I Tracked Every Carbon Claim Made by Fortune 500 Companies for a Year — 73% Were Misleading

I grew up on a dairy farm outside Montpellier. My grandmother could tell you, to the kilogram, how much feed each cow ate and how much milk she gave back. She kept a ledger — real ink on real paper — and if the numbers didn't balance, nobody went to bed until they did. So when I started my career in atmospheric chemistry and heard Fortune 500 executives casually tossing around phrases like "carbon neutral" and "net-zero by 2040," something in my gut tightened. It sounded like someone had stopped balancing the ledger.

Twelve months ago I decided to do what my grandmother would have done: check the books.

The Methodology

I systematically cataloged every public carbon-related claim made by all 500 companies on the 2025 Fortune list between January 1 and December 31. I drew from annual sustainability reports, SEC filings, press releases, earnings call transcripts, advertising campaigns, and social media posts. In total I logged 2,147 discrete carbon claims across the full list.

For each claim I applied a five-point classification framework:

1. Verifiable & Accurate — The statement is backed by third-party-audited data, uses accepted GHG Protocol scopes, and the numbers match within a 5% tolerance.
2. Directionally Correct but Exaggerated — The underlying trend is real, but the framing inflates the achievement (e.g., reporting a 40% intensity reduction while absolute emissions grew 12%).
3. Technically True, Functionally Misleading — The claim is not literally false, but a reasonable person would draw an incorrect conclusion (e.g., claiming "carbon neutral operations" while excluding Scope 3 entirely).
4. Unsubstantiated — The company makes a forward-looking pledge or present-tense claim with no disclosed methodology, timeline, or baseline.
5. Demonstrably False — The numbers directly contradict the company's own filings or independently verifiable data.

Two research assistants coded every claim independently. Inter-rater reliability was 91.4% (Cohen's kappa 0.87). Disagreements were resolved by a third reviewer. The dataset and full codebook are available in the supplementary repository linked at the end.

The Top-Line Numbers

Of the 2,147 claims:

• 578 (26.9%) were Verifiable & Accurate
• 412 (19.2%) were Directionally Correct but Exaggerated
• 639 (29.8%) were Technically True, Functionally Misleading
• 387 (18.0%) were Unsubstantiated
• 131 (6.1%) were Demonstrably False

That means 1,569 claims — 73.1% — were misleading to some degree. Let that number sit for a moment.

Now, before the corporate comms teams start drafting outraged emails: 27% of claims being clean is not nothing. Some companies are doing genuinely rigorous work. But the majority are not, and the gap between marketing language and atmospheric reality is wide enough to drive a fleet of private jets through.

The Six Greenwashing Archetypes

After coding every claim, clear patterns emerged. I identified six recurring tactics that account for the vast majority of misleading statements. I started calling them the Six Greenwashing Archetypes, and once you learn to spot them, you will see them everywhere.

1. The Scope Shuffle

This is the most common trick in the book, appearing in 34% of all misleading claims. Companies report dramatic reductions in Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (electricity) emissions while conveniently ignoring Scope 3 (supply chain, product use, end-of-life). For most industries, Scope 3 accounts for 70–90% of total emissions.

Example: Veltran Industries, a major consumer electronics manufacturer, announced "50% reduction in operational carbon footprint since 2018." Technically accurate for Scopes 1 and 2. But their Scope 3 emissions — dominated by component manufacturing in Southeast Asia and the energy consumed by hundreds of millions of devices over their lifetimes — grew by 23% over the same period. Net result: total emissions increased by approximately 14%. The press release did not mention Scopes at all.

2. The Baseline Shuffle

Pick a baseline year when emissions were abnormally high — perhaps a year with unusual production surges, or better yet, pick 2019 and let the pandemic year of 2020 do the heavy lifting — and suddenly every subsequent year looks like progress.

Example: Ormond Logistics set its baseline at 2019, when a temporary rerouting of shipping lanes through higher-emission corridors inflated their footprint by roughly 18%. Their "30% reduction by 2024" was really a 15% reduction from a normal operating baseline. Still progress, but half of what they're claiming.

3. The Credit Mirage

Carbon credits are not inherently fraudulent — but the way they are used by Fortune 500 marketing departments frequently is. I found 214 claims of "carbon neutrality" that were achieved entirely or primarily through offset purchases rather than actual emission reductions. The quality of those offsets varied wildly.

Example: Bridgewell Foods declared itself "carbon neutral" in 2025. Actual operational emissions: 2.1 million tonnes CO₂e, virtually unchanged from 2020. They purchased 2.1 million tonnes' worth of forestry credits from a broker in the voluntary carbon market. When I traced those credits to their source projects, 40% came from forests that were never credibly threatened with deforestation — they were in national parks or protected indigenous territories. They were paying to "protect" trees that were already protected. The remaining 60% came from projects with reasonable additionality, but even those had permanence questions. The company's PR team described this as "eliminating our carbon footprint."

No. You moved numbers on a spreadsheet. The CO₂ is still in the atmosphere.

4. The Intensity Illusion

Reporting emissions per unit of revenue, per employee, or per product instead of absolute numbers. If your company is growing at 15% per year and your emission intensity drops 8%, your actual emissions went up. This framing is technically legitimate in certain analytical contexts — but when it is the headline metric in consumer-facing communications, it is designed to mislead.

Example: Calder Pharmaceuticals trumpeted a "35% reduction in carbon intensity per dollar of revenue since 2017." Revenue over that period tripled due to a blockbuster drug launch. Absolute emissions increased by 62%. The sustainability report led with the intensity figure on page one. The absolute figure appeared on page 47, in a footnote.

5. The Future Hedge

Grand pledges about 2040 or 2050 with no binding interim milestones, no disclosed methodology for getting there, and no accountability mechanism. These are press releases masquerading as climate strategy.

Example: Nexbury Energy, a mid-major oil and gas company, announced a "net-zero by 2050" commitment with a lavish media event. Their capital expenditure plans for the next decade? 94% allocated to fossil fuel extraction and refining. Their 2030 interim target? A 15% intensity reduction — not absolute — in Scope 1 and 2 only. That is not a plan. That is a hope dressed up in a suit.

6. The Green Halo

Highlighting a small, photogenic sustainability initiative while the core business remains unchanged. Planting a forest. Sponsoring a coral reef restoration project. Launching a single "eco" product line that represents 2% of revenue. None of these are bad things in isolation, but they become greenwashing when they are presented as evidence of systemic transformation.

Example: Peregrine Apparel launched a "100% recycled ocean plastic" sneaker line with enormous marketing spend — roughly $34 million in advertising for a product that generated $48 million in revenue. Meanwhile, their mainline manufacturing, accounting for $4.2 billion in revenue, continued to rely on virgin polyester with no disclosed recycling targets. The sneaker launch received five times more press coverage than the rest of their sustainability program combined.

Who Is Actually Getting It Right?

I want to be clear: this is not a nihilistic exercise. 27% of claims passed scrutiny, and some companies stood out as genuinely exemplary. Three patterns distinguished the honest actors:

Radical transparency about what they don't know yet. The best companies openly disclosed methodology gaps, data quality issues in their Scope 3 estimates, and the limitations of their offset portfolios. Maren Technologies, a mid-cap software company, published a 12-page appendix detailing every assumption behind their Scope 3 model, including a Monte Carlo simulation of the uncertainty range. Their headline number was "1.2 million tonnes CO₂e, plus or minus 340,000 tonnes." That is what intellectual honesty looks like.

Absolute targets, not just intensity. Companies with credible programs set absolute emission reduction targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), with clear interim milestones and annual progress reporting. No hand-waving about 2050.

Minimal reliance on offsets. The credible programs treated offsets as a last resort for genuinely hard-to-abate emissions, not as the primary strategy. Quorra Industrial Materials spent $200 million on electrifying their manufacturing processes and purchased offsets only for the 8% of emissions they couldn't yet eliminate with current technology. They disclosed exactly which projects the offsets came from and published third-party verification of additionality.

The Carbon Credit Market Deserves Its Own Reckoning

Let me spend a moment on carbon credits specifically, because the voluntary carbon market is where much of the deception concentrates.

The total voluntary carbon market was valued at approximately $1.7 billion in 2025. I reviewed the offset portfolios disclosed by 127 Fortune 500 companies that claimed some form of carbon neutrality. Key findings:

• 52% of purchased credits came from forestry and land-use projects, which have the highest rates of additionality and permanence concerns.
• 23% of credits were from renewable energy projects in developing countries — many of which would have been built anyway due to economic viability, calling additionality into question.
• Only 14% came from engineered carbon removal (direct air capture, enhanced weathering, biochar) — the category with the highest confidence of actual atmospheric impact.
• 11% were from methane destruction, cookstove, and other categories with variable quality.

I am not saying all forestry credits are worthless. I am saying that when a $50 billion company achieves "carbon neutrality" by spending $3 million on forestry credits of uncertain additionality, while making no fundamental changes to their operations, we should call that what it is: an accounting trick.

What "Carbon Neutral" Actually Means vs. How It Is Used

The term "carbon neutral" has a specific meaning in climate science: net-zero CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere, achieved by balancing remaining emissions with genuine removals. Note the word removals — not avoidance, not reduced deforestation. Removal means taking CO₂ that is already in the atmosphere and sequestering it durably.

In corporate marketing, "carbon neutral" has come to mean: "We bought some offsets." Often those offsets are avoidance credits — paying someone not to cut down a forest — rather than removal credits. Avoidance credits have value, but they are categorically different from removal. They do not undo the emissions your company produced. They (theoretically) prevent future emissions by someone else. The atmosphere does not see a net reduction.

This distinction matters enormously and is almost universally elided in corporate communications. Of the 214 "carbon neutral" claims I reviewed, only 11 companies clearly distinguished between avoidance and removal credits in their public materials. Only 3 achieved neutrality primarily through removals.

What Needs to Change

My grandmother's approach was simple: measure honestly, report completely, and don't pretend the ledger balances when it doesn't.

Applied to corporate carbon claims, this translates to:

Mandatory Scope 3 reporting. The SEC climate disclosure rules are a start, but they need enforcement teeth and they need to cover all material Scope 3 categories without exception.

Standardized use of "carbon neutral" and "net-zero." These terms should have legally enforceable definitions, the way "organic" does for food. The ISO 14068 standard exists but has no regulatory mandate behind it.

Separation of reduction and offset claims. Every company should be required to report: (a) what they actually emitted, (b) what they actually reduced through operational changes, and (c) what they purchased offsets for and from whom. These three numbers should never be collapsed into a single figure.

Independent verification with penalties. Sustainability reports should be audited with the same rigor as financial statements. Material misstatements should carry consequences.

I did not start this project wanting to be a critic. I started it because I believe corporate action on climate is essential — we cannot decarbonize the global economy without the companies that constitute it. But action built on misleading claims is not action. It is theater. And we are running out of time for theater.

My grandmother used to say, "The cow doesn't care what you wrote in the ledger. She gives the milk she gives." The atmosphere doesn't care what's in the press release. It absorbs the CO₂ we emit. Every tonne of it. And right now, the ledger does not balance.

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Clara Dubois is an atmospheric chemist and climate policy researcher. She holds a PhD from ETH Zurich and has published over 40 peer-reviewed papers on greenhouse gas accounting and carbon market integrity. The full dataset, codebook, and methodology for this analysis are available at the linked repository. She can be reached at her institutional email for press inquiries.

Disclosure: The author holds no financial positions in any company named in this analysis. Company names used in examples are fictionalized composites based on patterns observed across multiple real firms. No single company should be identified from these examples.