Global car giant Toyota has quietly revealed a huge jump in greenhouse gas emissions, which now stand at 575 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent last year, a figure that places it just behind Canada on a country basis and vastly more than Australia.
The car maker’s annual sustainability report for 2022 showed emissions jumped by 45 per cent year on year, as the company revised the way it accounts for emissions, forced to by a European ruling that requires auto makers to account for the lifecycle emissions from the use of the cars that they make.
Although the extra transparency is welcome, even if forced, other estimates suggest there could still be other ‘carbon bombs’ inside the Toyota books that haven’t been revealed. The situation with Toyota is all the more controversial because of its attempts to fight emission rules in Australia and across the world, and its dismissal of electric vehicle technology.
A Transport & Environment report last year accused Toyota of underreporting its emissions by 69 per cent, and called the upcoming Europe changes a “ticking carbon bomb” for car markers that have traditionally tried to downplay the carbon impact of their products.
US-based activist group Eko says Toyota’s emissions are now higher than those of some oil majors, and would make it the 12th biggest emitter in the world if it were a country.
For car makers, about 98 per cent of their emissions fall under Scope 3, or as indirect emissions within a company’s value chain. A large chunk of that is as ‘use of product’, or the vehicles being used for their designed purpose.
New CEO Koji Sato, 53, is tasked with turning the carbon-skeptic company around.
He took the reigns in April saying the company needed to adopt a “battery-first” way of thinking following the failure-to-thrive of its fuel cell strategy and as the car maker is being left behind by the rapid uptake of battery-electric vehicles — even its own, as companies retrofit Land Cruisers and Hiluxs, which are still not available as electric utes, to electric at the request of miners.
Unwilling to adopt new opportunities
Toyota has been comically resistant to the idea of zero emission vehicles, after trying for decades to get a hydrogen car off the ground while being consistently beaten by the rise of lithium ion battery powered options.
Its own data shows sales of fuel cell vehicles falling from 5,000 in 2021 to 3000 in 2022. Even plug-in hybrid vehicle sales slowed from 116,000 to 88,000 in 2022. Only the company’s bet on hybrids seems to be working, with sales up 6 per cent year-on-year, according to the sustainability report.
Greenpeace and InfluenceMap identified Toyota as the third most influential negative climate lobbyist globally, after Exxon Mobil and Chevron, accusing it of lobbying against vehicle pollution standards as well as working to slow the uptake of EVs.
Just last month the Australia sales vice president Sean Hanley opened a new salvo against the concept of electric vehicles (EVs) in the country, saying they are “impractical” for most Australians and badly suited to the country’s needs.
Although the company has finally embarked on a full electric strategy – its sustainability report said worldwide battery electric sales grew to 38,000 in 2022, up from 16,000 the year before – a report last year found 499 of every 500 Toyota vehicles sold is powered by fossil fuels.
To put that in context, 65,000 new all-electric cars were sold in Australia in the first nine months of 2023.
“In contrast to their aspirational slogan “beyond zero”, the world’s biggest carmaker has fallen woefully behind its rivals in the switch to electric vehicles, and for many years has acted behind the scenes to aggressively lobby governments around the world to block, delay and water down climate action,” says James Ward, a campaigner at Adfree Cities in the UK.
“For Toyota to advertise themselves as green and sustainable in the face of growing emissions is greenwash, pure and simple, and only serves to confuse the millions of people around the world who are trying to make the switch to clean, green transportation.”
Toyota’s flowery language around sustainability is irritating environmental campaigners, who point out the disjunction between what the company says, and its own figures.
Eko campaign manager Eoin Dubsky points to the company line about “establishing a society in harmony with nature” while reporting surging emissions.
The company appeared to have an EV epiphany in January, when it announced a new EV platform and plans to launch a new range in 2027-28, years after other car makers entered the new and rapidly growing market.
And at the same time then-CEO Akio Toyoda said he’d stand down in April to make way for a new generation for the company.
“The new team can do what I can’t do,” he said in a statement. ”I now need to take a step back in order to let young people enter the new chapter of what the future of mobility should be like.”
The grandson of Toyota’s founder Kiichiro Toyoda, Akio has received a barrage of criticism in recent years for his failure to identify the world’s shift to EVs while pouring billions of dollars into white elephant technologies like hydrogen.
Rachel Williamson is a science and business journalist, who focuses on climate change-related health and environmental issues.