An increasing number of companies in Asia Pacific are slowing down their climate change plans, according to an EY report, due to the high cost of achieving such ambitions.
Over the next 12 months, around 65 percent of companies across industries in APAC will maintain or reduce spending to address climate change compared to the previous year, according to an EY report.
One-fifth of corporate sustainability leaders in the region cited excessive costs as a key reason to slow down plans. This is two times higher than companies in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
«The 2023 Sustainable Value Study shows that in Asia-Pacific, progress is slowing at a crucial time, and that gains are becoming harder to make,» EY said in a statement.
Delayed Timeline
As a result of the slowdown, the timeline to achieve climate change ambitions such as net-zero transition has been pushed further back.
Just 15 percent of APAC respondents were committed to achieving such goals by 2030 or earlier. 65 percent set their target between 2030 and 2060 while the remaining 19 percent are aiming for 2060 or later. This is in line with the global trend which saw 2050 as the median target year, compared to 2036 in the same study in 2022.
The survey was conducted between August and October with 520 chief sustainability officers at international companies from 10 industries in 23 countries with a minimum annual revenue of $1 billion. APAC accounted for around one-third of the respondents with 28 percent in China, followed by Japan (24 percent) and Australia (24 percent).
