Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
10/23/2015
Following a roundtable at the White House, President Barack Obama announced this week that a total of 81 companies have signed the administration’s American Business Act on Climate Pledge. In signing the pledge, these businesses are “voicing support for a strong Paris outcome … demonstrating an ongoing commitment to climate action … [and] setting an example for their peers,” according to a White House press release.
The group consists of companies from all 50 states with a cumulative 9 million employees and about $5 trillion worth of market capitalization. “These are some of the cutting-edge, most extraordinary businesses that we have. But it’s not just the big companies that are getting involved. It’s their suppliers and small businesses that are also getting involve,” Obama said following the roundtable.
In signing the pledge, companies have made a variety of commitments. American Express pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent globally by 2016 from its 2011 baseline, AT&T pledged to reduce its GHG emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from its 2008 baseline, and Nike has pledged to reach 100 percent renewable energy in all owned or operated facilities by 2025. Other companies to join the pledge include Apple, Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, Johnson & Johnson, IKEA USA, and McDonald’s. “And all told, right now the commitments that these companies are making total at least $160 billion. It ranges from reducing emissions to reducing water usage, to pursuing zero-net deforestation, to purchasing 100 percent clean energy,” Obama said.
The new commitments come less than two months before the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) being held in Paris from Nov. 30 – Dec. 11. COP21 is hoped to result in a new global climate agreement, which would replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2020.
State Department Urges Clean Energy Innovation
Also this week, the Department of State hosted a two-day summit at which Secretary of State John Kerry urged participants to invest in energy innovation. “We have to reach an agreement in Paris that will serve as the foundation for a low-carbon, climate-resilient future worldwide. But the road through Paris is paved with investment decisions that you’re going to make not tomorrow, but today — not in December, but in the next weeks, hopefully — and in the projects that we are working on and building together,” Kerry said in his opening remarks to the event.
