There’s been a bit of a stir about HSBC announcing it was pushing its Net Zero target back from 2030 to 2050. This target covered “operations, travel and supply chain” and the bank says it was on course to reduce that carbon footprint by 40% by 2030, and didn’t want to rely on offsets for the remainder.

So is this a disaster? The latest bank to run scared from climate ambition? Or a sudden collision with reality?

To me, it is disappointing, but probably not a surprise. 2030 is an enormously challenging target for Net Zero if, like HSBC, you are going to follow Science-based Targets (ie cut your footprint by at least 90%  before offsetting).

Last week I suggested we should reorganise the carbon footprint scopes along the lines of “what we can control” and “what we have to negotiate with others”, taking the NHS as a lead. Some suggested I might be letting organisations off the hook on their Scope 3 emissions, but getting the right balance between “best efforts” and “flying pigs” is a hard one.

Reading between the lines, one of the key challenges facing HSBC is finding sufficient numbers of low carbon buildings around the world. This isn’t surprising given the size of the bank and the number of buildings involved. HSBC has enormous buying power, so they can accelerate the building of new space or the retrofitting of old space, but if it isn’t available right now, which it clearly isn’t, this will take time.

That’s all understandable if the transition work continues apace. The risk in putting a target back by 20 years is the senior management may, consciously or subconsciously, assume that it is now someone else’s problem and (terribly inappropriate analogy klaxon) take their foot off the gas. My gut instinct is that 2040 would have provided sufficient time to make more substantial changes without the target disappearing over the attention horizon.

To me the timing of targets is an under-appreciated art – we will be covering this in March’s Net Zero Business Academy session on Sustainability Strategy. I may put HSBC in as a case study!