Climate commitments by companies aren’t always as green as they seem. A new report concludes major brands are exaggerating how ambitious their efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions are — in effect misleading consumers, investors and governments.

The report published Monday by the Europe-based environmental think tanks NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch examined 24 companies, including KitKat manufacturer Nestle, French retailer Carrefour and automaker Volkswagen. It found that only one company — shipping firm Maersk — had climate plans with “reasonable integrity” while the rest were assessed to be moderate to very low.

“For the majority of companies, we found their climate strategies to be lacking,” said Thomas Day, a researcher at the NewClimate Institute who co-authored the report.

Actual emissions cuts resulting from the companies’ plans would amount to less than half those needed by 2030 to help meet the Paris climate accord’s goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, it found in its second annual assessment.

The researchers also questioned companies’ pledges to achieve “net zero’’ emissions, arguing that most consumers would understand that to mean largely stopping the release of planet-heating gas into the atmosphere.

“These net zero pledges, they actually amount to a commitment to reduce the emissions of those companies by just 36%,” said Day. Companies either claim the rest will be removed from the atmosphere by artificial or natural means — so-called carbon offsets — or simply remove large chunks of their emissions from the tally.

This was the case, for example, for Carrefour, which excludes 80% of its stores from the net zero target for 2040, according to the report. The company was among four corporations ranked as having climate plans with “very low integrity,” along with American Airlines, food processing company JBS and Samsung Electronics.

Carrefour said it disagreed with the report, adding that its climate efforts had been validated by independent experts — a position also taken by Swiss-based Nestle, whose targets were labeled as having “low integrity.”

Ford plans $3.5B battery plant in Mich.

Ford Motor said on Monday that it planned to build a $3.5 billion electric-vehicle battery factory in Michigan using technology licensed from a Chinese company that has become one of the most important players in the auto industry.

The plant, to be built in Marshall, a rural town about 100 miles west of Detroit, will be the latest in a growing list of new battery and electric-car factories that companies have announced in recent months. Ford expects to employ about 2,500 people at the plant and begin production in 2026.

The automaker said it would own 100% of the plant and make battery cells using technology and services from Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., known as CATL. The company, the world’s largest producer of batteries for electric vehicles, has 13 factories of its own in Europe and Asia but none in the United States.

EU raises economic forecast

Europe’s economic prospects are looking up, at least a little. The European Union’s executive Commission on Monday raised its economic growth forecast for the year. It’s now up to 0.8% for the 20 countries using the euro currency.

That means the commission expects the eurozone to scrape by without a technical recession in 2023. But things are not great either.

Inflation may have passed its peak, but it’s still high at 8.5%. That’s going to keep holding back consumer spending. And the European Central Bank is raising interest rates, a step that’s aimed at getting inflation down but also makes it more expensive to get credit for purchases or business expansion.

Lawsuits filed over canal blockage

The world’s biggest shipping company said Monday it sued a rival shipping line in a Danish court, seeking compensation for ship delays that resulted from the blocking of the Suez Canal by a hulking vessel two years ago.

The Panama-flagged vessel Ever Given, operated by Evergreen Marine Corp., ran aground in March 2021, blocking the global waterway for nearly a week. The enormous vessel was released in a massive salvage operation.

In an email to The Associated Press, shipping giant A.P. Moeller-Maersk said it filed a claim against Evergreen Marine, the vessel’s Japanese owner and its German technical manager, Bernhard Schulte Management, in the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court in Copenhagen, Denmark.

— From news services