Companies Are Ditching Big Climate Goals for ‘Pragmatic’ Solutions

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This Climate Week, I did something crazy. In the middle of a packed week of panels, roundtables, and interviews in New York, I hopped on a plane across the country and spent a day at the MINExpo conference in Las Vegas for a forthcoming story. In the giant halls, alongside trucks the size of jet planes, companies gathered at the mining equipment conference promised to decrease their customers' carbon footprints and allow them to operate their mines more sustainably.

The public narrative around private sector climate action is one of deep skepticism. Many advocates have decried it as greenwashing, claiming that companies are using climate goals as a branding exercise. Many companies have pulled back their commitments, saying they no longer feel they are feasible. And businesses have grown reluctant to talk about their environmental work—fearful that it might cause backlash in conservative states and with a potential future Republican president.

In Vegas, where the target audience was the sea of men in suits and company polo shirts who buy mining equipment, I couldn’t help but think something has shifted. For a variety of reasons, just outside of the public eye, the private sector continues to move forward on decarbonization. Corporate customers across sectors and geographies are demanding lower-carbon solutions, and the promise of continued regulatory pressure has not dissipated. Instead of focusing on splashy commitments, many companies are taking a grounded approach to chart an actual decarbonization roadmap.

“Business is now really taking a very pragmatic approach, not giving up on the goal of where we need to go, but really managing it step by step,” Peter Bakker, who heads the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, told me in New York.

Over the course of the week, I heard similar messages over and over again from executives. George Oliver, CEO of HVAC giant Johnson Controls, said that emissions reduction had “become a core initiative” for many of the company’s customers, advancing its business making buildings more energy efficient. Pedro Pizarro, the CEO of utility giant Edison International, touted demand for the company's advisory business, which just ahead of Climate Week launched a partnership with auto giants to help decarbonize their supply chains. “They're seeing a lot of continued client interest,” he said.

And, over and over again, executives told me that the European Union’s climate disclosure rule—known in shorthand as CSRD—would act as a game changer. The regulation , which took effect this year for some firms already and will expand to more in the coming years, requires companies that do substantial business in Europe to disclose not only financially material information about how climate change affects their operations but also the ways that their operations materially affect the environment. While many remain up in arms over the various reporting demands, which require time and resources, they expressed a sense that the standards would create new momentum when the dust settles. “You hear some businesses complain about the effort it takes to get those frameworks done,” says Bakker. “But once that transparency emerges, then it becomes a tool that puts sustainability at the core of competitiveness.”

All of these conversations in New York contributed to the sense that the transition is indeed moving—no matter the public narrative. At a TIME100 panel I moderated on Monday, Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, described that progress as “irreversible.”

To be clear, none of this is enough. Away from the corporate folks, inside the security perimeter of the United Nations, some government leaders pushed the need for countries to amp up their policy agendas. In the first days of Climate Week, which coincides with the United Nations General Assembly, countries agreed to a Pact for the Future which calls for continued efforts to phase out fossil fuels with the ambition of keeping global temperature rise well below 2°C.

To get there, countries are supposed to create new climate action plans in the coming months to drive a climate policy step change. Movement in the private sector is heartening, but it could also use a step change.