"Big Business = Big Carbon" - Study

FILE - Smoke rises from the smokestacks of asphalt and brick factories burning coal, old shoes and oil extracted from tire rubber and plastic in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 9, 2017.

CDP, a non-profit that runs a global disclosure system for companies to manage their environmental impacts, found that current plans would lead to a world by 2100 that is 2.7C hotter than currently -- a far cry from the temperature goals of the 2015 Paris deal, which enjoins nations to limit warming to "well below" 2C above pre-industrial levels.

The NGO's report was derived by looking at the climate plans of more than 4,000 corporations across the world's seven largest economies.

Europe was the best performer, with rapid action since 2021 likely to have "cooled" the temperature prediction some 0.3C, the analysis showed.

Across all regions and sectors, only the European power generation sector achieved a temperature rating below 2C, driven by targets from renewable and nuclear energy companies.

Companies in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands had policies to reduce their emissions across their entire value chain, which equated with a 2.2C temperature rise, according to the CDP.

"However, despite this progress, the average temperature ratings for corporates remain well above 1.5C across all major European economies," it said.

Many companies have plans in place to reduce emissions directly produced from their business operations, such as vehicle exhausts and office heating.

Far fewer have plans covering emissions produced by the consumption or use of their products and which often count for most of their carbon footprints.

Businesses in Canada, on the other hand, were the worst performing in terms of decarbonization plans, with 88 percent of reported greenhouse gas emissions coming from firms that have no disclosed net zero plans.