reduction a strict condition of contract renewal or awarding, among other financial and non-financial incentives.
Four Traps to Avoid
As the field navigates the gap between commitment and delivery, the data highlights four major pitfalls to avoid in the years ahead:
Using AI for Paperwork instead of Operations: AI can do way more than data-cleaning and reporting. Use tools for routing, forecasting and substituting lower-carbon inputs to drive proactive avoidance rather than limiting it to faster disclosure.
Managing the Digits Instead of the Decision: Because business growth and better data push reported numbers up, a falling line can hide backsliding and a rising line can hide real progress. Manage the inputs (the material switches, the substitutions, the contracts) and let the final emissions number follow.
Reading Political Retreat as Permission: The loud corporate withdrawals from climate pledges are a minority; the majority simply went quiet. Treating political noise as a reason to ease off will not alter the physical realities of a warming planet.
Performing "Engagement Theater": Do not confuse survey response rates with actual carbon abatement. Sending questionnaires is not cutting emissions.
The Next Era is to Prove the Reductions
The measuring era is ending (not because it failed, but because it succeeded). It has shown us in high resolution exactly how far our commitments have outpaced our delivery.
The next phase is harder, quieter, and demands only one thing: Name a tonne of carbon you reduced, point to the specific business decision or stakeholder that did it and prove it.
If that sounds easy, you are in the 1% doing the real work. If it sounds hard, you are in the majority and you finally know exactly what the next few years are for.
Sources (The figures and findings in this article draw on the following publicly available research and reporting)
Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) — validated-target count (10,000+) and the ~40% rise in new target-setting in 2025. About the SBTi; Corporate climate target-setting up 40% in 2025 (2026).
CDP, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and Oliver Wyman — disclosure scale (~25,000 companies), Scope 3 as roughly 75% of the corporate footprint, and the four-lever analysis of 6,800 companies (executive pay, transition plans, internal carbon pricing, supplier engagement) with the frontrunner-vs-laggard splits. CDP Corporate Health Check (2025); Oliver Wyman summary.
MSCI — trajectory alignment (only ~38% of listed companies on a sub-2°C path; the aggregate implying ~3°C). Transition Finance Tracker, Q3 2025 (summary).
Net Zero Tracker — the delivery-planning gap (nearly one in three large companies with a net-zero target lacks a plan to reach it). Net Zero Stocktake 2025.
BCG & EcoVadis — supplier engagement as the single highest-leverage move (a ninefold improvement in the odds of hitting Scope 3 targets), and upstream emissions running roughly 11–21× a company's direct footprint. From Liability to Advantage: Decarbonizing the Supply Chain (2025).
PwC — Scope 3 averaging roughly 11× Scope 1 and 2 combined, across 4,000+ corporate disclosures. State of Decarbonization (2025).
World Economic Forum — supplier-survey duplication and the shift from questionnaires to contractual conditions (e.g., the NHS Net Zero Supplier Roadmap making carbon plans a condition of supply). From reporting to results: how companies cut Scope 3 emissions (2026).
Trellis — the 2025 wave of target roll-backs and the commitment-versus-delivery gap. Jim Giles, It's time we all come to grips with today's emissions-reduction reality (2025).
Integrity Next — the measurement paradox: better data and wider supplier coverage often raise reported Scope 3 emissions. Reducing Scope 3 Emissions (2026).
Gartner — the AI-native supply chain: agentic supply-chain software forecast to reach ~$53B in annual spend by 2030, while the sustainability function still runs largely on manual processes. Gartner Forecasts Supply Chain Management Software with Agentic AI Will Grow to $53 Billion in Spend by 2030 (2026).
McKinsey & Company — operational abatement and avoidable value-chain carbon costs. The Net-Zero Transition: Supply Chain Carbon Costs and Abatement Opportunities (2025).