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US companies are maintaining climate commitments while trimming their messaging about it, as they walk a tightrope between competing pressures on the environment, research shows.
An exclusive analysis shared with the Financial Times from Farient Advisors, which reviewed sustainability disclosures, Securities and Exchange Commission filings and company announcements, found 71 per cent of the 50 largest US companies by market capitalisation have remained committed to their climate goals. Twenty per cent have delayed or decreased their commitments, while 8 per cent have increased them.
Yet many of the companies that remain committed to climate goals have nonetheless not published sustainability updates about their efforts, in a sign of their reticence over how they talk about it publicly.
The findings suggest a new corporate strategy that the biggest American companies have adopted as they seek to navigate the delicate political climate, altered drastically in the last year by the re-election of President Donald Trump and the backlash to climate and diversity efforts.
“[Companies] are being careful about where they put out their messaging around their environmental or climate efforts,” said Brian Bueno, Farient Advisors’ sustainability practice leader. “They’re sharing less information than they would otherwise.”
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, for example, deleted a statement in its 2024 annual filing that once described sustainability as one of its “core values”. It also removed all references to “ESG”, which stands for environmental, social and governance. Despite the change in tone, the company has maintained its climate targets.
“Companies may reframe how they talk about [climate] issues but I don’t think they’re going to stop talking about it,” said Tyson Timmer, a researcher at UCLA. “There is still a large group of stakeholders . . . that are still concerned about these issues even though the politics in the US and parts of Europe have swung the other way.”
Trump has called climate change a hoax and his administration ended an SEC regulation requiring companies to disclose climate impacts. Texas attorney-general Ken Paxton led a coalition of Republican states in a lawsuit against BlackRock and other asset managers over their ESG strategies.
The Conference Board said in a recent report that 80 per cent of companies it surveyed were adjusting their sustainability strategy in response to the political environment. It found many had replaced the acronym “ESG” — now considered politically charged — with alternatives such as “sustainability” or “impact”. Survey respondents said they expected US federal policymakers and regulators to be the primary source of ESG backlash over the next two years.
“Companies in general are becoming quieter,” said Andrew Jones, principal research at the governance and sustainability centre at the Conference Board. “[They are] recalibrating language to talk in a neutral, less politically exposed way.”
Some companies have delayed sustainability reports amid the uncertainty. McDonald’s, which aims to halve emissions by its suppliers by 2030, has not released a sustainability report this year (it did provide an update in its proxy statement in response to a shareholder proposal).
Similarly, UnitedHealth Group has not released a sustainability report this year but said in its proxy statement that it was maintaining goals announced two years ago.
Others have released sustainability reports reaffirming their goals, including Microsoft and Apple. Nvidia announced it had achieved its near-term goal of powering its offices and data centres with 100 per cent renewable energy this year.
Coca-Cola, which weakened its environmental targets last year, reframed its sustainability goals in its most recent annual filing as “voluntary goals” that were “subject to change”, wording absent from its 2023 filing.
In response to inquiries from the Financial Times, UnitedHealth said its report would be released later this summer, and Nvidia declined to comment. The other companies did not respond to requests for comment about the findings.
Jones said he expected companies to face challenges in meeting their goals.
“The momentum is slow for action on climate and particularly action on mitigating emissions and decarbonising and moving away from fossil fuels,” Jones said.
Investors and asset managers have become less vocal on environmental and social issues and have become less supportive of activism. There were fewer climate-related proposals this year compared with last year, according to Danielle Fugere, president and chief council of investor advocacy group As You Sow.
“This is a year of uncertainty,” she said. “This administration and red state attorneys-general have been targeting companies that talk about climate action.”