Can tech help hold climate polluters to their net-zero pledges?

Steam rises from a chimney of the black coal-fired Grosskraftwerk Mannheim (GKM) power plant in Mannheim, southwestern Germany. Countries, states and companies have made voluntary net-zero pledges, but tracking progress on them is a challenge. Can automation and other tech advances speed efforts? — AFP

WASHINGTON: Legions of voluntary net-zero emissions pledges are now in place around the world to meet climate change goals – though ensuring companies and governments actually meet them is proving a much harder task.

But new automation and web-scraping techniques that aim to help tracking groups gather the data they need could soon help churn out almost real-time assessments of plans, curbing ‘greenwashing’ opportunities among laggards, backers say.