In 2022, climate risk has hit home as a heat wave in Britain shattered records hundreds of years old, wildfires swept through France, torrential rain drenched the American Midwest, and flooding devastated the Near East. On the global political stage, historic investment to fight climate change has collided with political tensions, stymieing collaboration. Against this backdrop, the world’s largest corporations are embracing environmental sustainability, both to manage risk and seize market opportunities. We researched the sustainability goals of the top 200 companies (G200) in the Fortune Global 500 rankings, as we last performed in 2020, and found a transformed landscape over just the past couple of years. According to our analysis, G200 firms in 2022 are:

  • Ramping up their operations goals. More than doubling from our findings in 2020, 51% of G200 firms have set a goal to become carbon-neutral or net-zero for their direct emissions and their purchased electricity, called scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, respectively, by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Firms are reducing emissions and offsetting the rest. Tripling since our analysis in 2020, 15 firms have already achieved carbon-neutral goals. Ambitious corporations are signing on to the Science Based Targets initiative, which requires them to reduce their absolute emissions as much as possible before they resort to any offsetting to claim net-zero emissions.
  • Broadening their emissions reduction targets. Firms are no longer only reducing emissions from their own operations. Showing how dramatically and how quickly the purview of sustainability strategies have expanded, 22% percent of G200 firms have set targets to reduce one or more categories of emissions upstream and downstream in their value chains, such as their supply chains or their products’ use (called scope 3 emissions).

In our new report, The State Of Environmental Sustainability In The Fortune Global 200, 2022, we break down the sustainability goals of the world’s largest corporations by category, industry, and geography; share Forrester data on the environmental sustainability actions and concerns of business and technology professionals and enterprise risk decision-makers; and outline how your organization can pivot according to these corporate bellwethers. Also, our newly launched research theme, the green market revolution, is out now, including this research and other coverage of environmental sustainability! Clients can read more about the green market revolution here. If you aren’t yet a client, you can get complimentary resources on the sustainability solutions hub.