A report that looks at the climate action of a number of significant Irish businesses says they are showing strong leadership and governance on climate action, but not making sufficient progress towards the actual reduction in emissions.
The Climate Transition Plan Scorecard report is from Business in the Community Ireland and DCU's Institute for Climate and Society.
It has assessed the climate ambitions and actions of ten large Irish firms - including Vhi, Bidvest Noonan and Equinix - which were the first signatories to BITCI's 'Accelerate' pact. That is a voluntary programme that encourages companies to set targets and a plan to get to net zero emissions.
"The main finding was that the key enablers of strong outcomes are in place," said Meghan Carmody, senior adviser and Accelerate Pact manager at Business in the Community Ireland. "Despite that... we're just not seeing emissions reductions happening fast enough."
In some cases, the report found, emissions actually increased at firms signed up to the pact. It also suggests that setting targets and measuring emissions doesn't necessarily result in falling emissions.
However Ms Carmody said this does not mean that voluntary targets do not work.
"They definitely are really necessary, but the question is 'are they sufficient?'," she said. "They are a proxy measure, like GDP and well-being. When we begin to see the target as the measure it loses some of its usefulness.
"But we definitely need strong targets."
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She said that the companies involved are leaders in the area - and in their sectors - and they all have strong targets across their operations. However targets themselves do not result in emissions reductions.
One of the big challenges for firms is in reducing their Scope 3 emissions - which would cover the emissions in their supply and value chains.
Reducing this largely requires cooperation from what can often be a broad network of suppliers - making it a challenge to make progress around.
"This can constitute over 90% of emissions for the average company," Ms Carmody said. "Companies are beginning to set targets in the area, but not all of them have targets. They are engaging some suppliers, but there's a lot more that can be done.
"It's a really difficult area due to data, there's a lot of resourcing requirements being put on companies of all sizes."
Another area where BITCI has seen little progress is the linking of pay with environmental performance.
Ms Carmody said there could be no silver bullet in encouraging companies to make progress at a faster rate, however this would be one major change that could help push them in the right direction.
