Carbon emission figures from the retail sector are 11% higher than those released when the industry launched its flagship strategy to reach net zero, a shock report has revealed.
Five years on from the launch of the BRC’s Climate Action Roadmap, estimated UK retail emissions for 2024 stood at 331 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, compared with 298 million tonnes in 2019.
Supermarket leaders today claimed the figure was largely down to improved data quality, which showed a more accurate picture of the industry’s environmental impact and said it did not necessarily reflect a big increase in actual emissions.
However, the new report accepted that the strategy had achieved mixed results, with the industry hamstrung by a lack of government action and limited progress on carbon reporting by the retail supply chain.
It said progress on the strategy, which aimed to reach net zero by 2020, had been held up by systemic challenges. These included policy uncertainty, supply chain complexity, financial pressures and technological limitations.
The report claimed the overwhelming majority (91%) of retailers had established a GHG emissions baseline and publicly reported emissions.
Yet with more than 93% of retail emissions falling outside direct control, substantive industry progress depended on more joined-up retailer collaboration to influence global suppliers into action.
The report shows only a third (30%) of the very biggest suppliers provide GHG emissions data and 70% of products do not have information for consumers on responsible sourcing.
The roadmap was launched in 2020 with the support of 63 founding retailers, including the likes of Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Iceland, John Lewis, Lidl, M&S, Morrisons, Ocado and Sainsbury’s.
When the roadmap launched, baseline emissions were estimated at 215 Mt CO2e, using 2017 Defra consumption-based data. But the BRC said a more accurate and repeatable methodology used to recalculate emissions for 2019 and 2024 had shown an apparent 11% increase since that estimate.
It said the updated footprinting methodology was a significant step forward in accurately tracking UK retail emissions and involved moving from assumption heavy, top-down estimates to a bottom-up approach grounded in real retailer data, which gave a clearer picture of where emissions occur and where action matters most.
However, the report said the rising figure reinforced the need for retailers to step up collaboration across the value chain, including reporting on Scope 3 emissions and going further to take action to reduce emissions embedded in supply chains and consumers’ homes.
The BRC said it would continue to support retailers to deliver the transformative change needed by convening cross-industry stakeholders, including tracking annual progress and shaping policy to unlock investment and drive momentum.
“In 2020, we launched the Climate Action Roadmap to set the ambition for UK retail to reach net zero by 2040,” said BRC CEO Helen Dickinson.
“Five years on, we must use the takeaways from this report to drive the industry from collective ambition to a step change in collaborative action. The climate emergency is no longer tomorrow’s problem.
“It is here today: disrupting supply chains, driving shortages, increasing costs for households – and threatening the long-term stability and resilience of UK retail. Climate change is a very real risk to businesses and the consequences of inaction are simply too big to ignore. We need more radical collaboration between companies to bring down emissions and step up the drive to net zero.”
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