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Net Zero goals of big companies kicked off target
By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>
SO MANY COMPANIES have endorsed the Federal Government’s Net Zero policy and have ostensibly committed themselves to reducing carbon emissions from their businesses.
But so many of those companies are also lobbying against these policies. They’re either doing it themselves or through their associations.
The Climate Integrity Report released at the end of May has revealed that these companies that claim to be behind Net Zero – yet are lobbying against climate action – include Coles and Woolworths, Qantas, Rio Tinto, BHP and other big organisations. 
“It’s what we refer to as greenwashing,” Lucy Piper, a director of WorkforClimate told Talking Business. “On the one hand we’re saying we’re going to do something and on the other hand, lobbying behind the scene to try to prevent regulation from allowing those changes to happen.
“My understanding is the organisations, that were leading the research, wanted to look into the biggest household names and companies in Australia to get a clear picture of what they are saying versus what they are doing behind the scenes to take action on climate.
“And we can see that, despite making commitments around emissions reduction – because those companies all have Net Zero targets – what they’re doing behind the scenes is using their influence to try to shape government policy in a way that’s going to prevent any meaningful action happening in the short term.”
Net Zero has a cost
Ms Piper said it was acknowledged that it would cost companies a great deal of money, in the short term, to prevent “catastrophic climate change and global warming from happening”.
“It’s going to cost us money in the short-term but we need to take action in order to prevent long-term bad things happening in our economy and society,” Ms Piper said.
“Unfortunately, the way businesses and the economy are set up are such that quarterly profit targets and quarterly reporting are what our businesses and corporate sector orient towards.”
Ms Piper said these businesses and directors faced the prospect of costly legal action if they continued to lobby against climate policies.
“Another thing highlighted in the Climate Integrity Report is … a future legal risk to organisations and company directors if they’re not aware of the lobbying activity that their company is either supporting – as part of a trade association – or is directly doing,” she said.
“That is creating that gap between ‘Here’s our climate commitments’ and ‘Here’s how we’re preventing action from taking place’.
“There is potential for them to be open to legal risk down the track.
“The legal risk to company directors, if they are not across what their corporate lobbying and corporate affairs teams are doing – either directly or indirectly via trade associations who are lobbying on their behalf – will open them up to that integrity gap between what they’re saying and what they’re doing.”
Ms Piper said regulatory bodies such as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) were now “cracking down” on greenwashing.
“Companies cannot say: ‘We’re going to do all these things’ and then act completely differently,” she said.
“It is not what consumers want, it is not what employees want. It is not what shareholders and investors want, because it means that funds can be allocated in the wrong places.” 
Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness
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