Welcome, everyone, to this latest edition of Oxford Net zero Climate in the Balance.
Our series of conversations this term,
exploring the critical questions and issues if we are to achieve a world of net zero emissions and hence a stable climate.
I'm Steve Smith. For those of you who haven't tuned in to one of these already,
I'm executive director of the Oxford Net Zero Initiative, and it's a pleasure to be hosting today.
This week, we're discussing the race to zero by cities, businesses and investors.
Now, those of you who joined last week will remember we discussed the fact that despite
a lot of the focus is on national governments when it comes to climate action,
there's an awful lot of action also going on at the levels of cities, regions and local governments.
And you may have heard two of the Race to Zero campaign, which is a UNled initiative in the run up to twenty six climate negotiations this year,
designed to rally cities, regions, but also businesses and investors and a host of other non-governmental actors to set ambitious net zero targets.
They have now around one thousand five hundred entities signed up, covering a large fraction of global emissions and global GDP.
So it's worth us taking a closer look at these targets and asking what the opportunities might be for them
to add further momentum as we head for net zero and also about some of the potential challenges up ahead.
So to date, help me with that. I'm delighted to be joined by Eva Brophy and Tom Hale, who are going to help us go through this topic.
If a Brophy is a lecturer in innovation and enterprise,
jointly at the School of Enterprise and the Environment and also the side business school in Oxford.
Her research focuses on how businesses deal with big systemic environmental challenges, not least climate change.
She studied this in a number of contexts, including electrification in sub-Saharan Africa,
and is interested in both the innovations that businesses make and the
collaborations needed across different organisations to realise such coordinated,
large scale system transformations. And Tom Hale is associate professor of Global Public Policy at the School of Government.
His interests are also in the area of collaboration across boundaries to solve big problems, but coming from the angle of political institutions.
So he's published on topics across issues of the environment, economics and health, and has been particularly busy over the last 12 months,
both as leader of the Oxford covid-19 Government Response Tracker, which you may have seen in the news,
but also as chair of the Expert Review Group for the Race to Zero campaign for the UN.
So before we kick off just the usual reminders before we get going,
we're recording this talk so you can view it again on YouTube on the Oxford Martin school channel there.
And we would really like you to send in your questions for Tom and Effa as we go along.
To do that, you need to be viewing on cast and you should be able to see and ask a question button at the bottom of your screen.
So click onto that. You can type in your question.
Very importantly, you can also vote on questions you'd like to be answered and we will work our way through most popular ones as time allows.
We'll try and make sure we have plenty of time for questions as good to have a proper conversation.
So I will hand over without further ado to Tom,
who I think is going to tell us a bit about the race to zero and some of the high level issues for businesses and cities and investors.
Thanks, Tom. Thank you, Steve, for that kind introduction and thank you, everyone, for joining us today.
I'm going to share my screen and try to share with you some ideas on how the best zero is working
and also how that zero targets are spreading around the world and what we might make of that.
So bear with me for a moment to share this with you. Right, writes.
So we've all seen, of course, a lot of mansio targets proliferating around the world,
and we wanted to talk about briefly, it's really what we can make of this.
What are they really representing a serious movement to address the goals of the Paris agreement?
Or are they, as many claim, greenwash in different ways as the racist campaign, which is a major effort and interacting with this debate?
So the premise certainly what this report is, my remarks are a report that's actually coming out next week,
which is a joint effort of us here in Oxford and parts of Oxford and the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit,
a non-profit group that works to communicate on climate issues.
And this is what we're having a sneak peek of this question of what you see around the world in terms of net zero targets.
So might avoid going to too many the details because they're all come out in support of that.
What's your appetite for an exciting read? And coming up next week.
This is called work, including hour by hour co-host, host today, Steve Smith.
But you know, especially and I want to say this is really powered by data collection efforts by over 50 Oxford students over the course of last year.
So this is really very much a team effort I'm talking about today.
So. I think the starting point for our question was really what is net zero evening?
As we know, we've seen a lot of criticism around the idea of Natsu, especially in recent months, rescuing example from last year.
Here's a short clip showing you.
We're not telling you to keep talking about reaching net zero emissions or carbon neutrality by cheating and fiddling around with numbers.
We're not telling you to offset your emissions by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa,
while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered as an infinitely higher rate.
Planting trees is good, of course, but it's nowhere near enough of what is needed and it cannot replace real mitigation and rewilding nature.
So here's a common argument. We hear from many others that zero actually doesn't mean what is not consistent with efforts to achieve the goals,
the MFAT to potentially abused concept and such a degree, which of course, comes from voices of the activists like Rita.
And a recent report, for example, from Friends of Friends of the Earth International, which called this whole concept chasing carbon unicorns.
But you also, of course, hear it from even a much more mainstream.
But since there's an article about NAFTA yesterday here which is talking about the need for companies to put forward serious net zero targets,
so a lot of attention is focussed on this question of what makes it a net zero target, good or bad,
and how do we make sure we have more the kind of the bad kind and how can we tell the difference?
Well, the risk to zero is a campaign that's trying to do something in that domain.
This is a campaign that's quite unique, actually. It's run by these high level climate champions who are the official people tasked by the process,
by the NSC process with mobilising commitments from subnational non-state actors, cities, businesses, states and regions, et cetera.
And unlike previous mobilisation efforts by these actors, the current effort, the race to zero,
has actually established a fairly robust criteria process to try to make sure that it's mobilising
the right kinds of efforts as basically for starting line criteria and then to leadership practises,
as they're called by the campaign. The starting criteria are really procedural steps to make sure you have a pledge as 1997 before 2050,
a plan for meeting it, that you're taking immediate steps.
Number three, proceed to do so and that you're publishing your results in a transparent way.
And then on the substance, the leadership practises the campaigns, trying to make sure that different entities are setting that zero targets include
all of their all the emissions that can be attributed to them following the
best practises and methodologies and also managing offsetting to the extent
they're doing or saying they're doing it in a way that's net zero consistent.
And this is these are kind of an interesting effort to find, if you will,
orchestrate or steer this universe of net zero targets toward a science based conception.
If you're interested, you can read more about the exact criteria there.
But the question arises, of course, how much of a groundswell of Dencio targets actually are aligning with these criteria?
So that's what we aim to set up the study in this report.
And to be clear, this is not an official RenaissanceRe report is not trying to specifically operationalise the race.
Zero criteria to see who's kind of meeting them or not is trying to assess the wider universe of net zero targets,
those that are in the race to zero and some that aren't against sort of benchmarks,
robustness that are drawn on, but not necessarily exactly the same as the basis of your criteria.
So a key distinction there.
It's a really big set of activities we're trying to look at in this report, over 4000 different entities and includes countries, states and regions,
provinces and the world's top twenty five emitters,
cities with populations larger than 500000 and all of the world's 20 largest public companies, as defined by the Forbes global two thousand.
So in total,
we're looking at over 4000 actors and we're trying to see a do they have a net zero target or things like climate neutrality that are similar?
And if they do have those targets, are they robust? Looking at their criteria, I just mentioned and as I said,
this work was done by over 50 students using Internet searches for publicly available information as they entered into a standardised coding.
So it is quite a large effort to try to figure out what's going on with this groundswell and see what targets are the most exciting part.
What do we find, as I said, where this report is coming out next week. So this must be a little sneak preview,
but some already some of the interesting findings that I think resonate with some of the other criticisms and voices we're hearing on this topic.
First, if you look at the targets and the timing of those targets, you see, as you said, that much of the world,
indeed, most of the world is now covered by a net zero target or similar kind of target.
And most of those have a 20 50 deadline, actually about two thirds.
The world economy, measured by purchasing power parity, is currently covered by net zero target, and that accounts for about 60 percent of emissions.
So if you think about where we were just five years ago,
at the start of the year after the Paris agreement was signed and ratified, this is huge progress.
We've gone from a concept that was really sort of initial at that time to suddenly covering the majority of the world economy.
That's really a huge, huge achievement. But of course, the robustness is now the next step.
So if you look at a second finding status, you see that most of these targets are still in the proposed or aspirational stage.
They may be existing a policy document for a company, for a country or some other jurisdiction,
or they might be in a press release for a company, but we need to see some more of them to be translated into kind of hard binding targets.
So if they're over one hundred twenty national targets, we see only seven are actually enshrined in law.
Actually, the U.K. is a good example of country where where that kind of legal enshrining has had an important effect on climate policy.
So we're probably remain there.
If you look at the coverage of these targets, what's actually been included in that zero or not, you see also some room for improvement.
So many of the cities and countries and also states and regions include only carbon and then haven't mentioned other greenhouse gases.
And only about a third of companies include all of scope three in their emissions that they're seeking to bring to zero.
So that's, again,
an important gap that we need to think about how to to build improve on the biggest gap that we saw around the question of offsetting.
And here is really an informational gap. Most actors either don't say if they're going to use offsetting or not or don't
tell us very much information about how they intend to approach offsetting.
And very, very few have. Maybe they said, no, we won't use any offsets or if we do use offsets abandoned by these very specific criteria.
So this is another example where I think there's a lot of room for for further strengthening.
And finally, even on governance, basic governance, questions like having reporting and interim targets is more that can be done.
Actually, addressing the need to meet subnational governments tend to have the most room for improvement on that criterion.
And and actually, companies are doing a bit better in that domain.
That probably reflects the different governance arrangements around those two sets of actors and governance.
The question, equity, how much to these different actors saying that's your target is considered equity or not?
We find actually is a bit of a gap where all of them should probably do a better job of thinking about how equity affects their approach, etc.
So the basic message is we're seeing a lot of targets, but also a huge need for more robust targets with the aim, with a few implications.
So I think we're arguably in a period of great success from that zero, which is led to a kind of wild west,
if you will, of different definitions and different standards being proliferating across the world.
So that's, I think, the sort of sometimes a good problem to have,
because it means people are not actually grappling with what's required to limit to stop climate change.
In other words, to bring the world to a state of net zero emissions.
And therefore, it also creates new challenges, new challenges about how to define it.
And if you recognise the Wild West still that you'll see it's from the TV show called
West World or some of you might be familiar with where nothing is quite as it seems.
I think that might also apply to Natsuo targets and therefore highlights the need for further work.
At the same time, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
On other words, allow this sort of confusion we're seeing around mansio targets to limit
people's ability to actually drive transition toward what the climate requires,
which is a balance between sources and sinks of greenhouse gases as soon as possible.
And that's where I think the governance of net zero will really be key races. Here is, of course, an important, I think, initiative in that direction.
But it's a UN sort of campaign. It's not ultimately a regulatory agency or a kind of standards anybody.
So the transition, I think, is going to be very important going forward is how these private standards are voluntary standards are emerging,
get registered into different types of regulation in regulation by national governments, standards,
by organisations like the ISO, the International Organisation for Standardisation or others.
And if you look at prior examples of sort of private standards setting private voluntary regulations in the private sector,
in the climate space, you'll see examples of how this can play out.
So the history of the greenhouse gas protocol very much follows this model where private efforts
and standards were developed by an NGO and then increasingly used in the private sector,
eventually helped to inform more binding restrictions by national governments and international organisations and others.
So I think this is the direction of travel for net zero standards and where I hope the conversation can go next to less in the Wild West,
but also not throw the baby out with the bathwater and instead moving toward rigorous
definitions of net zero that are going to help us all move more quickly to Paris climate.
So leave it there. But thanks for your attention. I'm looking forward to Episcopals. Thank you very much, Tom.
A great summary, and I will give people a reminder to ask your questions in the bottom.
We've got two so far. I'm sure there are plenty more of us. So to get stuck in the questions, we'd love to hear them.
I'm going to hand over to you, though. If so, what are your reactions to the kind of findings there?
And how do they match your experience of of working with organisations directly to sort of get around,
get their head around the transformations necessary for that? Thanks very much, Steven.
Thanks a lot, Tom. I think, first of all, it's an incredible effort to actually do this comparison across so many different types of entities.
And the number of people involved shows how difficult it is actually to to do that,
to collect the information that allows us to do some sort of benchmarking.
So I think it's a it's a fantastic effort.
I think a couple of things jump out at me from from the reports and from your remarks, Tom, that I'd like to pick up on.
And the first is kind of going back to this sense that we've made huge progress in the last couple of years.
And to me, you highlighted a number of companies, a third of companies cover all of their emissions and in their targets,
you highlighted that is quite a low number to me.
That's actually a huge sign of progress, especially on corporate targets and having this coverage of of all of the emissions that are associated.
Also extending into value chains, I think is a really good sign that we're progressing into a much more systemic understanding,
especially from businesses across different industries of what's required to be able to make lasting change.
So I think that's kind of one thing that, yes, of course, we need to we need to have more and get that number of especially the largest companies
across industries setting targets and reporting on on all of their emissions.
But I think I see a sign of hope from that as well.
And given the past that we've come from in the last especially in the last decade or so, that's kind of one positive sign.
And I think the the second thing to me, though, is going back to this, how you started the definition of net zero.
And I think we need to be, as you said, keeping a balance between allowing some diversity of approaches right now while we're learning
and enabling different types of approaches to emerge from different types of entities,
for example. But we have to have some sort of clear,
overarching principles then I think that's getting the balance right between this kind of diversity of
approaches and innovation around kind of target setting and the types of plans that are implemented.
But then at the same time,
having overarching principles I think is really critical and comes out very nicely from from the work that that you've done.
And then the third main thing to me that I picked up from the report is that half of the companies that you actually look
at in their targets are publishing an action plan on the how of how they're going to actually get to to reaching a target.
And I just I wanted to pick up a little bit on that because we've been doing a lot of work trying to
to develop the skills that are required for those action plans to be implemented in organisations,
because I think that's a critical challenge that comes next or is is playing out in many different organisations across sectors and across industries.
We're launching the Oxford Climate Emergency Programme at the end of this month,
which is an online executive education programme jointly between the business school and the Smith School.
And critical to the programme is this idea of having an action plan.
So yes, it's important to have to set targets and to have a plan.
But how we actually put those plans together is really critical and we need to do an
awful lot more to learn how to do that as as individuals in complex organisations,
across many different industries in the in the years to come and to be able to to go from commitments
on these growing commitments that we're seeing and to really having lasting change and impact.
So what I'd like to to do is just to kind of pull out a couple of things from from what
we're seeing and the types of skills that we think are really required from the programme
and from the teaching that we've been doing at the at the business school in the Smith
School that I think really connects very nicely to some of these themes from your report.
And I think it's all around Connexions, actually. And I think that's very core to the research that I do and the research that.
Tom does as well. We're very interested in these connexions and collaborations,
I think we just need to see a lot of that really dialled up in the in the next year in preparation for the race to zero and of course,
in the next decade. So getting from kind of targets to impact,
I think that's kind of my going to be the focus for me and in teaching and research in the next couple of years.
And the first thing would be that it's absolutely critical to connect climate and net zero with the core strategy of any organisation.
So I think that's something that is absolutely critical.
And we've seen in many different industries facing big transitions,
the ones that get left behind are the ones that can't actually figure out how to change their overall
mindsets and their overall strategies in ways that will get them to the pace they need to be.
And that's not just a question of of climate.
It's also any kind of disruption that we have in industries, the companies that get left behind.
It's not just a question of the technological capabilities that they have in their organisations.
It's really about a mindset change, stepping back and thinking about bigger questions.
Right. And this kind of comes back to this question of defining net zero even as any kind of organisation.
What does that mean to to my organisation and the impact that I have in my industry, in my sector?
We have been doing lots of work and thinking about the role of business model innovation to help companies in in answering those big questions.
Right. So stepping back and thinking about, yes, I have a net zero targets,
but what does that mean ultimately to the products and services that I'm that I'm delivering?
What kind of value do I want to actually create? How can that be captured and delivered?
Maybe I need to be working with different with my suppliers very differently.
So this connexion between net zero and core strategy of any type of organisation is absolutely critical.
I think the second kind of theme, and this goes back to Tom,
how you finished the the connexion between net zero and other goals is absolutely critical.
We get his remarks, I think are very, very important to think about if we focus only on the things that we can measure and we're
trying to kind of massage numbers and show that there is a balance between sources and sinks.
And we don't allow space for things that are not so easy to measure, like climate justice, then I think that's that's a very difficult space to be in.
I think we need to at this point particularly have focussed on connecting net zero with and with other sustainable development goals,
doing that in a way that allows us to have positive visions for the future.
And I think that's where the role of businesses can actually be really,
really helpful in connecting beyond net zero, having this positive vision of the future that connects to people,
that connects to jobs,
that connects to an opportunity for living in better ways in our cities and and working in places that we actually want to work in.
So I think that's that's a really,
really important element to think about as we're translating and measuring benchmarking across time, different types of entities.
And then finally, the third kind of main thing that I would say is we started off this way, introducing myself and Tom.
Any individual organisation needs to be connecting with others in the way that they're setting targets and translating those targets into action.
So I think and this is where we need to see much more focus in the coming years.
So I think up until just two or three years ago,
we've had a very individual focussed approach to thinking about setting targets, particularly for businesses on on planet.
And that's just not going to be enough. There needs to be concerted efforts to to connect with competitors to to think about what the implications
might be of engaging them with with policymakers to enable competitive collaboration in different industries.
If we're going to see the types of systemic changes that need to happen across the board,
it can also be collaborating with activists being part of initiatives like the Race to Zero.
These are new types of initiatives that are emerging and have been emerging over the last couple of years.
But we need the skills in different. Types of organisations to be able to to know how to collaborate, when to collaborate,
what how we're encouraging transparency and learning through these different collaborative initiatives.
And I don't think we know enough yet about how to how to do that and the skills that are
required across different partners and collaborations and to make sure that there's a
focus on the individual goals for four different entities and the collective that this
focus on the collective and measuring collective outcomes I think is absolutely critical.
So I'm going to stop there with just trying to kind of connect the dots between, yes, we have huge momentum.
And I think your work on showcasing these targets really shows to me that's
why we've come so far in the last in the last couple of years in particular.
But I think we still have this this gap between, yes.
Understanding kind of definitions and benchmarking across different types of targets that your work is contributing to.
But then also going a step further and translating the targets and commitments into into lasting change,
through and through action plans that are actually robust and lead to the type of types of impacts we need to see.
Thanks very much. For two things really struck out for me there.
One is this framing of deep decarbonisation and net zero is as an opportunity for business rather than a restriction.
And the other one was this idea that this kick starting all these interesting collaborations, such as the race to zero, often with competitors,
and they feel like to two new things that we're still getting our head around, that climate change is sort of stimulating discussion.
And we'd love to talk to you more about that. But we've got lots of questions and we should we should address those.
A lot of them, I think, really centre on this point, which has come up at several times in the discussion about the definition of net zero,
especially when you get down to the company or the other local level.
I think maybe the kind of overarching question is summed up best by Anthony Caravan.
I will dig into some of the details,
but he asks and it seems there's a need for a universally recognised definition of net zero carbon positive or whatever you want to call it,
is their work on this. So I'd like to ask you both that maybe Tom first and also maybe tack on, you know, is it desirable to have a single definition?
We're talking about a huge range of different organisations dealing with different sources of emissions and sinks and that different spatial scale.
So. So what's your view on that, Tom? So sorry, this morning, the new one behind the quick the question box,
so I think it's a great question and there is a globally agreed definition of net zero for the planet, which you can find in the IPCC.
So I went back and forth in the glossary and asked what it says very simply, by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases,
the atmosphere is balanced by anthropogenic removals of a specified period.
So that's the finding that zero planetary scale.
And then the whole question becomes, OK, what does that mean for our individual business or city or investor?
Then he gets quite challenging. And I think there are two schools of thought.
There's basically a school of thought that says an actor, an entity is net zero when its own emissions are balanced or either zero or balance.
Individual actions are balanced by sources that are like the things that are like with the ongoing mission.
So if you have to seen fossil fuel emissions destroying those, moving them in a permanent way,
there's no school of thought, though, that says actually an actor is net zero.
One is following certain targets that align with some kind of scenario that leads to a world that's one net zero world.
And that's quite different because it might mean that different sectors or different
sections or different scenarios would give individual actor different kinds of targets.
So I think we see both possibilities, which impacts the science based initiative is a prime example sector based approach.
Others have taken a kind of more conventional definition of net zero,
meaning like two years or this is going to actually add up to zero or not and
must doesn't there like on a time frame of what might be aggressive actions?
Might be some some improvement there.
I think I agree with you that the key way to resolve this is to establish where the general scientific principles and
then to encourage operationalisation that makes sense for different kinds of actors in different kinds of contexts,
as long as they're keeping faith with those core scientific principles.
And my interpretation of what the Zero campaign is trying to do is exactly that sort of criteria
or really sort of meta criteria then to encourage upward convergence across toward them.
We have only a very clear scientific definition for the world and then a lot of difficulty in applying that individual entities,
but certainly encouraging to see how many how hard people are trying to figure this out.
So final final word on this race is your campaign is going to be publishing a
fictional lexicon for how they see these terms interacting so much that it takes.
Grace, yes, I just to pick up on a couple of things that Tom already mentioned,
I think this disconnect between the and the overall systemic impacts that we need to
see at a planetary scale and then translating that down to individual organisations,
I think that's what has stopped a lot of progress today, particularly in businesses.
And so trying to understand what such a complex environmental challenge on a global scale actually means for individual and entities.
I mean, that's absolutely critical to making progress.
And I would I would definitely agree with the the need to have more of an alignment to the sectors and
industries in terms of how we're understanding the the targets being set by and by individual organisations.
I think without coordination,
we're not going to be able to see the types of impacts and pathways that are really required in the next in the next decades.
And I think we're seeing a lot of a lot more companies particularly realising that in order to do that,
they need to be part of initiatives like the race to zero.
So I think it's it's we're seeing a lot more alignment around this second school of thought that that might be explained.
So I think it's it's not about necessarily single definitions.
I think we need to to definitely have peer to peer principles and then allow for those to be translated in different ways,
depending on geographies as well. I think that that has to be a very important part of this translation process and thinking about impacts and
especially the dimension of the the impacts of climate that we need to to also be bringing into the picture.
So so with that in mind,
the kind of recognition that we're dealing with a wide range and there may not be at least a very simple one size fits all definition of net zero,
I think maybe we can drill down into a few specific aspects of how we define it.
Other people have asked and just get your takes, both of you, on those specifics.
So so one of them being asked by Ben Tufan what maybe it's a kind of two part question.
How can we avoid well-meaning waffle, particularly over the use of offsetting in net zero plans?
But also, he points out, there are fundamentally difficult technologies to develop and scale before we get to net zero.
We've heard of some of those technologies and that's issues in previous weeks, actually.
So maybe perhaps I can ask you before to kick off with that point about technology,
because a lot of these technologies will need to be developed by businesses and of course, businesses have a financial bottom line.
So what do you think is the role of business in actually delivering some of these innovations which are currently expensive and difficult?
And then maybe I could ask you, Tom, to speak to that one about offsetting what you found in your studies,
about the nature of offsetting and perhaps how that might need to change in a proper net zero world.
So if a. Yeah, absolutely, so I think I mean,
the the role of business has been critical already and scaling different technologies that have been very important for climate action.
And so a lot of the work that I've been doing has been focussed on energy systems and innovation related to energy technologies.
I think what's going to be critical in the years to come and this kind of goes back to a lot of the things that we've already been talking about.
And our understanding of net zero is innovation around connecting new technologies in ways that actually means different needs.
So, for example, in the case of renewables, we have lots of innovation and individual technologies,
lots of cost reductions that have happened over the last 15, 20 years, and particularly in solar and battery technologies.
A lot of the innovation that needs to happen now is to to to package different types of solutions in ways that actually address people's needs,
whether that's in buildings, how they want to live and heat their homes or in in in different kinds of industries as well,
where there are certain demands for for carbon renewables.
So I think the role of business for me in this in this next kind of decade is
really it's really important to be asking those fundamental questions about
what different types of customers actually need to as a starting point and to
be able to to feed back into the way the technologies are being developed.
And I think we're seeing we're seeing more of that.
There's more of an understanding, especially with carbon removal technologies, that we and that we need to be understanding.
Well, what what do different industries actually need in terms of carbon removal?
And how can we actually develop those technologies in ways that we're interacting with the industries that really need this, the service?
And so I think we've we've learnt a lot from the progress that we've made on particularly on
developing energy technologies and bringing customers and big users into conversations much,
much earlier on than has happened in the past. I think that's what we need to see more of in the future.
And we see, I think,
promising examples of that happening and kind of integration of different technologies being a very important part of a company's role in innovation.
And I think that that requires open approaches. It requires, again, lots of different types of collaborations and collaborative initiatives.
So I think we're just going to see much more replication of of initiatives for
different purposes connected to genetic technologies in the years to come to.
I think the asset in question is extremely important, it's really about,
in many ways the most talked about and controversial and also quite difficult to understand.
Part of the broader debate we're seeing now on net zero, I think is more distinguished.
Two things before that, there was even a twinkle in a client, policymakers I lots of debates around offsetting as a tool for poor policy.
And it's more documented difficulties of operationalising, offsetting or any kind of carbon credit exchange system,
voluntary or regulatory or otherwise, to make it actually effective for reducing emissions.
And if people are interested in those debates was a great book by David Victor.
It's co-author Daniel Conwell, who's making climate policy work,
which goes into those difficulties quite nicely, says all of those kind of issues of operationalising it,
but then adding zero as a new layer of complexity and technical requirements,
because also in general, it's not the same as necessarily offsetting necessarily.
And I would highly recommend another university publication on net zero aligned offsetting to think through those issues in detail.
But to my mind, the two key issues are really sort of like the likeness of offsetting and on transition.
So on the first one, you know, if you're taking if you're intending to take the carbon out of the atmosphere or in some way balance carbon,
you're putting into the atmosphere or the greenhouse gases to make sure that what you're
balancing is like the thing you're putting it in has to be like in terms of quantity,
of course. Also, like in terms of time, scale carbon we put out today, that's up to potentially thousands of years in the atmosphere.
And if you're trying to compensate for that with a storage technology like a tree that may not last quite that long and we have more flexibility,
then you're not really achieving like for like and there's also issues.
And second, the transition to offsetting today is not necessarily what's consistent with what offsetting will need to be
to deal with any kind of residual emissions that are left over by the time we reach zero and even worse.
Was a residual emission versus what sort of a thing that you might just want to keep for because it's too hard to get rid of.
It's a very tricky thing. People disagree on the UK Committee on Climate Change had a very nice breakdown in the UK, at least,
of which sectors are more likely to be needing some residual emissions and which ones should really be getting all the way to zero.
And that's an important distinction. But I expect that to be a huge area of work going forward, define exactly what distribution's mean,
who should be residual, who should or should not, and how we transition towards that outcome.
So we'll move on to some questions of scope now, which the audience have been asking, Tom,
I think you touched on on the scope of activities that are included in these targets,
scope one, of course, and formal definition of the emissions that directly happen sort of within the fence of your activities, as it were.
CO2 is then when you're using energy, electricity or heat, and that's coming from a power station elsewhere.
And then three years, in a sense, your entire value chain.
So sort of indirect emissions caused by caused by the product or service that you're dealing with.
So Nick Air is watching and asks about those, in a sense, go to emissions,
saying most most zero carbon energy will have to come from rural areas, be generated outside cities, but it may only be used in cities.
So how do you think cities and local governments should deal with this?
And then I think we had another question about SCOP three emissions.
Charlie Freitag says, Should corporate net zero targets include scope three?
I think you've been assessing whether or not they do. Tom, I think there was also an article by Michael Liebreich a few days ago,
perhaps querying whether it's sensible to include scope three net zero targets,
because potentially you get a lot of double counting overcounting at targets.
And so perhaps I can pass that to you, Tom, first and then if what do you think about the right answer for the scope of targets,
the questions on the citizens and national governments?
For better or worse, the decision was made back in the early days of that policy that jurisdictions like that,
like nation states and countries, will be we'll do the accounting based on total emissions.
So we're not looking at what the other products that the drivers of the city might use that are imported and elsewhere.
That's not figured into the way we calculate emissions for cities today.
That's maybe worth revising and looking at one set, more ambitious targets.
We've seen some of the most ambitious ones begin to look at this question of consumption emissions,
no question as much on how to and I think it's really about this disconnect between who's the user and who's the maker.
I think from kind of your perspective, I don't think it's a problem because as we say,
particularly the concern of ours, I think it's more difficult political challenge there.
You know, certain city may want to put demands on its providers to provide its energy that we
have be consistent with the goals that the jurisdictions that are providing energy.
So it's more of a political choice and accounting one on the question of corporate scope.
Three, this is a really interesting point that, you know, obviously one person's got three is another person's guilty to one.
And we also don't overlap in this in this domain. So does that mean we should draw the boundaries here?
Are there my own view is that an entity that wants to be responsible for making sure it's dealing
with carbon and as as remit should be looking at all emissions that contribute to all of them.
And some of those would be 100 percent controlled by the entity as some of those would be five percent control.
But that doesn't mean it's not your responsibility if you only control five percent of it,
it means you have to work with others to deal with those emissions dimensions. To people's point about the collaboration here,
this is not something that is solved by having every single individual entity go down to its micro piece of emissions.
But the process to which everyone begins to do that will lead to the kind of collaboration that are necessary for the system as a whole to transform.
So that's one example here. We now see a lot of financial entities beginning to take zero payments, which involves not just their own sculpturally,
but often defines them in scope, three of the businesses that they're investing in lending to otherwise.
And that seems like quite a long chain of causality. However, those investors are making these kinds of purchase in a way that ensures that
there is sort of operationalisation of that will be as multipronged effort.
That will include engagement with companies trying to work with companies to develop,
invest in technological solutions that will help companies get beyond it and
might involve some sort of sticks as well as carrot sticks like divestment.
It came to that, but it's a very complicated set of interactions that are implied by the scope three target for finance firms.
So I don't think, you know, the complexity is not something we should stay away from.
That's exactly where we need to work. Matthew. Yes, so I would I would definitely agree with with what Tom has shared about this,
the purpose of Scope three reporting or reporting on all of I'm setting targets for
all of the emissions that are attributable attributable to an individual entity.
I think what I would add is that I think it's it's not just about yes, of course,
there's going to be double counting, but I think that that's exactly the point.
It shows the interdependencies between the activities of different types of organisations.
And I think until we understand those interdependencies better,
we won't be able to make progress in getting to the the overall country and planetary targets that we need to reach.
So I think that's that's absolutely critical to making progress.
That's the first thing that I would add. And the second is that I think the process of actually understanding the scope through
emissions is more important in my mind than the actual numbers that are attributed.
I think it's and I think this is also critical to understanding what we need to do now in terms of going from commitments to to to action plans.
So it's one thing to have a very good sense of the scope, three emissions of any individual entity,
but the process of actually going through understanding how your activities as an individual company or organisation connect to others,
give you opportunities to identify which kinds of suppliers could I work with,
and to be able to to reduce the emissions associated with a particular product or service that I offer, for example.
And I think it's actually the value comes for from identifying those opportunities in your in your supply chain to to take
action and to enable real change to happen across the boundaries within different industries and across different industries.
So I think it's not a question of should there be scope three reporting or not.
I think it's about what what the purpose is of actually kind of coming to this.
Yes. Some sort of understanding of the overall impact and measuring that in some way.
But the process behind us and to me is even even more important.
And to be able to identify the types of opportunities that we've been that we've been talking about as part of our sessions so far.
OK, so the third strand of this kind of this definition of net zero, which is probably the last one,
will do a lot and then try and squeeze in a couple of other different questions is actually from from Miles.
Thank you, Miles. He says, of course, I introduced this talk by saying we need a world of net zero emissions and hence a stable climate.
But of course, notoriously, the way that we tend to measure emissions of greenhouse gases doesn't exactly measure that.
So just to unpack this and forgive me if I get this wrong, Miles,
in terms of what you're trying to ask here, but emissions of methane, for instance, are much shorter lived.
They don't have the same permanent effect on climate as CO2. But the way that we stack these up into a single total CO2 equivalent of
emissions doesn't necessarily represent that differential impact on temperature.
So, of course,
the the exact mix of greenhouse gases that you can get to net zero CO2 equivalent basis can actually lead to different results in global temperatures,
depending on the specific mix of greenhouse gases. So I like this question.
He says, should we care to businesses and organisations mind about this or when should they care, Tom, or do you have a view on that?
So, Miles, I have a feeling that I do think they should care,
they you the having accuracy and knowing what the actual effect of what you do on climate change and global warming will be is,
I think, kind of now essential for an evidence based approach to the topic.
So it should be a situation in which the gases are going to be in the atmosphere for periods of time and taking action quite plainly.
I think practically the reason why we haven't seen more attention to that is that,
you know, for many, many businesses, the short term efforts must be on decarbonisation.
Nothing like that is exceptions. But in decarbonisation, such an overarching imperative for industrialisation,
this question gets lured by the huge priority of focussing on getting the fossil fuels out of the deluging.
So I think that's the practical reason why I haven't yet seen more refined approaches.
But I think it's interesting to see how as enemies begin to approximate and reach Nizza,
how they're going to grapple with this topic is going to be part of the. Did you want to add anything to.
I mean, I think the only thing that I would add is I think we need to to be also tracking the and the changes over time, as Tom mentioned,
as companies and other entities get closer to reaching the goals that they set,
because I think this of this question is going to become more important over time.
And I think it just speaks to the need for us to to really understand these changes.
And these are long processes that many different organisations are putting into place.
And we don't really understand enough about actually how to sustain commitments,
how our how our understanding of definitions are going to change over time,
and which types of aspects of definitions like the one that Miles is pointed to and become more
important given the changes in industries and in our overall progress in meeting targets.
So I think there's there's a lot of I agree with with Tom.
I think it's very important to understand the the differential impacts.
But I think this is something that will become much more important over time and just is another reason why we probably
need to get these five hundred students to keep tracking a lot of the progress on many aspects of the targets,
the improvements to targets that we're seeing across different types of entities over time.
Did and for Miles to keep thinking about this from from the physical science perspective, this is interesting that to take a national example,
of course, there are some forward thinkers who are already grappling with this because it's material to their emotions.
So New Zealand, for instance, has a very large share of its greenhouse gas emissions coming from agricultural methane.
And actually they've set a net zero target for their CO2, but then offsets an emissions reduction that's non-zero for agricultural methane
and that is still potentially at least consistent with a stable climate.
So clearly, some more thinking still to be done, that scope, scope for further improvement.
A specific question for you, Tom, based on the study results that you presented.
So Peter Archduchess asks about about the data that was used.
You mentioned the fact that it's based on publicly available data. And so there's a risk of cost associated with the quality of that data.
What in or isn't in there so is or isn't in there. Sorry.
So, Peter, specifically, how is supranational emissions dealt with, for instance, from shipping, air travel and extractive mining?
And do you worry that the basis of the data collection means there are some important gaps?
Definitely the publicly available information is limited and I can give us.
But it's it useful for us on the specific question of external aviation and shipping, et cetera.
We do record by other countries are including those aspects.
And there certainly it's not, but it's definitely a gap that's made by a lot more.
Thank you. I'm going to ask quite a big question next, but it's a highly rated one and it's a good question.
So let's see how we do with the remaining minutes we got left. And hopefully I've got time to squeeze another one, but standeth tremendous asks.
This is a planetary scale problem, so it demands structural solutions. But of course, at the local level, she argues,
at least it's easier to energise people about lifestyle changes that often don't add up to the large scale structural changes we need.
So how do we promote this confluence of individual and government coming together?
And I'd also like you and businesses as well to focus on sort of tackling the big strategic problems.
I guess that's something that both of you have spent your careers researching,
but from from the sort of government institutional angle and from the corporate angle.
So I'd love to hear both your views on that. What was needed for strategic alignment?
Maybe if I can ask you to go first, if that's not putting you on the spot too much.
I just just kind of think through my ideas on the spot, I guess, because it is a it is a really big question and a really good question.
And I think this is going to be biased and given the type of research that I that I do and that I'm interested in.
But I do think that there is a role for business,
particularly at this intersection between changes that we need to see at an individual level and at an institutional level.
And I think there is there's a much bigger need to to focus on positive visions for the future.
And I think that can help to to overcome this disconnect between small individual actions.
I'm adding up to the to the bigger structural changes that we need to see.
And I think there are there are more and more companies in different industries really trying to rethink what it is that people actually want.
And I think we need to see much more efforts to to to ask kind of more difficult questions about, well, what do we really want to see in our cities?
What types of services do we do we want? What types of how do we actually want to work?
I think conversations right now around kind of the future of work have have really changed because of our experience in the last year.
And I think they give us that opportunity to to to step back and ask much bigger questions than we have done before.
I think before the pandemic, we were talking about structurally changing work as some sort of like far off and future that might use
the future thing that might happen to fundamentally change the impact of of our cities on climate,
for example. And now we're we're seeing a lot of those structural changes actually playing out.
So I think that the there is a there's a lot of opportunity to to to to shape bigger questions in kind of local spaces
using this the power of our local environments that will connect to to structural changes across different cities.
And I see a big role for for for companies getting involved at both local and local levels and to be able to do that.
So it really it requires connexions at a local level as well as at a global level.
It requires companies to and to know what's going on in the local environments that they're connected to,
for example, and also to be aware of different national policies and global movements.
So it's I mean, it's a it's a very challenging time for for people in in different organisations to to be
able to kind of think more systemically and to ask these really big challenging questions.
So, yeah, I think I'll I'll stop there and see what Tom has to add to to quite a challenging but very good question to finish this off on.
It's a great question, I think, you know, the Paris agreement and the history of its implementation since 2013,
I think that's a really interesting insight that my world is what the scientist as a journalist, relations scholar is quite different.
And I we think about solving global challenges, actually suing Paris.
Give us a very ambitious goal of achieving net zero soon out the century, ideally by 2050, to keep the one point five degree target rich.
That was very much a kind of surprise in December 2015.
Me, it wasn't necessarily going to be in there. It was only the result of hard work by activists and the vulnerable countries.
Then we saw this amazing take. You take it up with that idea by cities, by businesses, by of countries in the following year.
That was unexpected, I think, to go as far as it has now reached the point where actually maybe it's over subscribed and we
have people diluting the concept in some ways by taking on less meaningful versions of it.
And that's not a new notion of sort of activism,
scientific investigation and ultimately strands of orchestration and governance regulation that will give us further clarity there.
So the interaction between these particular processes and the way we looked on the ground
using science to take form in the operation of of all sorts of different countries,
cities, businesses, investors, etc., can we now keep pushing it up forward in the right direction?
I think we can and we are, but have a lot more work to do.
So it's kind of systems change. We're seeing of interaction between different kinds of different places.
So different sectors, different levels of policymaking is to be fascinating.
I think this is exactly what we need to make work better and faster to get ready to go.
Right, so the power of positive vision, the need for collaboration, we've come a long way, but there's a lot further to go.
Sadly, we're out of time there, but thank you very much for that effort and thank you for joining us.
And thank you all of you watching today for joining us and for your questions.
Next Monday,
we have the final instalment of the series when Professor Ross Rikabi and Sophie Gill will be talking about the role of oceans in net zero.
And sadly, I won't be joining you for that one. But the good news is you'll have you'll be in the much more capable hands of Miles.
Professor Miles Allen, this chair. So do sign up for that one.
You can register by clicking on the green button at the bottom of your screen if you're on Chromecast or through the Oxford mathematical website.
It's been a pleasure hosting these conversations, seeing the enthusiasm of all those tuning in and fielding your great questions.
I hope before too long we'll be able to see many of you in person at net zero events.
And in the meantime, have a very good week.