The recent landmark court ruling ordering Shell to accelerate its decarbonization plan and the remarkable related battle that just pitted Engine No.1 against ExxonMobil (in which the small activist fund holds a mere 0.02%) is further proof the writing is on the wall for all large greenhouse emitters. The wider lesson: Any company in any industry unprepared for the accelerating radical energy transition is bound to be in trouble.
On many different occasions, we have mentioned the critical need for the wellness industry to be up to speed with respect to decarbonization plans—conversion to practices that sustainably reduce and compensate carbon dioxide emissions.
And it’s notable that two industries at the core of the wellness “space” are so poorly ranked. According to a new study that measures which industries are more on track than others to achieve carbon reduction targets, (1) hospitality and (2) food, beverage and agriculture come last.
They are preceded by (in decreasing terms of being more on track than others to hit 2020–2050 emission-reduction targets): (1) power generation, (2) apparel, (3) infrastructure, (4) services, (5) manufacturing, (6) retail, (7) biotech, healthcare and pharma, (8) materials, (9) transportation services and (10) fossil fuels.
Naturally, industries that rank poorly are in more extractive industries (like food and agriculture) and in sectors that are harder to decarbonize (like transportation), but even among industry laggards (hospitality, food, beverage and agriculture), a commitment to execution in terms of reducing carbon emissions often makes the difference between “good” and “bad.”
