The growth paradox in corporate carbon targets: absolute attainment conceals scale and intensity

Transition finance supports high-emitting firms along different routes, from efficiency and fuel switching to retiring high-emitting assets. Yet progress is often judged by whether a firm meets an absolute emissions target. We ask what this verdict shows about how its result arose. A firm's emissions change sums the changes in its output, energy use per unit of output and emissions per unit of energy. We recompute each verdict with the output term removed and, without price data, with the change in energy use removed. We apply both to targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative and, imposing a 1.5°C-aligned path, to the firms in Korean and Australian disclosures and sustainability reports. The verdict is accurate about total emissions but silent about their composition. Growing firm-years with rising emissions miss a one-year path by construction, yet in half to two-thirds of them emissions per unit of output fell. Removing output changes about one verdict in four under validated targets and three to four in ten among disclosing firms with revenue. In Korea the total follows output through energy use, while emissions per unit of energy show little association with sales. Attainment with lower output is not thereby undeserved, as it may reflect a planned retirement; the decomposition cannot establish which route a firm is on. It shows which component carried a verdict and so which evidence, such as retirement plans or equipment and fuel changes, a lender should check. Reporting each verdict with its three terms requires no new data. Preprint, not peer reviewed. Version 1, 2 October 2026.