(Bloomberg) -- More than 200 companies have had their net zero commitments removed from a key ledger by the world’s leading watchdog for corporate climate goals, after they failed to meet a deadline to submit concrete plans.

A review by the United Nations-backed Science Based Targets initiative of corporate commitments found that 239 of 590 companies that had made net zero pledges didn’t submit plans within the required 24 months, according to a March report.

Investors increasingly demand SBTi verification amid growing skepticism around emission-reductions claims. But key sectors of the economy, including finance and fossil fuel production, are still awaiting SBTi guidance. There’s also disagreement over methodology, which last year led SBTi to remove Amazon.com Inc. from its list.

Read More: Amazon.com Fails to Get CO2 Endorsement From Key Watchdog 

The review looked at the results of a recent campaign to encourage target setting. SBTi said companies pointed to a requirement to incorporate emissions from value chains, also known as Scope 3, as the biggest barrier to setting net zero targets. The watchdog said that two-thirds of the companies dropped from the net zero commitment list are in the process of setting, or have set, near-term emissions targets that are more limited.

“Relatively few companies are ready to adopt long-term deep decarbonization targets for their value chain (Scope 3),” SBTi said. That “could be due to too many unknowns in the future and/or doubts about their ability to meet their targets.”

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