Climate Change Mitigation (Mitigation) is the practice of minimizing contributions to climate change such as reducing carbon emissions, waste, and pollution. Mitigation – typically through reduced Greenhouse Gas Emissions – has been the focus of most climate action to present. This is the case amongst both public and private institutions. Mitigation projects may include building new green energy, establishing waste-reduction policies, or improving pollution capture. Reducing carbon emissions is the most important goal of mitigation, but current efforts fall far short of what is needed to avoid catastrophic, irreversible climate change. Even if every nation accomplished all their existing targets, we would still emit 19 Gigatons more CO2e by 2030 than we can if we want to keep global warming below 1.5° C.[1] This is equivalent to the total emissions of nine of the top 10 emitting countries in 2023.[2] Given the scale of this problem, it is imperative that both public and private institutions drastically increase their commitments to reducing emissions.
Private Climate Governance is taking an increasing role in mitigation efforts. Because carbon emissions reporting is fairly new, it is hard to measure total emissions reductions. Some private mitigation efforts have been very successful. Walmart’s Project Gigaton, for example, has mitigated over 750 million metric tons of CO2e from their supply chain since 2017. Similarly, companies like Amazon and Microsoft have matched their energy consumption with renewable generation.
Two problems remain prevalent within Private Mitigation plans. First is the failure to meet targets. A 2023 study from Boston Consulting Group found that just 14% of companies with emissions reductions targets have met those targets over the past five years. It can be difficult to track whether companies are meeting their reduction pledges because these targets are generally implemented over a long period of time. Furthermore, companies may be incentivized to make commitments they are unable or unwilling to meet because they receive good PR in the short term and are unlikely to be punished in the future. The risk of such noncompliance can be reduced by third-party oversight through organizations like the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which employs scientists to track whether partner companies are meeting their targets and removes them from the network if they fail to do so.
The second major challenge is accounting for Scope III emissions which make up 75% of the average company’s total emissions. Scope III emissions include indirect emissions from a company’s supply chain, so they tend to be much more difficult to track than Scope I or II emissions. Accordingly, many companies ignore mitigating Scope III emissions because they are too difficult to manage. This could be improved by universal carbon reporting standards, but the present reality is that most companies suffer from insufficient data on their Scope III emissions. Scope III emissions are therefore both the most important, and the most difficult, to mitigate.
The good news is that Mitigation is financially beneficial, so profit-maximizing companies have an incentive to engage. Of 1,850 executives interviewed in the BCG study above, 40% reported over $100 million in financial benefits from meeting mitigation targets. Since these executives came from large companies (over 1,000 employees and $100 million annual revenue), that number is higher than most companies can expect, but smaller companies can realize financial and nonfinancial benefits from their decarbonization efforts as well. Climate change will challenge every industry, and the greater the warming, the worse the impact will be for most. Mitigation is therefore not just environmentally friendly, but it also insulates the company from the most severe consequences of global warming.
[1] The best science suggests that we need to reduce emissions by 43% relative to 2019 levels by 2030 to keep global warming below 1.5° C. Meanwhile, all the existing targets would only yield a 5.3% reduction. Based on total emissions in 2019 (52.4 Gigatons), this leaves a 19.75 Gigaton gap between goals and needs.
[2] These countries are the United States, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Iran, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia.
