'To greenwash or do the right thing? Corporate dilemmas at COP28', 2 December 2023

...[T]he private sector has never been embraced so warmly at a climate summit as it has been in the oil-rich city state...

Corporate pledges have been coming thick and fast, with Dubai-based Emirate Airlines ...heralding its first flight with "100 percent sustainable aviation fuel" and BNP Paribas bank saying they were phasing out financing projects related to extracting coking coal.

Others have been more hazy. The public relations teams of big companies feel they have to "come up with something during COP"... But most of the time they recycle "something they already have on the go".

...Sanda Ojiambo, assistant secretary-general of UN Global Compact praised the "very active and dynamic business movement that happens at COP"...

But only 18 percent of big firms worldwide are cutting emissions "fast enough to reach net zero by 2050", according to a report last month by consultants Accenture...

While COP28's Emirati president Sultan Al Jaber could not be more business friendly, experts say lingering suspicions of conflicts of interest -- Jaber is also CEO of the UAE's national oil and gas company -- put corporations in a complicated position ... "We did ask ourselves the question" whether we should go to Dubai, admitted the representative of a large French group, before deciding to press ahead "because it is important to take every chance to help move the lines"....

But corporations are also at COP28 to influence as well as sell, with a huge number of lobbyists present.

And not all of them are trying to help wriggle out of responsibility for the climate.

More than 200 major corporations including the likes of Ikea, Coca-Cola, Sony, DHL, Heineken and Nestle have recently called on national leaders to set a timeline for phasing out unabated fossil fuels –- without the use of controversial carbon capture and storage technologies... Maria Mendiluce, head of We Mean Business, which coordinated the appeal, said we need to back companies trying to do the right thing. "We tend to focus on criticising those who are doing something... (but) we need to highlight those that are not doing anything."