Sustainability initiatives gain traction against backdrop of climate disclosure rules

Nestlé is launching two projects aimed at reducing and removing carbon emissions from its cocoa supply chains. The initiative, announced in March, builds on the company’s commitment to reach net-zero status by 2050.

The global food and beverage company said it would develop the two projects alongside suppliers Cargill and Export Trading Group’s Beyond Beans over the course of five years. The projects seek to address climate change’s impact in the cocoa industry by promoting agroforestry, accelerating the shift to regenerative agriculture, and supporting the reforestation of deteriorated land around cocoa farming communities.

Collectively, the initiatives are estimated to reduce and remove over 500,000 metric tons of carbon over a 20-year period, according to Nestlé. The company also said each project would be set up with a “robust” carbon monitoring and accounting framework that will track its lifetime progress.

The company said it would distribute various multi-purpose species of shade trees to farmers, who will be taught tree planting and pruning techniques. Nestlé said introducing shade trees will help reduce the harsh effects of the sun and provide cocoa crops with spaces rich in moisture, enabling them to survive during the dry season. The shade trees will also help improve water management and enhance biodiversity on the farms, in addition to absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to the company.

Together, both projects from the company aim to plant over two million shade trees across land managed by nearly 20,000 farmers in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.

Nestlé — which houses over 2,000 brand names under its umbrella — owns several chocolate and confectionery, drinks and ice cream labels that utilize cocoa, including KitKat, Smarties, Milo, Nesquik and Häagen-Dazs. The company is also one of the largest corporate cocoa consumers in the world, buying around 414,000 tons of cocoa annually for its products. The beans, in addition to processed cocoa, come from major cocoa exporters such as Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico and Indonesia, as well as Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, where Nestlé plans on initiating its shade trees project.

"These projects are important milestones on our journey to net zero,” Darrell High, Nestlé’s global cocoa manager, said in a press release. “We're working to address our emissions all the way to the farms we source from.”

High said long-term forest protection is only possible through collaboration with “fully committed suppliers,” but that the process also relies on participation from local communities who “have an impact on the forests and can help find land-use solutions that are best suited for the local reality."

Ursule Gatta, Cargill’s partnership officer overseeing the Ivory Coast, said the company will collaborate with Nestlé to scale up the project to cover 18 cooperatives over the course of five years.

Nestlé’s carbon monitoring and verification program will track both the number of trees planted and the corresponding tons of carbon dioxide sequestered, which the company said will help guarantee verifiable and permanent carbon removals within its supply chain. The monitoring system will also keep track of the effectiveness and efficiency of reforestation initiatives and projects undertaken to restore the surrounding natural landscape.

Google has committed to purchase $35 million in carbon removal credits, matching the Department of Energy’s carbon removal purchase program, the company announced in March. The DOE said its program, launched the same day, invites organizations working on curbing their carbon footprint to make “bigger and bolder purchase commitments” in the voluntary carbon market to help scale the sector.

The tech giant said it was the first company to match the DOE’s pilot effort to buy $35 million in carbon removal credits, made through its Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Pilot Prize that launched in 2023. Google will use both nature-based and technology-based solutions to contract these credits out over the next 12 months.

“This model of mutually reinforcing public-private support is an important tool to commercialize carbon removal solutions,” Randy Spock, Google’s carbon credits and removals lead said in a company blog post. “As with many emerging technologies, governments and companies have a critical and complementary role to play in demonstrating promising carbon removal approaches and bringing them to a commercial scale.”

Google said it is “working hard” to reduce emissions across its operations and value chain, but recognized that curbing its carbon footprint and addressing climate risk requires “a diverse set of tools.” The search engine platform and computer software company said its pledge to buy carbon removal credits builds on recent purchases it made through Frontier — an initiative led by Google’s parent company Alphabet, Stripe, Meta and others — which aims to accelerate the development of carbon removal technologies by cultivating future demand.

“Carbon removal needs to be kickstarted to mitigate global climate change and remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere,” Spock said in a LinkedIn post. However, he noted that companies were uncertain about which solutions to support in the short term and saw such carbon removal purchases as risky.

Spock said the DOE’s program marked the first time the federal government ventured into the voluntary carbon purchase marketplace by procuring carbon removal credits, which paved the way for Google to make a similar commitment for the private sector.

The DOE said its Voluntary Carbon Dioxide Removal Purchase Challenge will have a public leaderboard to track voluntary carbon removal purchases from companies, as well as provide supporting materials to assist buyers in making “better and larger carbon removal credit purchases” and help more suppliers find customers. Though the program will not issue additional federal funding to support the cause, it encourages companies to make purchase pledges similar to the $35 million the DOE invested.

“This effort aims to address the non-financial barriers holding back carbon removal credit purchases, including lack of transparency into the market and lack of recognition that carbon removal credit purchases are essential and valuable today,” the DOE said in its announcement.

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By JLL

With carbon reduction deadlines looming and regulations tightening, more businesses are adopting fast-evolving technologies to measure, monitor and manage their real estate emissions and guide future sustainability decisions.

Sustainability technologies will account for the biggest share of increased tech budgets over the next three years, according to JLL’s survey of 1,000 companies. Over two thirds of corporate occupiers say tech that helps them to manage and report on their sustainability progress is a top budget priority. 

Globally, 45% of occupiers and 62% of investors surveyed plan to adopt energy or emissions management tech in the coming year. Another 62% of investors are interested in tech that supports sustainability monitoring and reporting while evaluating climate risk in portfolio planning is an emerging area.

“Tech is a critical enabler for companies to better understand how they’re doing in terms of their net zero goals through from flagging risks in their portfolio to monitoring their day-to-day operations,” says Ramya Ravichandar, Vice President, Technology Platforms - Smart & Sustainable Buildings at JLL.

Implementing tech successfully

One hurdle to the implementation of these technologies is that many businesses lack a concrete roadmap.

“Successfully integrating these technologies into real estate is a challenge,” says Yuehan Wang, Global Research Associate, Real Estate Technology at JLL. “Even large companies may lack a feasible technology strategy that addresses how to make procurement decisions, ensure the tech is correctly used, and scale it across a portfolio.”

The number of companies adopting data science and modelling tools, which are used to analyze occupancy, energy use and financial costs across buildings and locations, for example, jumped by 14% to 40% between 2020 and 2023, JLL’s survey shows. 

Yet a lack of standardized data across smart building systems remains a stumbling block.

To extract accurate insights about their real estate’s carbon footprint, companies need to merge information from various systems, from HVAC (heating, ventilation and cooling) to waste management. However, these systems are often siloed, making it difficult to integrate data, while companies may lack the tools or expertise to gather and analyze building data effectively.

“The hardest problem for real estate to overcome is the many data silos that must be integrated for buildings to operate efficiently, especially when some buildings may be 50 or 60 years old with outdated systems,” says Ravichandar.

Driving value from tech investments

To drive value from sustainability tech investments, companies need to clarify their objectives and how they will deliver on their targets, says Wang.

“Businesses should define what they need to achieve with sustainability technology, set benchmarks, and understand which products on the market are best suited to their operations and goals,” she adds.

Training is also paramount to ensure different teams correctly use and benefit from sustainability tech.

“Sustainability tech has to reach everyone from the boiler room to the boardroom,” says Ravichandar.

For companies that get it right, there are substantial boons to operating costs and environmental impact.

One JLL financial services client ran data analysis to identify energy-saving initiatives, using data visualizations to support clearer reporting and better decision-making. These measures contributed to savings of $664,158 in a single building flagged as having high energy consumption.

Another company used JLL’s analytics platform Canopy to track, manage and measure sustainability performance across its offices and data centers. It helped the company to identify new conservation measures and alternative financial options for capital upgrades, capturing $5.7 million in energy-savings and $2 million in cost avoidance over a three-year period.

The role of AI

As AI continues to evolve, it will play an increasingly pivotal role in tackling the sizeable carbon footprint of real estate. Generative AI could catalyze the integration of sustainability technologies into both buildings and operational workflows, for example, by making these technologies more accessible through user-friendly interfaces.

This could accelerate the smart building transformation that underpins more sustainable real estate.

“In recent years, building owners have been experimenting with sensors, digital infrastructure and other smart tech. AI capabilities could bring about the tipping point by making it easier and more efficient to tap the benefits of these technologies,” says Wang.

This, in turn, would have big implications for the speed and scope of real estate’s decarbonization.

“Technology is core to real estate’s decarbonization,” says Ravichandar. “As it becomes integral to how buildings function, it will lower real estate’s emissions on a macro scale.”

Click here for more information on JLL’s sustainability services and tech solutions.

Unilever has set more ambitious goals to curb its carbon footprint by the end of the decade by slashing direct and indirect emissions across its operations, according to its latest climate transition plan unveiled in March. The strategy builds on the company’s goal of reaching net-zero across its value chain by 2039, ahead of the 2050 target most companies have set.

The consumer goods company — which owns brands that include Ben & Jerry’s, Knorr and Dove — said it aims to reduce its scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by 100% by 2030, compared to a 2015 baseline. The company said it already met its near-term 2025 target of slashing its scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by 70% in 2023.

Unilever also set goals to reduce its scope 3 emissions from energy and industrial operations by 42% by 2030, compared to a 2021 baseline, and reduce scope 3 emissions from forest, land and agriculture — especially those associated with ingredients — by 30.3% in the same time period.

The London-based multinational manufacturer, which supplies products catering to nutrition, hygiene, personal care and more, launched its updated climate strategy the same day the Securities and Exchange Commission finalized its long-awaited climate disclosure rule. The final rule — a pared-down version of the original — scrapped scope 3 emissions disclosures entirely and scaled back scope 1 and scope 2 reporting requirements.

Despite the retraction from the regulatory agency, Unilever said it planned to reduce scope 3 emissions from key categories, including raw materials and ingredients, packaging materials, logistics and transport, ice cream refrigerators, aerosol propellants and the end-of-life treatment of sold products.

Unilever said it needs to “drive transformations” in its agricultural supply chain to reach this goal. The company aims to do so by focusing on regenerative agricultural practices, which include nourishing the soil, increasing farm biodiversity, improving water quality, etc. The company said it was also looking to invest in landscapes and jurisdictions that surround its sourcing locations, with the aim of engaging with smallholder farmers, civilians, local governments and businesses.

The company said it slashed its direct emissions, scope 1 and 2, primarily through increasing use of renewable electricity and energy efficiency programs and plans to invest over 150 million euros ($163 million) in its manufacturing decarbonization program over the next three years. The program will focus on three areas: decarbonization of thermal and electrical energy, increasing use of renewable power and reducing emissions from refrigeration.

“As a company dependent on agricultural and energy-intensive chemical ingredients, we believe that transitioning to become a lower-emission business has many benefits,” Hein Schumacher, Unilever’s CEO, and Ian Maekins, Unilever’s chair and non-executive director, said in the introductory note to the climate action plan. 

Schumacher and Maekins said transitioning to such a model “increases resilience, improves efficiency, and future-proofs [the company’s] value chain against transition risks such as carbon prices, while sparking innovation and helping to attract the best talent.”

Though Unilever said its plans “identify actions capable of delivering” its near-term emissions reductions targets, it also said the most significant challenge for its scope 3 reduction goals relates to emissions in its home care business. The company said “commercially viable pathways to reduce emissions from energy-intensive chemical feedstocks” by 2030 are not yet clear, which presents a difficult task for Unilever and other companies that are dependent on similar supply chains.

Amid a sustainability push from regulators and investors, just one-fifth of organizations say they’re meeting or exceeding their decarbonization goals, according to a new study from Engie Impact, a consulting subsidiary of French multinational utility company Engie. The study’s findings are based on responses received by 515 senior decision makers across industries during the third quarter of 2023.

Although two thirds of surveyed organizations said they put in place some form of carbon reduction commitment, the lack of coherent focus, internal governance bottlenecks, budgetary constraints and data challenges are impeding progress, Engie Impact reported.

“A lot of roadblocks to achieving goals are really cross-functional and can’t be solved by one group or team alone,” Abby Davidson, managing director of strategy and implementation at Engie Impact, told ESG Dive. “Ultimately, decarbonization is a business transformation,” requiring alignment across business units, she said.

Decarbonization efforts have gathered momentum across companies as laws and regulations — including the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, the passage of two California climate disclosure bills in October, and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s climate reporting proposal — add pressure on leaders to show results.

However, despite this increase in demand for transparency, corporations have struggled to implement their sustainability initiatives and decarbonization solutions. The report identified five major roadblocks to execution: Multiple business priorities; governance and decision making complexity; limited budgets; technology and tracking impediments; and a lack of internal skill sets.

A key problem is programs are often implemented in a piecemeal way, according to Davidson.

Engie Impact’s research found many organizations take a “siloed approach” to decarbonization and treat it like any other corporate initiative. As a result, they fail to tap into the benefits that come from a more holistic way of advancing decarbonization strategy, one which requires organizations to acknowledge the complexity of meeting long-term carbon reduction goals and recognizes the scale of the effort. Such an approach also entails a coordinated approach across the organization, where all business units are able to help advance a common set of objectives.

More than one-third of respondents said their organization takes a hands-off approach to decarbonization, deeming it low priority or as an isolated approach with minimal cross-fertilization. Further, 1 in 5 organizations surveyed said their business model is not compatible with long-term decarbonization commitments.

“Executives who embrace a holistic approach do so knowing it necessitates a fundamental reassessment of how their business functions,” the study noted.

Poor data management stalls execution

Ineffective data management can stand in the way of decarbonization implementation, a challenge identified by a large swath of survey respondents. Two thirds of respondents said meeting long-term decarbonization commitments would require a complete transformation or significant change in how their organizations manage technology and data. Only 40% of organizations said they have a centralized repository for decarbonization data, or what researchers called a “single source of truth for decarbonization data” in their organizations.

“You can't make progress or monitor what you can't measure, and so I think companies aren't set up to measure emissions data … this is a transformation [needed] in how they gather data and measure data,” Davidson said.

The top three metrics used by organizations to measure success included the overall reduction in scope 1 and scope 2 emissions; long-term financial return on investment; and impact on brand perception and value.

In resource-constrained times — budget and investment constraints were the top inhibitor to implementation, according to respondents — Davidson stressed the importance of a long-term view when assessing impact of decarbonization initiatives.

“What we encourage companies to look at … a total cost of ownership model, so looking at a broader perspective on the variables that go into owning a particular asset and looking at the holistic picture over time,” she said.

Companies, she added, also need to be open to new ways to finance decarbonization efforts, especially among firms that can’t allocate capital expenditures for the transformation of manufacturing facilities.

“Engie and others have models in the market [that bring] energy savings as-a-service where we will own the asset and the company will pay it back through energy savings and keep the capital expenditure off their books,” Davidson said.

Getting buy-in at the top

The study said progress on decarbonization should be championed at the executive and board levels, but only  one-third of executives surveyed described their board as “decarbonization champions.”

“Boards are under increasing pressure to have people on the board of directors who understand and can effectively govern decarbonization strategy for the business,” Davidson said. “It’s very important for the board to oversee and be able to govern decarbonization as they would any business transformation.”

Engie Impact commissioned research firm Meridian West to conduct its survey.

Barclays will no longer provide direct financing for any new upstream oil and gas, thermal coal expansion projects or related infrastructure to help achieve its net zero goals, the bank announced in February.

The bank also unveiled a Transition Finance Framework, laying out how it will classify “transition finance” and allocate funding to decarbonize high-emitting sectors. The framework aims to track its progress against a prior commitment to allocate $1 trillion in sustainable and transition financing by 2030. 

The London-based bank’s updated Climate Change Statement also said all portfolio energy companies will be required to report information relating to their transition plans and decarbonization strategies — including their scoped emissions reductions targets, expansion plans and any low-carbon business activities or plans — by Jan. 1, 2025.

Barclays said, beginning in 2026, it will only fund energy companies with “near-term net-zero-aligned” scope 1 and scope 2 reduction targets, a 2030 target to reduce methane emissions in line with leading industry guidance and a commitment to cease all routine, non-essential venting and flaring.

The bank said its climate change strategy is focused on achieving net-zero emissions across its operations, reducing its financed emissions and financing the transition. Barclays said it will continue to update and adapt its strategy to keep up with the pace of market, technological, geopolitical and regulatory updates.

“We will keep our policies, targets and progress under review in light of the rapidly changing external environment and the need to support governments and clients in delivering an orderly energy transition, integrating social considerations and providing energy security,” the updated climate strategy statement said. 

Though climate financing has increased over the years — almost doubling in the last decade to $4.8 trillion between 2011-2020 — the incline is not enough to put the world on track to meet 1.5 ºC global warming targets, according to research from the Climate Policy Initiative. The research group estimates that at least $4.3 trillion of capital is needed annually by 2030 to “avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

The bank is also establishing a client transition review forum to review its clients against the new transition framework. Any energy company with more than 10% of upstream oil & gas capital allocated to expansion; non-diversified upstream oil & gas companies; and companies with the lowest scores on the transition assessment will trigger mandatory annual reviews on whether Barclays will continue its financing.

Additionally, Barclays won’t provide any direct funding to energy groups for oil and gas projects in the Amazon biome or the Arctic Circle; ultra-deep water or extra heavy oil infrastructure projects; and oil sands exploration projects. The bank will stop funding all clients working on coal mining or coal-power generation by 2035. The bank said it hopes to have all the internal systems and controls in place to monitor their clients against these restrictions by the end of June.

In January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton banned Barclays from doing business with the state over its role as a “fossil fuel boycotter.” As a result, the bank — which was ninth-largest underwriter for the state in 2023 — can no longer underwrite any municipal bonds for Texas.

Allianz, a Germany-based life insurance and financial services company, announced in January it had created a new dashboard to track the emissions reductions and investments required for countries to achieve the net-zero commitments they made in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

Allianz’s Sector Assessment of Multiple Emissions pathways dashboard, or SAMEpath, is a free, open source tool that includes both sector- and region-specific data that will allow users to explore transition risks in different companies, sectors and climate scenarios.

Accrding to Allianz SE’s Chief Economist Ludovic Subran, the dashboard will be a “living tool” and includes a risk assessment portion, allowing users to examine transition risks under scenarios including limiting global temperature rises to below 1.5°C, remaining below 2°C and the overshoot scenario the world is currently on track for.

The world’s largest insurer said the tool was developed given the shrinking timeline to reach the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and outlines the transition path for over 50 industries. 

Subran said SAMEpath will help simplify and combine the data from the ever-growing number of climate scenarios and models.

“After the Paris Agreement, the thinking was that the world needed a simple Google Maps-like tool to orient us on reducing greenhouse gasses,” Subran said. “Unfortunately, there is an almost unmanageable number of models and scenarios now.”

The tool will allow users to run customizable data searches on different variables, regions and scenarios. SAMEpath also lets users simulate their own custom climate policies and analyze their impacts.

The dashboard also includes the ability to visualize the association between emissions reductions — either overall or in a singular industry — and the carbon price required to reach those reductions.

Allianz launched its first net-zero transition plan in 2023, with an aim of halving its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The firm also set intermediate targets to reduce carbon emissions 30% for its retail motor segments and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions intensity of its commercial insurance sector by 45% by the end of the decade.

The past year has given way to various climate science indicators that the globe is far off track from achieving the goals set out in the Paris agreement, and the U.S. is not exempt from that analysis. 

The nation’s Fifth National Climate Assessment found its current climate adaptation moves are “insufficient” to reduce climate related risk or reach climate targets. Previously, the Rhodium Group estimated that, despite U.S. emissions dropping in 2023, U.S. emissions reduction rates need to triple and then sustain that elevated pace through the end of the decade to reach its 2030 goals.

Bloomberg launched an enterprise tool in November 2023 which will allow investors to assess corporations’ impacts on the United Nations’ sustainable development goals through a data mapping platform, which the company said is the first to align with the UN societal blueprint.

The UN’s member states adopted the 17 SDGs in 2015, including gender equality, reduced inequalities and affordable and clean energy. The UN Environmental Programme Finance Initiative Sector Impact Map will provide more clarity for investors seeking to direct capital toward sustainable assets and assess how private sector activities are aligning with the SDGs.

Bloomberg’s data mapping and materiality assessment tool will give investors information on more than 500 sectoral activities mapped to 38 topics to assess impact, in addition to the SDGs, to discern the effects corporations have on the environment, people and economic development.

By giving investors insight into how companies’ operations impact the 2030 sustainable agenda, Bloomberg hopes to bridge a gap between ESG integration and impact investing, according to Patricia Torres, global head of sustainable finance solutions. UNEP FI Program Lead, Careen Abb, said the tool will also help make impact analysis mainstream for the financial industry, and “accelerate the transition to an economy that helps deliver the SDGs.”

The UN released its most recent SDG implementation update in July 2023, which found implementation progress for more than half of the goals were “weak and insufficient” and 30% of targets have seen progress either stall or regress.

“Unless we act now, the 2030 Agenda could become an epitaph for a world that might have been,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in the report’s foreword.

Guterres said that global governments are far from delivering on a 2020 pledge to invest $100 billion annually in climate and urged the international community to reform its financial architecture to ensure that the benefits of a globalized economy are equitably shared. The UN has estimated a $2.5-$3 trillion annual funding gap needs to be closed for developing countries, if the 2030 goals are going to be met.

This new data mapping tool joins Bloomberg’s growing suite of ESG products, which includes sustainable debt instruments, climate risk exposure indicators, companies’ carbon emissions datasets and more. In October 2023, Bloomberg and Riskthinking.AI launched an artificial intelligence tool that aims to help businesses predict their financial exposure to climate change. This tool aligns its data with all the climate change scenarios laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Most companies in the apparel, beverage, food and high-tech industries — four water-intensive sectors — have a long way to go to meet their water sustainability targets, according to a report by environmental nonprofit Ceres.

The Boston-based group created a benchmark analysis in October 2023 ranking 72 companies, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Amazon and Adidas, among others, on their water stewardship practices and evaluated their progress toward meeting the 2030 sustainability and water conservation goal set by Ceres’ Valuing Water Finance Initiative in 2022.

Only 11 of the 72 are on track and making substantial progress — 50% to 75% — toward the goal, with food corporation Cargill leading the way. However, the remaining 61 companies are meeting less than 50% of the outlined goal, with produce distributor Chiquita Brands International falling at the bottom of the list.

Findings from the report underscored a clear imperative: companies “must accelerate their efforts to advance their water stewardship strategies.”

Ceres launched the Valuing Water Finance Initiative in 2022 in a move to push companies with a high water footprint to “value and act on water as a financial risk and drive the necessary large-scale change to better protect water systems.” The global initiative has gained the support of 90 investors, collectively representing $17 trillion in assets, committed to engage with companies to better oversee and protect freshwater resources across their business operations and global supply chains. 

“As the global water crisis escalates, so do the financial risks facing businesses and their investors,” senior program director of water at Ceres and co-author of the 2023 report, Kirsten James, said in a press release. “While some companies are demonstrating a variety of leading practices, we need to see more companies excelling on all aspects of water stewardship in order to ensure sustainable water supplies for businesses, communities and the environment.”

A company’s performance is measured on six science-based, actionable steps Ceres outlined to provide investors with the framework required to help move companies to strategically address water risk — a roadmap aligned with the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for Water. 

The expectations outlined include companies not impacting the water quantity and water quality in water-scarce areas across their value chain or the conversion of natural ecosystems critical to freshwater supplies; companies providing access to water and sanitation in communities they interact with; and companies conducting board oversight regarding water management efforts and public policy engagement.

Cargill is currently at the top of the list, at 68.9% to its target, with the shortlist including other food companies such as Danone, General Mills, Mars, Nestlé, and beverage companies PepsiCo, Diageo, Coca-Cola, Heineken, along with Microsoft in the tech sector and The Gap in apparel.

Some of the remaining 61 companies that met less than 50% of the outlined goals include Unilever, Kellogg,  Kraft Heinz,  Domino’s, Levi Strauss, H&M, Adidas and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. 

The report also found water quantity-related targets often fail to consider local watershed conditions, and water quality is largely overlooked in setting corporate water stewardship targets. Further, most companies fail to assess how their business activities and operations across the supply chain impact water resources and have yet to address remaining gaps in board oversight of water risks and water-related governance incentives.

The Coca-Cola Foundation, which is the philanthropic arm of The Coca-Cola Company, provided a $325,000 grant to Ceres in 2021 to support the nonprofit’s Valuing Water Initiative. Coca-Cola is ranked as the seventh-highest company in terms of progress made — achieving 55.6% of the target goal — in the 2023 report.