The Global Dissemination to Multinationals of the Carbon Emissions Ruling on Shell

Shell’s landmark ruling ordered to reduce the CO 2 emissions to the Shell group by a net 45% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels. In this paper, we analyze the effects of extending Shell's sentence to all the foreign affiliates of multinational enterprises and find that it would result in a 2.85 GtCO 2 reduction in global emissions. This amount implies around 27% and 40% reduction in the emissions gap to fulfil the total 2030 estimated emissions not to exceed 2 o C. We focus on MNEs in the automotive industry (such as Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan, and Ford) and combine the information of their sustainability reports with multiregional input-output data of MNEs’ affiliates. We find that the current targets disclosed by those companies represent 8%-22% of the required reductions in their upstream emissions if the Shell sentence were extended to the automotive industry