Europe leading the way in setting net-zero environmental targets

Annual reports 'green and fluffy'

Self-flattering depictions of corporate greenery are often irksome, but without green dreams – and the right incentives – net zero-ambitions may never be realised.

All things green and fluffy look great in any corporate brochure. Never have pictures of wind turbines or luscious pristine forests so often graced the pages of annual reports. If the proverbial Martian only had the world's library of annual reports as evidence of life on earth, it could only assume that all was well in the Garden of Eden. Now it is easy to be cynical about this corporate obsession with chlorophyll. "Greenwashing" is the charge laid at the corporate door, with companies' laundry suspected of being heavily soiled under the repeated green rinses. These corporate brochures ...