Net-zero emissions

But net zero standards require reducing emissions to more than 90% and then only offsetting the remaining 10% or less to fall in line with 1.5 °C targets.

[16] There is currently no national regulation in place that legally requires companies based in that country to achieve net zero.

This stated that the world must "achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century".

This is because the carbon cycle continuously sequesters or absorbs a small percentage of cumulative historical human-caused CO2 emissions into vegetation and the ocean.

If CO2 emissions that result directly from human activities are reduced to net zero, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would decline.

[28][29] However some publications, such as the national strategy of France, use the term "carbon neutral" to mean net reductions of all greenhouse gases.

[3] Countries, local governments, corporations, and financial institutions may all announce pledges for achieving to reach net-zero emissions.

[3] Robust net zero standards require actors to reduce their own emissions as much as possible following science-based pathways.

[39][40] To balance residual emissions, actors may take direct action to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it.

[24][25][26][27] Permanence means that removals must store greenhouse gases for the same period as the lifetime of the GHG emissions they balance.

[45] Loose regulation of claims by carbon offsetting schemes combined with the difficulties in calculating greenhouse gas sequestration and emissions reductions has also given rise to criticism.

"[46] The UK Government's Climate Change Committee says reported emissions reductions or removals may have happened anyway or.

[24][25][26][27] So significant investment in carbon capture and permanent geological storage will probably be necessary to achieve net-zero targets by mid-century.

The International Energy Agency says that global investment in low carbon substitutes for fossil fuels needs to reach US$4 trillion annually by 2030 for the world to get to net zero by 2050.

[60] On average, approximately 29% of companies in EU member states have formulated a respective target to achieve net zero or have already reached this goal.

[62] The guidance from standards institutions says that organizations should choose a base year to measure emissions reductions against.

This is because the necessary embodied energy and other effects of raw material extraction are often significant when measuring life-cycle emissions.

[63] Leading standards and guidance allow official accreditation bodies to certify products as carbon neutral but not as net zero.

In many sectors such as steel, cement, and chemicals, the pathway to reaching net zero in terms of technology remains unclear.

[71] At the same time they continue to increase greenhouse gas emissions by extracting and producing fossil fuels.

[73] Climate scientists James Dyke, Bob Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr argue that the concept of net zero has been harmful for emissions reductions.

This is because it allows actors to defer present-day emissions reductions by relying on future, unproved technological fixes.

This effectively serves as a blank cheque for the continued burning of fossil fuels and the acceleration of habitat destruction", they said.

[75][76] "A net zero target means less incentive to get to 'real zero' emissions from fossil fuels, an escape hatch that perpetuates business as usual and delays more meaningful climate action," he said.

[76][75] At the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), the High-Level Expert Group on the net-zero emissions commitments of non-state entities of the United Nations formed the previous March by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and chaired by former Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna released a report that stated that the carbon neutrality pledges of many corporations, local governments, regional governments, and financial institutions around the world often amount to nothing more than greenwashing and provided 10 recommendations to ensure greater credibility and accountability for carbon neutrality pledges such as requiring non-state actors to publicly disclose and report verifiable information (e.g. greenhouse gas inventories and carbon footprint accounting in prospectus for financial securities) that substantiates compliance with such pledges.

[77][78][79] After the release of the report, Net Zero Tracker, a research consortium that includes the NewClimate Institute, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, the Data-Driven EnviroLab of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Net Zero Initiative at the University of Oxford issued a report evaluating the climate neutrality pledges of 116 of 713 regional governments, of 241 of 1,177 cities with populations greater than 500,000, and of 1,156 of 2,000 publicly listed companies in the 25 countries with the greatest emissions (whose pledges cover more than 90% of the gross world product) by the recommendations of the UN report and found that many these pledges were largely unsubstantiated and more than half of cities had no plan for tracking and reporting compliance with pledges.

"[26] The UNFCCC's Race to Zero campaign says emissions reductions and removals should "safeguard the rights of the most vulnerable people and communities".

[84][85] The plan is to review each existing law on its climate merits, and also introduce new legislation on the circular economy (CE), building renovation, biodiversity, farming and innovation.

[87] A year later, the European Climate Law was passed, which legislated that greenhouse gas emissions should be 55% lower in 2030 compared to 1990.

The Fit for 55 package is a large set of proposed legislation detailing how the European Union plans to reach this target.