The campaign that kick-started the net zero movement is shifting focus

Race to Zero, an influential campaign that catalyzed support for net zero from thousand of large companies, is winding down as its leaders shift focus to delivery of climate commitments.

The initiative, which was launched in 2020 with backing from the United Nations, will be folded into the U.N.’s ongoing Global Climate Action Agenda, an effort to accelerate implementation of climate strategies over the second half of this decade.

“When we launched Race to Zero in 2020, the challenge was to mobilise campaign members around a shared, credible definition of net zero at scale – and they did, in the tens of thousands,” said Nigel Topping, a prominent climate leader who helped launch the campaign, in a statement announcing the move.

The campaign was also attacked for what critics saw as a deference to corporate interests and a lack of engagement with civil society.

Net zero promoter

Six years is a long time in corporate sustainability. When Race to Zero launched in 2020, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) was still more than a year away from publishing its first corporate net-zero standard. Yet close to 1,000 businesses, including Nestlé, Adobe and Diageo, became Race to Zero launch signatories by pledging to reach zero by 2050, publish plans for achieving that goal and set interim targets. The number of participating companies went on to more than double in the year after launch.

As it grew, Race to Zero tightened its criteria to reflect the evolving consensus around what constitutes a meaningful net-zero commitment. In 2022, for instance, the campaign said that signatories must publish a transition plan within a year of joining the campaign, extend net zero to all emission scopes and align lobbying activities with net zero. By that point, 7,000 companies had signed up.

Meanwhile, companies’ understanding of what it would take to hit net zero was developing — as was their awareness of how that might conflict with business imperatives. The 2022 update, for instance, required signatories to forgo developing or financing new coal projects. A few months later, Race to Zero began asking signatories only to “phase out” coal, with no end date specified. The change came after major banks said the original no-coal commitment might violate antitrust law, but climate activists cast the move as a retreat in the face of financial-sector lobbying.

The dispute over the coal language also shone a light on Race to Zero’s decision-making processes, which centered on a relatively small group of experts. The structure “creates scope for ambition but also opportunity for disruption by actors with competing missions,” argued a team of UK-based academics in a review of net zero guidelines published earlier this year.

Passing the baton

To be fair, Race to Zero was a campaign to generate commitments rather than an attempt to create a detail framework for the transition to net zero. Since the race launched, the latter gap has been filled by SBTi’s influential Corporate Net-Zero Standard, which was updated in June. A companion standard is also being developed by ISO, the international standards organization. Both rely on much broader stakeholder input.

Race to Zero succeeded in that it helped turn voluntary criteria into formal standards, argued Kaya Axelsson, an advisor to the campaign and researcher at the University of Oxford who helped author the review of net zero guidelines. “Now the next phase of the race is holding the line, keeping the standards and going beyond to do the systemic work that enables those things to happen,” she said.

That phase will be spearheaded by newly formed Net Zero Activation Group, which is due to be formally launched later this month. Organizations interested in participating can complete a form on the group’s homepage.