Global mining giant Glencore has provided the first annual update on its climate change strategy, revealing that it expects to see its Scope 3 value chain emissions fall around 30 per cent by 2035 as efforts to curb its carbon intensity accelerate.

Last February, the Anglo-Swiss multinational published a 'climate change position statement' pledging to develop a Paris Agreement consistent strategy and "prioritise capital investment to grow production of commodities essential to the energy and mobility transition and to limit its coal production capacity broadly to current levels". 

In its first update on progress against the new goals, the company said its capital expenditure throughout 2019 had been weighted towards energy transition materials, including African copper and cobalt and nickel in Canada.

It also confirmed that in part because of "natural depletion of our oil and coal resource base over time", the company now expects around a 30 per cent cut in absolute scope 3 emissions by 2035.

"We expect the depletion of our coal resource base in Colombia, and to a lesser extent South Africa and Australia to contribute," the firm added.

In addition, the multinational said it had exceeded expectations with its short term emissions reduction efforts. "We are on track to achieve a near doubling our first GHG reduction target of reducing emissions intensity by at least five per cent by 2020 compared to a 2016 base line," the report stated. "We expect to achieve a circa 10 per cent reduction."

The company is now working on new longer term targets for Scope 1 and 2 direct and energy-related emissions, which are designed to "support the Paris goals" and are due to be announced later this year.

It also promised that it was continuing to implement the recommendations of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) in its annual reporting with the results due to be incorporated in the company's annual report later this month. More broadly, it said it is "incorporating climate change into operational planning, most recently in our new Tailings Storage Facility protocol".

The update, which follows BP's announcement last week that it would pursue a net zero emissions goal, is the latest evidence of how carbon intensive extractive companies are working to develop more credible decarbonisation strategies.

However, environmental campaigners and some investors have consistently argued that Glencore and others should be moving faster to phase out their coal operations and step up investment in cleaner alternatives.