Just 5 per cent of the UK’s largest public companies have published climate transition plans that are “credible” or sufficiently detailed under draft British government guidance, despite most businesses saying they are committed to slashing their greenhouse gas emissions.  

As part of a raft of green measures announced on last week, the UK government said it would consult later this year on making transition plans — where companies outline how they will cut emissions and the associated costs of doing so — mandatory for all large companies, including private businesses. Companies that fail to do so will have to provide a justification.

But new research by EY found that despite about 80 per cent of FTSE 100 companies having already disclosed some sort of plans that includes public targets to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, only 5 per cent would comply with the Transition Plan Taskforce’s (TPT) draft disclosure framework. The TPT was set up last year after the British government pledged at the UN COP26 climate summit hosted in Glasgow that UK listed businesses would have to publish decarbonisation plans by 2023.