Who would have tipped engine maker Horse to be leading the race to net zero?
Some of the world’s biggest car makers are finding themselves on the ‘naughty step’ of a new emissions watchdog
One of my favourite amusements when attending new car launches at the moment is to mention something called the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), just to see what kind of facial expression is pulled by the particular industry executive to whom I happen to be talking.
I get the whole smorgasbord: from smug and superior right the way through to aggrieved and indignant, via a wonderfully varied mix of bemused, resigned and dismissive gurning.
The SBTi is the body that guards the gateway through which manufacturers must pass in order to qualify for the UK government’s Electric Car Grant.
It’s an initialism that I’ve read often on manufacturer communications without having a clear idea myself of what it is, where it’s based or who’s behind it.
It seems, in short, to have sprung to prominence almost from nowhere and suddenly be wielding rather a lot of power.
In actuality, the SBTi was set up back in 2015, in a collaboration between the United Nations, the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Carbon Disclosure Project and a couple of other ‘global non-profit’ organisations.
Its brief remains to engage global big businesses to set and then commit to hitting targets for the and near longer-term cutting of carbon emissions.
It has an associated ‘services’ arm, which would seem to take a more hands-on role in guiding businesses through the process for a fee, I would bet. But the organisation’s main bit certainly seems to be run on a charitable basis.
The SBTi website (sciencebasedtargets.org) includes a ‘target dashboard’ section with a distinctly global list of corporate and SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) registrants.
Filter it for ‘automotive’ and you will find a chart of some 494 companies many of which you will probably never have heard of.
The Anhui Zhongding Sealing Parts Company of China is one of them, as are Happy Forgings Ltd of India and Sumitomo Rubber Industries of Japan.
It includes lots of car brands, too, of course. So which, according to this particular system, have the clearest, strongest commitments to cutting carbon, not just in their own manufacturing but concerning power generation and component supply as well?
Take a bow, Mahindra, Horse Powertrain and the Aston Martin Formula 1 team. All have both short and long-term SBTs, short ‘road maps’ that could – should, even take them – all the way to net zero (some admitting a few pretty big conditions, you would imagine).
Most car makers – BMW, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Kia, JLR, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Volkswagen and more – have registered only short-term reduction targets, extending perhaps to 2030 or 2035, not committing all the way to reaching net zero.
But one of the best things the SBTi site does is to allow you to directly compare these near-term targets – and not only between particular car makers.
You can tell, for instance, that Volvo is working slightly harder – or rather faster – to cut its ‘scope one and two’ emissions (CO₂ coming directly from its own manufacturing processes and its power consumption) than Renault, and also harder, slightly, than Airbus.
Neither is working quite as hard as either Apple or Unilever, however. I had assumed quite wrongly, as this reveals that car makers had to do more than other businesses to make their operations sustainable.
Because they just happen to make cars, which, until quite recently at least, have been painted as the arch-villain of the climate change narrative. But most car makers actually seem to be doing only about as much as the average Western corporate entity.
The SBTi site is also good at flagging brands that initially committed to at least some targets but have since failed to follow through. On the naughty step here (and it’s not our step, your honour) are Porsche, Ferrari and Tata, but also Geely, Nio and Tesla.
Some EV-only brands have called the SBTi system loaded in favour of ‘legacy brands’. It’s much easier, so they claim, to set and meet a short-term carbon emissions reduction goal if you have at least fairly recently been making hundreds of thousands of combustion-engined cars per year than if you have only ever made electric ones (and pretty sustainably at that).
Quite what excuses there are from Stuttgart or Maranello for absenting themselves from the heart of the SBTi carbon-cutting crowd, however, I couldn’t say – although I don’t doubt they will have some good ones.
