{"id":12685,"date":"2024-05-22T17:39:48","date_gmt":"2024-05-22T08:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/codo.jp\/?p=12685"},"modified":"2026-06-03T14:48:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T05:48:16","slug":"climate-plans-in-the-heavy-industries-sector-how-did-japanese-firms-perform-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/codo.jp\/en\/climate-plans-in-the-heavy-industries-sector-how-did-japanese-firms-perform-in-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate plans in the heavy industries sector: how did Japanese firms perform in 2024?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In the World Benchmarking Alliance\u2019s first Heavy Industries Benchmark, the 91 most influential aluminium, cement and steel companies worldwide were assessed on their alignment to a low carbon world. The findings were consolidated into an insights report published in April 2024. In this blog post, we summarize the main findings and analyze how Japanese firms performed. <\/strong>  <\/h5>\n\n\n\n

What are WBA climate benchmarks?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

 The World Benchmarking Alliance<\/a> (WBA) is a global non-profit that creates benchmarks of over 2000 firms by comparing their contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and publishes assessments of companies\u2019 climate plans across various industries. The assessments are based on the ACT methodology<\/a>, developed by ADEME<\/a> and CDP<\/a> to measure the quality of corporate low-carbon transition plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The WBA Heavy Industries Benchmark focuses on assessing companies in this high emitting sector (18% of global CO2 emissions in 2022). The comprehensive assessment of these companies combines ACT assessments and social as well as \u201cjust transition\u201d assessments (conducted according to an internal WBA methodology) to provide an overall score covering the environmental, industrial, and social dimensions of each company\u2019s low-carbon transition.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The heavy industries benchmark covers 12 aluminium, 34 cement and 45 steel companies, including five companies from Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sector not yet aligned with the Paris Agreement and with lacking investments in green technologies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Based on the 91 company assessments, the WBA identified 5 key findings for the heavy industry sector: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Assessed companies have only decreased their greenhouse gas emissions by 0.8% annually between 2017 and 2022.<\/strong> To stay aligned on the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming to a +1.5\u2103, companies must triple their emission reduction over the next 5 years.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Investments in R&D for non-mature technologies are very low (10% of the assessed companies):<\/strong> less financing for the development of decarbonized technologies now means achieving net-zero will be harder, or even not possible.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Some of the companies assessed display good practices, meaning a higher standard for the industry is possible:<\/strong> 28% have transition plans covering all business units and 23% include a carbon price in their cost calculations for example.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. While some companies are leading the just transition of the sector by fostering resilient workers and communities , many are struggling. <\/strong>Half of the companies have scored 0 in the WBA-set just transition indicators. Even the top company only scores 50% in these indicators, showing that the industry can still take steps to improve. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. There is a big lack of commitment regarding working conditions and human rights.<\/strong> Only 55% of companies surveyed say they are committed to the health and safety of their employees and only 45% are committed to respecting human rights. The companies assessed in this benchmark employed more than 2.9 million people in 2022.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    How did the Japanese companies perform? <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    In this benchmark, the highest-ranking company was Cemex (Mexico) with a total score of 56.4\/100. The lowest ranking companies were Cemros (Russia), Delong Steel (China) and JiuQuan Iron and Steel Group (China), all with a total score of 0.0\/100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Most of the Japanese companies ranked in the top 50% of surveyed companies, with the exception of Hanwa scoring 72th. Here are their detailed ranks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n