SINGAPORE, Sept 23 (Reuters) - More than 40% of major

companies, cities and regions have still not set any targets to

cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to an annual "stocktake"

released on Monday to gauge global progress in the fight against

catastrophic climate change.

While more governments and enterprises have issued net-zero

pledges since last year, their attention has been further

diverted by wars, elections and economic challenges, leaving a

significant "commitment gap", said Net Zero Tracker, a coalition

of research groups at the University of Oxford.

As countries prepare to submit new 2035 climate targets to

the United Nations, policymakers and company boardrooms are

struggling to translate long-term goals into concrete action,

with transition plans still lacking robustness and detail, the

researchers said.

"A common theme throughout this report is the persistent

lack of integrity across the board," said John Lang, who heads

Net Zero Tracker's Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

The report looked at net-zero commitments and action plans

from 198 countries, 706 sub-national regions, 1,186 cities and

nearly 2,000 publicly-listed companies.

They found that while 1,750 entities out of more than 4,000

had made formal net-zero pledges, nearly 1,700 hadn't set

targets of any kind.

Among the listed firms, just under 60% had set net-zero

targets, up 23% since last year's report, with a significant

rise in pledges from Asia.

The total number of companies with no emissions targets

dropped to 495, from 734 last year. They include electric

vehicle makers Tesla and BYD, Nintendo ( NTDOF )

and Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK/A ), Net Zero Tracker said.

The report cited Costa Rica, Volvo and Google

owner Alphabet as examples of "good practice" when it

comes to implementing net-zero pledges.

However, only 5% of regions, cities and companies met all of

Net Zero Tracker's criteria for "robustness" - which include

having detailed plans to phase out fossil fuels, it said.

Around half of the regions, cities and companies have failed

to set targets for non-CO2 greenhouse gases like methane, and

many firms also failed to account for emissions across their

entire value chains or clarify how much they will rely on

offsets to meet targets.

As many as 148 states covering 88% of the world's total

population have net-zero commitments, with Mexico, Iran and

Azerbaijan, host of the COP29 climate talks in November, among

the exceptions, the report said.

Technologies exist to triple the current levels of climate

ambition, and the next round of nationally determined

contributions (NDCs) submitted to the U.N. need to provide more

details about how targets will be implemented, it concluded.

"There's been some good progress, but we need a lot more,"

said Catherine McKenna, a former Canadian environment minister

who chairs a U.N. expert group on net-zero commitments.