Ad Net Zero, an industry group seeking to reduce advertising’s carbon impact, officially launched its U.S. chapter today. And the group, whose members include major ad holding companies and trade groups, is already being targeted by climate activist group Clean Creatives.

Clean Creatives is comprised of strategists, creatives and industry leaders “who believe that fossil fuel clients represent a threat to our shared future,” according to its website. The group argues that Ad Net Zero cannot achieve its goals as long as its backers—which includes WPP, Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group of Cos.—continue to work for fossil fuel clients.

Clean Creatives is trying to prove its point by securing the social media handle @adnetzero on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok and using the accounts “to ask for evidence of a true plan to transition to net zero that includes member agencies ending promotion of Big Oil,” it announced this week.

“The Advertising Association didn’t reserve these social media handles. They also haven’t made a plan to end work with fossil fuel clients,” reads the first post on the @adnetzero Instagram page.

“We will happily share access to the @AdNetZero accounts if Ad Net Zero can share a plan about how they will get their member agencies out of working with fossil fuel clients,” said Clean Creatives Director Duncan Meisel. “Until then, we’ll use these channels to distribute information about how the industry’s work with fossil fuel clients undermines Ad Net Zero’s goals.”

Ad Net Zero, which launched its first chapter in the U.K. in 2020, has global and local supporters ranging from Dentsu to Google with over 50 supporters in its U.S. chapter, according to a press release. The group’s members provide voluntary annual funding for all operations and are required to be part of working groups that focus on one of the five points in its action plan, said U.S. chapter’s Director John Osborn, formerly the CEO of media agency OMD.

Ad Net Zero member WPP’s “annual carbon footprint is 5.4 megatons of CO2, and the footprint of their fossil fuel clients is 2,287 megatons. So if they generate even a 0.2% increase in sales for their fossil fuel clients, they wipe out the entire impact of their pledge,” Meisel said in an interview with Ad Age in January 2022.

Asked about that in an interview this week, Osborn said, “We have not yet tackled that topic and that is something that is under discussion,” Osborn, who was appointed to the role in October, called the issue “important.” He declined to specify when the group would address it. 

As for Ad Net Zero’s progress in the U.K., the organization has created an online Ad Net Zero training course which over a thousand ad professionals have completed, according to an Ad Net Zero U.K. spokesperson. It has also organized two Global Summits to discuss issues including updates on carbon measurement and Ad Net Zero goals, said the spokesperson.

The organization created a carbon calculator and received data from 35 U.K. organizations, with the aim of tracking towards the organization’s goal of net zero U.K. ad operations by 2030, according to the spokesperson. Ad Net Zero aims to increase data submissions this year by working with 85 new organizations and has also started an effort to standardize carbon calculations by creating a team led by Reckitt Global Media Director Craig Fryer last October. 

The group worked to embed sustainability considerations in awards, holding its own awards and most recently working with Cannes Lions to include a question around sustainability on creative entries. It has commissioned PWC to create a framework that measures the ad industry’s responsibility for resulting carbon impacts of the sale of products and services that have been successfully advertised, said the spokesperson.