Expanding renewable electricity use in global corporate supply chains

Abstract

Expanding renewable electricity (RE) use in global corporate supply chains can help to achieve global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions targets by mid-century, but efforts face several challenges. First, corporations and their suppliers may be subject to varying climate policy stringency, leading to a misalignment of incentives to act. Second, measuring true progress is difficult, because counterfactuals are unobserved, and measures of effort vary under policy. Third, relevant policy and broader stakeholder audiences differ in the standards of measurement they recognize. Transparent and broadly accepted, or at least interoperable, standards for assessing effort would help corporations and nations strengthen confidence in corporate claims that RE procurement efforts support international climate goals.