AEG, the world’s leading sports and live entertainment company, announced today on Earth Day 2019, that the company has adopted a new greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, based on the 2018 Global Warming of 1.5˚ C report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Two weeks ago, I joined the CEO of Walmart’s international business to discuss how PepsiCo can help them reach their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions goals under Project Gigaton. For our part, we are striving to reduce absolute GHG emissions across our value chain by 20% by 2030—avoiding roughly 35 million metric tons of GHG emissions overall. That’s the equivalent of more than 73 billion miles driven by the average car—or taking more than half the cars in PepsiCo’s home state of New York off the road for a year. This is a science-based target, and it represents PepsiCo’s contribution to meeting the initial goal of the 2016 Paris Agreement: limiting global warming to within two degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels.
Nearly 50 years ago, US Senator Gaylord Nelson spearheaded the first Earth Day, sparked by the devastating 1969 oil spill off the Southern California coast. The inaugural celebration in 1970 saw 20 million Americans showing their support, followed by the passing of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Acts by year’s end.