Walmart fell short on many of its environmental pledges for 2025, an outcome it foreshadowed in December 2024.
But the world’s largest retailer made demonstrable progress on its carbon footprint: It cut absolute emissions from operations (Scope 1) and electricity (Scope 2) by 7.5 percent to 14.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (mtCO2e) during the 2026 fiscal year ended Jan. 31 — a cumulative reduction of 24.6 percent since 2016. The total for its indirect emissions (Scope 3) rose about 3 percent to an estimated 635 million mtCO2e.
In addition, Walmart reduced its carbon intensity, which measures emissions as a percentage of sales, by another 11.6 percent for Scope 1 and 2. It has cut emissions intensity for Scope 1 and 2 by more than half since 2016. It also passed the halfway point for its pledge to add 10 gigawatts of new clean energy projects by 2030.
Future progress will remain “lumpy” because of business growth; global energy policy and limited clean electricity projects in certain markets; and the availability and cost of technologies for decarbonizing delivery fleets and refrigeration systems, Walmart said in its FY2026 ESG Report, published July 29, which includes final tallies for the retailer’s 2025 milestones.
“We’ve always said progress is not going to be linear at the aggregate level,” Kathleen McLaughlin, executive vice president and chief sustainability officer at Walmart, told Trellis.
New 2030 target
Walmart has pledged to reach “zero emissions” by 2040, but that goal isn’t independently validated. The company committed in 2020 to cut combined absolute emissions for Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 35 percent by 2025, ultimately logging a 24.6 percent reduction, according to the report. That target was approved by the Science Based Targets initiative. “It wasn’t quite the goal we originally set but it was good progress,” McLaughlin said.
Walmart has replaced that pledge with a new, validated science-based pledge for Scope 1 and 2 — aiming for a 28 percent cut by its 2031 fiscal year, based on a 2025 baseline. Judging by last year’s progress, it is one-quarter of the way there.
One big factor is Walmart’s multiyear project to adopt refrigeration and heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment that uses refrigerants with a lower global warming potential (GWP).
On-site refrigerants accounted for almost 30 percent of Walmart’s Scope 1 inventory in 2025, but refrigerant emissions were down almost 21 percent because of upgrades — some projects have delivered 80 percent emissions reductions — and better maintenance. Walmart employs more than 600 technicians trained to handle low-GWP options.
“That’s been part of a broader system that’s helped us improve refrigeration emissions, including using AI and data-based tools to get at and predict maintenance requirements and sources of leaks,” McLaughlin said.
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