Reality has left the supermarket kicking its net-zero target down the line, but this shouldn’t automatically make it a punch bag. By David Burrows.
This column tends to focus on carbon footprints rather than casual footwear but in July 2023 we featured Crocs, which had decided to push its net-zero target back from 2030 to 2040.
Reading the company’s ESG report and accompanying press release, in which the softening of the target was conspicuously downplayed, it was clear the commitment was made without comprehensive analysis of how it might be achieved. It was just one of many such promises made around the time of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. “We will sadly see more of this in coming years,” wrote sustainability consultant Mike Barry on social media at the time.
Last month a rather underwhelming COP30 wrapped up, and it has become clear that Barry was spot on. In the past 12 months or so Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Diageo and most recently Heineken and Morrisons have adjusted their climate targets (as well as other ones across environmental, social and governance, or ESG).
A variety of language has been used for the changes. Coca-Cola went for ‘evolution’ while Heineken chose ‘simplification’. Morrisons actually took it a step further in its press release: “Morrisons strengthens climate commitment with new SBTi-validation and expands scope of net-zero targets.”
Press releases, as Notebook has previously reported, can be a perfect place to push the rules on green claims a little. These are one of the most used and least monitored vehicles for ESG communications, with neither the Competition and Markets Authority or the Advertising Standards Agency regulating these frequent fliers.
Morrisons moves
The Morrisons case is the most intriguing given the nuance in the announcement. Here is what the supermarket also said in its statement to journalists: “Morrisons today announces a significant strengthening of its climate commitments, with a new set of near and long-term science-based emissions reduction targets that have been formally approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).”
The new 2050 net-zero target “covers the entire value chain including emissions from agriculture and land use sources. The targets align with global best practice under the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C pathway,” the company said.
New reduction targets are also in place: scope 1 and 2 emissions by 80% by 2035, and by 90% by 2050. As for the 98% of emissions that are scope 3, Morrisons has expanded its emissions target to include a 40% reduction in scope 3 energy and industrial emissions by 2035, and a 48.5% reduction in scope 3 FLAG (forest, land and agriculture) emissions within the same timeframe (with 90% and 72% reductions respectively in these by 2050).
This wasn’t how the media saw it. The Guardian and The Telegraph, as well as trade publications like The Grocer, went for headlines such as: “Morrisons becomes first UK supermarket to delay its net-zero targets.”
The articles offer context but how many people now think Morrisons simply greenwashed the first time around?
Maybe it did. Initial targets were set by many supermarkets and food companies with very little homework and under intense pressure from politicians, the public, competitors and chief executives.
Even those that were well-versed in the machinations of science-based targets from the early days have had to deal with changes as the science ebbed and flowed, most notably with new guidance relating to those FLAG targets so many in this sector are most fearful of.
As Rob Chester, CEO at assurance, testing, inspection, and certification company Supply Chain In-Sites put it in a blog following the Morrisons announcement: “FLAG emissions are complex. Measuring them consistently is hard. Reducing them often involves trade-offs between productivity, welfare, environmental protection and cost. And the people being asked to change most are often those with the least financial headroom to do so.”
Red FLAG
Farmers want to engage with supermarkets on net-zero, including working towards more regenerative approaches, but they are not confident that their paymasters really want to invest money to make this work. Throw in the chaos around carbon credits and insets, and who claims and pays for it all – and how much – and it gradually becomes clear that Morrisons may well have made a decision that others will follow.
Morrisons is saying something many retailers and suppliers are feeling but rarely articulate out loud, Chester explained: “[T]he hardest part of net-zero isn’t stores or fleets anymore. It’s everything upstream. And that changes the conversation.”
Indeed, Morrisons’ original net-zero target for 2035 was trumped up in a 2021 press release as “five years earlier than initially pledged and 15 years ahead of the UK government target”.
But this only included emissions from its own operations; so no indirect supply chain emissions were included. For those, the supermarket set a 30% reduction for its “wider ‘scope 3’ emissions across its entire own brand supply chain”, in line with 2°C of warming rather than 1.5°C.
So, it was a bit of a fudge compared to those setting targets covering all scopes and in line with limiting global heating to 1.5°C. Efforts have therefore focused on scopes 1 and 2: Morrisons says it has already cut total emissions by 22%, largely through energy efficiency, lower-carbon logistics and supplier collaboration, for example. In other words, the hard graft is still to come; the big investments still need to be made; the toughest decisions must yet be confronted.
The way I see it, the old Morrisons target was knee-jerk while the new one both lengthens and strengthens it. Why stick with 2035 when the law and the science is telling you that 2050 is where you should be aiming? Of course, the risk we all face is targeting 2050 and then missing.
Morrisons’ decision, like others in the past 12 months, has generated a lot of attention (and kept the Notebook in business). Chester has “some sympathy” for those CSOs in the firing line. “Delaying or resetting a target doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning intent. In many cases, it reflects a recognition that you can’t decarbonise agriculture without making some really tough decisions.”
This year more CSOs are likely to feel more heat as their CEOs – the ones who basked in the bold targets set at the start of the decade – ask them to scale back their sustainability plans as they look to stop the lid blowing off ingredient prices. The irony here is that costs are rising in no small part due to climate change (and not just because of new environmental levies and rising wages as some would have us believe).
AgFunderNews reported recently that food companies are reframing net-zero around resilience: “If resilience is the watchword for 2025, transformation must be top of the agenda for 2026 – with clearer targets, accountable ownership, and credible delivery plans to match.”
In 2025, the reality of climate change certainly kicked in for food companies as harvests were wrecked, supplies dried up and invoices ended with eye-watering figures. This dose of realism is also shaping new net-zero targets. Whether Morrisons deserves to be panned or should be seen as a pioneer, only time will tell.
