Delta Hyped "Net-Zero" As PR Strategy - It Flopped, Then Came "Offsets", Followed By Flailing
Delta Air Lines has embraced one of the corporate world’s most ambitious targets for lowering carbon emissions. In 2020, the airline vowed to invest $1 billion over ten years to reduce its carbon footprint, with money going to new planes, the development of cleaner jet fuel and hundreds of millions in savings in operations. “Carbon neutral since March 2020,” the airline has touted on its cocktail napkins. “Travel confidently knowing that we will offset the carbon emitted on your Delta flight.”
What the napkins don’t say is that, in 2021, Delta failed to hit its target. To make up the difference, it spent $137 million to buy carbon offsets at a price some experts say has little impact. The offsets cover 27 million megatons of “unavoidable” carbon dioxide emissions – a price that works out to just $5.04 a ton, which some experts find preposterous. “A bottle of water in an airport costs me $5. There’s no way that the social value of that carbon is $5 a ton,” said Shivaram Rajgopal, professor of accounting and auditing at Columbia University’s business school. “Delta gets to wash away the sins of its emissions.”
With the West Coast withering from a historic drought, the Mississippi River drying up and ever-more intense hurricanes hitting the Southeast, U.S. corporations face more scrutiny than ever before to meet their ambitious climate commitments. Many, such as Delta, are struggling to deliver. There are a mix of reasons. Early on, some companies adopted climate targets or “ambitions” for public relations purposes. Other companies have grown faster than expected. Still others misjudged the challenge of transforming their operations, or assumed they would never be held to account for their ESG commitments, shorthand for “environment, social and governance” policies.
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In its 119-page 2021 Environmental Sustainability Report, Microsoft said that it reduced scope 1 and 2 emissions by 16.9 percent, or 58,654 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. But on the next page, the report includes a chart showing that scope 1 and 2 combined make up just 2 percent of Microsoft’s total emissions of 14 million metric tons. Its remaining greenhouse gases — Scope 3 — grew 22.7 percent, in part because the company’s sales have grown. Microsoft says it still plans to remove half of its carbon emissions by 2030.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/05/delta-climate-pledges-corporations/