Net Zero Business Models

14TELLING THE NET ZERO STORY

“We cannot get to net zero without proper climate reporting.”¹

—Mark Carney, Former Governor of the Bank of England

Every company, large and small, public and private, will be affected by the Great Transformation, but each company has a unique story to tell. Regulations requiring publicly listed companies to disclose how they will achieve net zero are emergent in jurisdictions around the world. The consensus is that uniform and globally recognized disclosure standards with respect to companies' net zero transition plans, their Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, their science‐based emissions‐reduction targets, and their progress toward those targets will emerge by 2025.

As more and more publicly listed companies commit to achieve net zero, inventory their Scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions, and set near‐term and long‐term science‐based emissions‐reduction targets, one could argue that this information is material to the future value and performance of publicly listed companies and should be disclosed now for shareholders. Many reporting companies already take this approach and provide full disclosure of all this information in their securities filings, on their websites, and in sustainability and impact reports.

Parts II and III of Net Zero Business Models outline the general narrative arc of conforming a business model to a net zero economy and suggest elements of the common pattern language that companies use to describe their journeys to net zero. It ...