The Salata Institute Corporate Climate Targets Database is a research tool that tracks voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments made by Russell 3000 firms between 2000 and 2024. It provides a framework for understanding how these private commitments interact with a fragmented public policy landscape, including carbon pricing, regulatory mandates, and subsidies. For finance professionals, it offers a comprehensive view of how large, publicly traded companies are aligning internal goals with evolving jurisdictional policies.

Organisation behind the tool

The database was produced by researchers affiliated with the Harvard initiative on Corporate Climate Targets, which is a research cluster of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. The associated working paper was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

What the tool does

The tool documents and classifies various types of voluntary corporate climate commitments, including:

• Net-zero and carbon-neutral targets.
• Carbon-reduction and energy-related commitments.
• Qualitative climate goals and sectoral distribution of targets.
• Data on internal carbon pricing and benchmarking against existing carbon taxes or emission trading systems.

The database provides broader coverage than traditional sources like CDP by including firms that do not respond to voluntary surveys but do disclose targets in public domain reports.

Target audience

The primary audience includes academic researchers, policymakers, and finance professionals interested in corporate sustainability disclosures and the effectiveness of voluntary climate action.

Relevance to finance professionals

• Risk assessment – Evaluation of whether corporate targets are incremental or merely reflecting existing regulatory requirements in specific jurisdictions.
• ESG analysis – Access to a broader set of climate disclosure data for Russell 3000 companies, including those missing from survey-based datasets.
• Investment context – Insight into how firms benchmark internal carbon prices against public policy, providing a proxy for how management views future regulatory costs.