Featured Toyota Breaks into Top 10 of Worst Companies on Climate Policy

ouch . . . . hard to believe, what with stoking up on brown coal from Australia to put on a hydrogen reformation halo

Toyota hydrogen cars could be powered by brown coal - Drive

saving the planet ... one cough at a time.
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I don't put much stock in electrek.co articles. To Toyota's credit, they have one of the cleanest fleets in EU and one of the cleaner ones in NA. They are not wrong about the assertion that selling many hybrids is a good way to reduce emissions on the cheap and a good use of available resources.

 

My bad elecyrek.co does produce original "research" sometimes. I learned a few years back that they were terribly biased source of information. I choose to immediately ignore anything that's associated with them. I don't know anything about influencemap.org to decide whether it's a trustworthy analysis without putting significant time into it, which I don't have.

 

If this helps, Influencemap is a UK Think Tank. Their mission statement is as such:|
InfluenceMap Mission and Impact

Their conclusions seem to fit what Toyota itself says. They have lobbied against many climate friendly policies.
While hybrids were a great step forward, they are currently only a moderate improvement over non-hybrid ICE vehicles and not in very high demand.

Edit: Here is their methodology for auto companies. It seems quite transparent.
automotive.influencemap.org Methodology

 

Electrek is a stock pumpers EV blog, has a very strong BEV bias (duh) and is better thought of as Teslatrek. It's truly frightening that so many in its comments section think it's a dedicated journalistic news site tho'.

Example, this data from that report is never mentioned:

• Another sector which stands out are US utilities, with six companies (Sempra Energy (5th), American Electric Power (6th), Southern Company (7th), Dominion Energy (13th) and Entergy Corp (25th) all making the top 25 most negative and powerful globally.
  

And this certainly doesn't help the narrative either:

Placing 10th, Toyota remains the most negative and influential company from the Transport sector, having placed 3rd in 2021.

My 2 cents.

 

The irony is I don’t really care about low CO{2} manufacturing. It is a one time event versus the operating cost.

At most, a carbon tax makes sense to encourage better manufacturing and operating. I’m not interested in going after any one company.

Bob Wilson

 

I find the report far more interesting and reliable than electrek.
Glad to hear Toyota improved, hopefully their rethinking EVs is an indication they will continue to improve.

The more I read about their methodology the more I was impressed. I generally dismiss opinions for Electrek, however I VERY much appreciate them bringing this tool to my attention.

 

Kind of hard to miss the top ten chart in the article.

Electrek is a car centric site. There are surely sites of the scope to report fully on what the Influencemap report covers. Electrek does link that report, which is far better than other sites I've crossed. Most of their posts also separate the news being passed along from their opinion on that news.

"Meanwhile, the study does note the Japanese automaker has “improved its climate policy engagement”..."
the Electrek article.

They didn't ignore, or try to hide it. It just wasn't the focus of the posting. Whether Toyota has cut back on their lobbying, or the other top ten companies increased theirs doesn't matter to the fact that they are still the top one in the transportation sector.

Toyota would be cleaner if they expanded their hybrid line up sooner, and didn't take their time in rolling out improved technologies in general. While there is an aspect to maintaining quality in doing so, maximizing profits is a bigger influence. Which is what drives Toyota in this lobbying against these environmental policies.

 

Toyota Crown Wins Green Car Journal's Prestigious 2023 Green Car of the Year®, Additional Green Car Awards™ Winners Revealed (theautochannel.com)

"Nov. 8, 2022 -- Toyota's all-new Crown sedan has been named Green Car Journal's 2023 Green Car of the Year®, earning the most coveted environmental award in the automotive field. The hybrid sedan rose to the top amid an impressive field of 'green' cars "

 

Where did the Tundra place?

But that is a distraction from the topic of the thread. It isn't that Toyota doesn't make fuel efficient or clean cars. It is that they lobby and campaign against policies that would require them to sell more 'green' cars, or make those cars even 'greener'..

 

i'm loving mine!

 

At one time or another every manufacturer of gas burners has lobbied against efficient & cleaner/more costly tech, whether it be higher mileage standards, catalytic converters, lead free gas Etc. They have even gone so far as to downplay & advertise why plug in cars are not a good answer. It's a corporation. The goal is making money. It's not like Toyota is doing anything less than what you would expect - namely dragging their feet so as to continue with the most profit from old tech - while still moving forward albeit more slowly than other manufacturers.
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Silly just Evanglists angry with hybrid approach

 

You can dismiss a blogger that way, but the report has a very solid methodology.
It is also very transparent with links to sources.
The report also considers both EVs and FC vehicles as zero emission vehicles. I see no bias in the report.

 

They aren't the only ones covering this report.
ESG round-up: CDP to incorporate ISSB climate disclosure standard
AEP and Dow, named as climate policy obstructers in new report, funneled support to wide array of legislative candidates | Energy and Environment | wvgazettemail.com
The last one didn't even mention Toyota's placement.

The report can be found here.
https://influencemap.org/EN/report/Corporate-Climate-Policy-Footprint-2022-20196
"The research demonstrates the importance of policy engagement when considering corporate climate performance and highlights the gaps with mainstream corporate climate targets, indicators, and metrics. For example, 80% of the 25 most negative and influential companies have made net-zero commitments, while 10 are given an A- or higher under CDP’s 2021 climate change disclosure scores."

The only other car company in the top 25 of the list was BMW.

 

Despite what netzeromn's methodology, forgive me for being skeptical of the results.

Here are the 20 biggest OEMs in Europe ranked in 2019. (I haven't seen newer data; please post if you can find it.) Surely there are worse companies in the transportation sector. Toyota is right to lobby for hybrids. Hybrids really do cut emissions. Lucky for us coal is dying, but had it not been, EVs really do produce more emissions than hybrids if electricity is sourced from coal.* In much of the world, EVs are only slightly better than hybrids.

Every car should have been a hybrid in 2020. Then the push should have been on PHEVs and EVs in that order.

*If you're wondering why, it's mainly because coal releases more CO2 per unit of energy compared to oil when burned. Natural gas is cleanest but there are other problems with it, like leakage.

 

Again, the report isn't about a company's, or their products', emissions. it is about "The 25 Most Influential Companies Blocking Climate Policy Action Globally."

If Toyota was lobbying for hybrids over ICE cars, I don't think many would complain, but they are lobbying for ICE and against BEVs. They sided with the Trump administration for lower CAFE targets, for example. Meeting the higher ones wouldn't have been a burden to them. They have the technology to do so, but rolling it out at a faster rate would result in lower profits. It wasn't outside forces keeping all their models from being a hybrid by 2020.

The luck in cheap natural gas that is killing off coal also saved federal subsidies for hydrogen cars. The Mirai may not have made it to California without them. Selling them would have cost Toyota more.

Coal was around a third of the US grid generation before its decline. It has to be almost all of the grid for an EV to be dirtier than a hybrid, but then they are still close. They are better than ICE in 95% of the world. Yes, Electric Cars Are Cleaner, Even When The Power Comes From Coal

 

I'm not saying petrol cars are cleaner than EVs when electricity is sourced from coal. I'm saying hybrids are. Hybrids-to-EVs is more an apples-to-apples comparison because they both have regenerative braking.