Net zero has become the go to phrase in corporate climate talk. Almost every big company has one now: a promise to hit net zero emissions by some future date, usually 2050. Sounds great. Ticks a box. Makes for a nice headline. But here’s the thing: a pledge is only as good as what sits behind it. Plenty of net-zero commitments turn out to be long on ambition and short on substance. So how do you tell a credible plan from a well-branded press release? 

Here are 5 questions worth asking.

1. Does it include a real interim target, or just a distant deadline?

“Net-zero by 2050” is an easy thing to announce and a hard thing to be held accountable for, because nobody currently working at the company will still be there to answer for it. 

The credibility test is whether the pledge includes near-term, checkable milestones: targets for 2027, 2030, 2035, with public reporting against them each year. A plan that only names an end date, with nothing in between, is a plan nobody can actually verify until it’s too late to matter and too late for anyone to be held accountable.

2. Does it cover Scope 3 emissions, or just the company’s own operations?

Emissions are split into three buckets:

• Scope 1 is what a company burns or releases directly.
• Scope 2 is the emissions baked into the power it buys.
• Scope 3 is everything else: suppliers, transport, and the big one, what happens when customers actually use the product.

For a mining company or an oil company, Scope 3 is where almost all the real damage lies. So, when a pledge only talks about Scope 1 and 2, it’s bragging about the small stuff while the big stuff stays out of frame.

Pledges that quietly limit themselves to Scope 1 and 2 can look impressive while ignoring the bulk of a company’s real climate footprint.

Case in point: BHP. Its 2024 Climate Transition Action Plan, unchanged in its FY2025 filing, promises to cut operational Scope 1 and 2 emissions by at least 30% by 2030 and reach net zero operations by 2050. Nice. But then, BHP admits it’s “not currently in a position to commit” to any hard Scope 3 target. That’s a big gap, because BHP’s own numbers show Scope 3 runs to roughly 40 times its Scope 1 and 2 emissions combined. You can’t claim net zero while you’re still growing your fossil fuel business. 

3. Is the company still expanding the thing it claims to be phasing down?

Case in point: BP’s 2050 net zero pledge functions as a form of rhetorical cover. It’s a secure public commitment because it’s distant enough to require no immediate action. In actual fact, the near-term targets (production, capex allocation) move in the opposite direction. 

What’s actually happening to the “hard” numbers? 2020: pledge to cut oil and gas output 40% by 2030. 2023: watered down to 25% by 2030. 2025: production target dropped from the reset entirely, oil and gas capex raised to ~$10bn/year (~20% increase), renewables capex cut ~70%. That’s not a wobble. It’s a colossal retreat over five years. It ends in an outright reversal on the measures that were supposed to work on decarbonising, like output volume.

4. Who verifies the numbers. Are they published in full?

Self-reported progress isn’t the same as verified progress. Credible pledges are backed by independent, third-party auditing and disclosed with enough detail that outside researchers, journalists, and watchdog groups can actually check the numbers. 

Also worth watching: whether a company stays inside the accountability frameworks it originally signed up to, or quietly exits them. 

Case in point: between December 2024 and mid-2025, nearly every major North American and several global banks withdrew from the UN-convened Net-Zero Banking Alliance. This was the framework used to set and report on their climate targets since 2021. Leaving the shared framework means there’s no longer a common standard or outside body checking their numbers against everyone else’s. 

When the referee leaves the field, the score becomes whatever each team says it is.

5. What happens to emissions when the company outsources or offsets them?

Two moves are common when direct emission reductions get hard. First, outsourcing energy-intensive work to third-party suppliers who don’t have to report it back, and second, buying carbon offsets instead of cutting emissions at the source.

Neither is inherently dishonest, but both can be used to make a footprint look smaller than it is.

The bigger picture

With no real enforcement power over corporate net-zero claims, accountability so far has come mostly from investors, journalists, NGOs, and independent trackers rather than regulation.

The binding part of any commitment language is the cost of leaving it. Once that leaving-cost drops, like activist investor pressure, or a lax regulatory environment, the pledges turn out to be exactly as they always were. Voluntary.

That’s not a reason for cynicism about every pledge!

It’s simply a reason to read past the headline number and ask 5 questions before deciding whether a company’s climate promise is a legitimate plan or a well-designed piece of marketing.

Curious to get started with your sustainability journey? Check out our Sustainability Toolkit and find out where you are at!

Anne Stuart

Zero Emissions Byron Northern Rivers