Carbon budget of listed firms to run out by October 2026: Research

SINGAPORE - The world’s listed firms are set to exceed their carbon budget – the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that would limit global temperature rises to 1.5 deg C – by as early as October 2026, new research showed on Monday.

The expiry date is two months sooner than a previous estimate made in October 2022, even though the number of global companies making commitments to combat climate change has risen 8 percentage points to 44 per cent over the period, investment data provider MSCI said in its latest Net-Zero Tracker.

It said only 17 per cent of listed firms have set targets ambitious enough that align emissions with the 1.5 deg C target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, up 10 percentage points compared with 2022.

The tracker revealed “a significant gap” between the climate pledges of listed firms and their actual emissions, said Mr Sylvain Vanston, executive director of Climate Change Investment Research at MSCI.

“Public and private companies and investors must act urgently, as this report clearly shows that time is running out and we are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees,” said Mr Vanston.

Despite new pledges, public firms were expected to emit 11.2 gigatonnes of direct greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere in 2023, the same as 2022, putting them on track to warm the planet by 2.7 deg C by the end of the century, the report said.

Climate change is expected to become significantly more extreme if temperatures rise by more than 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. Global mean temperatures in 2022 were 1.15 deg C above the 1850-1900 average, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. REUTERS