Plans for the tech company climate, explained

Your climate plan bullshit detector

Each day it seems, a new company in tech updates its climate plan or drops one. They’re among the most important sustainability documents a company can produce, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that many have a whiff of, well, bullshit about them. That’s not to say they’re all terrible or in bad faith, of course.

Play is a complex web of motivations. All these climate plans are behind you.

• The government is failing to act on climate change, creating a Category 5 hurricane-sized vacuum.
• There’s the fact that, uh, well, we better do something about the whole heat-death of the planet thing before it’s too late.
• Tech workers are becoming more vocal in their demands for companies to address the climate crisis.
• And, yes, there’s a desire to capture some good PR as the public grows more concerned about the climate crisis.
• All of this is to say that there are noble reasons and some that aren’t, which has led to a mixed bag of pledges.

To add to the confusion: Climate plans are possible It is reallyIt’s difficult to decode.It can be difficult to figure out which commitments are true and which are PR fluff. But don’t worry, friend. Protocol Climate is here to assist. Climate change is a topic full of buzzwords. Understanding what those buzzwords mean is the first step. Let’s take a quick tour of some of the key concepts:

• Net zero: Any in-vogue climate plan will almost surely mention a company’s net-zero goal. This simply means that the company promises to reduce its emissions as much as possible and offset any excess. That’s the whole “net” part of “net zero.” Many companies — including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft — have set a goal of being net zero by 2050 (though some are aiming to do so even sooner). Technically, this would align with the key goal of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But there’s a lot of wiggle room in the term that actually makes this target less valuable than it seems. (Learn more below.)
• Scopes of emissions Scope, Scope 1, 2 and 3 are the three types of carbon emissions. This is carbon pollution’s Neapolitan icecream. Scope 1 emissions are the choco … errr, direct emissions from a company (say, the tailpipe emissions from an Amazon delivery truck). Scope 2 emissions are from indirect sources (emissions from the power plant from which Amazon buys electricity). Then there’s Scope 3, where most companies’ emissions are: Those are tied to the entire value chain both up- and downstream (i.e., the supplier manufacturing the gas-powered leaf blower you bought on Amazon, and then you using it. Tsk, tsk. Get an electric one!
• Carbon offsets These are a quick and easy way for companies to basically tithe for polluting by buying credits to back a forest project in California or a solar farm in Bolivia that will (in theory) sequester carbon dioxide or put more renewable power on the grid that wouldn’t have been installed otherwise. But it’s very different than companies actually reducing emissions.

That’s just emissions, though. Climate plans can also include other metrics such as commitments to put pressure on suppliers to clean their act; planning for how they will adapt to climate change; and financial planning.

• Remember the famous climate person koan? Climate change affects everyone, which means that everything must change. There are many moving parts.
• But to spare your inbox, we’re going to focus on the emissions parts here.

How do you distinguish the good from the ugly? Companies can say whatever they want in their plans because there are no global unified climate reporting requirements. There are some key factors that can help us identify real companies on climate.

• Interim targets: Net zero by 2050 sure sounds nice. But if a company doesn’t have a meaningful series of interim targets — in 2025, 2030 and so on — to help it get there, that’s a huge red flag.
• Scope 3: Scope 3 emissions are the lion’s share for most companies. At MicrosoftScope 3 emissions account for 75% of the total. Ditto for Amazon. If you’re not addressing Scope 3 emissions, do you even care about the climate, bro?
• A reasonable offset strategy There are simply too few offsets in the world for the math to create a habitable planet. “Offsets really shouldn’t play a role in achieving [net zero], except for the last mile,” Simon Fischweicher, the head of Corporations and Supply Chains at corporate accountability nonprofit CDP, told Protocol.
• Executive accountability: Executive bonuses are often tied to making shareholders more money. That’s nice and all, but companies with credible climate plans can also ensure that part of their executive compensation is tied to prioritizing the planet, which Fischweicher said is “really critical.”
• All of these are included in the best plans. and in Thursday’s newsletter, we’ll walk you through how you can think about these issues in more detail so that you can write a killer climate plan for your own company.

Even the best plans may not be enough. At the moment. Some companies are doing great work in putting together plans. The bad news is they’re having a hard time meeting them. Microsoft, for example, said that it saw Emissions increase by 21.5%Last year, customers bought a lot of Xboxes and the company’s data centers expanded. The week before, it had been sold out of all its data centers. received an “A”As You Sow, a corporate accountability nonprofit, for its plan. I don’t say this to trash Microsoft; good on it for trying! But the company’s failure to get on track shows why we can’t necessarily rely on tech companies to shoulder the burden alone. This is the common refrain This sums it all.

Steve Adler, Austin Mayor, sees cities as climate innovation centers

Protocol Climate hosted a Launch Dinner at the Goals House in SXSW on Monday night. Your diligent climate editor couldn’t just sit down and relax at dinner, though. (OK, I did that one day.) To kick off the gathering, I sat down with Austin Mayor Steve Adler to talk about the city’s climate plan and how Texas’ tech hub is cleaning up its carbon pollution. Below are some highlights of our conversation.

• Mayors are more accountable for their actions than other policymakers. Adler said his proximity to constituents means he has to deliver on Austin’s climate goals — or face questions when he’s out in the community: “At a city level, platitudes and aspirations don’t really carry much weight. The people I run into at the grocery store don’t want to know about what the aspirations are. I get asked really specific questions about … why did I make this decision to fund this priority this way and not another.”
• This responsiveness allows cities to get things done quicker. Adler was at the United Nations climate talks last November and “it was [really] frustrating to watch the speed at which nation-states are moving.” He said he’d like to see cities connect with each other, whether it’s to share knowledge or even finances so that cities in the Global North help those in the Global South with their own decarbonization efforts.
• Austin has a net zero plan. In line with that responsiveness, Austin has set an aggressive net zero by 2040 plan, “with a strong emphasis on cutting emissions by 2030.” That includes deploying new building technologies like heat pumps, building out an EV charging network and increasing access to micromobility and public transit. Adler pointed out the city added “equity” when it revised its climate plan, reflecting that the energy transition has to include everyone.

Look out for a longer version of this conversation with Adler that we’ll publish on protocol.com later today.

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