Legions of voluntary net-zero emissions pledges are now in place around the world to meet climate change goals — though ensuring companies and governments actually meet them is proving a much harder task.
But new automation and web-scraping techniques that aim to help tracking groups gather the data they need could soon help churn out almost real-time assessments of plans, curbing so-called green-washing opportunities among laggards, backers say.
One effort, run by the nonprofit Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), based in Britain, aims to be "the mothership where people come when they think about net zero," said John Lang, the group's Net Zero Tracker lead.