RACE AGAINST THE CLIMATE CLOCK

The Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor (CCRM) 2025 finds that corporate climate action is frequently treated as a marketing exercise rather than a business model redesign. While some companies like Inditex and Adidas have improved their target setting, the report highlights widespread 'creative accounting' and greenwashing. Key issues include the use of unbundled Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) in tech and fashion, the conflation of land-based carbon removals with emission reductions in agrifood, and the use of unsubstantiated carbon credits to claim carbon neutrality. The document argues that voluntary standards are insufficient and calls for stringent government regulation, specifically citing EU directives like the CSRD and CSDDD, to mandate transparent reporting and ban product-level carbon neutral claims.

• The majority of analyzed companies exhibit poor integrity in their climate strategies; none of the 20 companies in the deep dive analysis received a score of 'reasonable' or 'high' for integrity, and only H&M Group, Inditex, and Stellantis received 'reasonable' scores for transparency.
• In the agrifood sector, companies are blending emission reductions with land-based carbon dioxide removals (CDR), which is problematic because land-based sinks are non-permanent and vulnerable to reversals from wildfires or land use change. Nestlé has indicated that up to 80% of its emission reduction target could be met via land-based carbon sequestration.
• Tech companies frequently use 'market-based' accounting and unbundled Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to report declining electricity-related emissions while their actual location-based emissions—the average emissions of the grids they operate on—have increased since 2019.
• The automotive industry relies on intensity-based metrics (emissions per kilometer), which can mislead stakeholders by allowing companies to increase absolute emissions while claiming intensity-based reductions. Furthermore, companies like Toyota and Volkswagen fail to disclose crucial input data or emission factors for vehicle use.
• Corporate use of carbon credits for 'carbon neutrality' claims is often unsubstantiated or misleading. For example, Apple markets products as 'carbon neutral' using nature-based credits, and Microsoft's 'carbon negative' goals rely heavily on unproven, large-scale carbon removals.
• The report identifies a lack of traceability in Environmental Attribute Certificates (EACs), noting that 'book-and-claim' models lack a physical flow of commodities. Nestlé is specifically cited for using book-and-claim and mass balance constructs to claim emission reductions that may not have occurred.
• The document advocates for the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (ECGT) directive, which will ban carbon neutral claims at the product level starting in 2026, and warns that the 'Omnibus package' may water down the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).

APA

Faecks, B. (n.d.). RACE AGAINST THE CLIMATE CLOCK. Carbon Market Watch. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/CCRM_CMW_policy_R2025.pdf

Chicago

Faecks, Benja. RACE AGAINST THE CLIMATE CLOCK. Carbon Market Watch, n.d. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/CCRM_CMW_policy_R2025.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Faecks |first1=Benja |title=RACE AGAINST THE CLIMATE CLOCK |publisher=Carbon Market Watch |url=https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/CCRM_CMW_policy_R2025.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{faecksndrace, author = {Faecks, Benja}, title = {{RACE AGAINST THE CLIMATE CLOCK}}, institution = {Carbon Market Watch}, url = {https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/CCRM_CMW_policy_R2025.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }