On Earth Day, Net Zero Tracker (NZT) has released its latest analysis that reveals how far private firms are lagging behind their public counterparts in setting climate targets and, as a result, their readiness for incoming climate regulation.

As its name suggests, NZT tracks the net zero commitments made by nations, states and regions, cities and major publicly-listed companies, and shows these results in a ‘living’ database. By doing this it aims to increase the transparency and accountability of the net zero targets pledged.

In its latest analysis, NZT shows a widening gap between the climate targets of private v publicly-listed companies. Less than two-fifths of the world’s largest 100 private firms (38) have net zero targets, compared with the majority (70) of their publicly-owned peers.

Digging further into the analysis shows how the gap widens further, and the effect this could have on private firms. For instance, only half of the world’s 100 largest private firms have set a net...