Climate actions from the private sector are crucial to cutting global emissions and meeting the climate targets set by the Paris Agreement. In recent years, an increasing number of companies have pledged to contribute to the achieving of those targets. However, the emissions pathways of most firms are still misaligned with these goals. To explain the root causes of this discrepancy between effort and outcome, we developed a new methodology to track the actions implemented by major public corporations to reduce their emissions. Our analysis shows that firms aligned with climate targets prioritise actions focused on creating growth opportunities, such as investing in research and development and new products as well as fostering cooperation with other ecosystem players. Overall, we provide a new systematic framework to track the effort of public firms to align their emissions with country-level targets. Our approach can be used by investors and policymakers to redirect capital towards its most sustainable use and to design behaviourally founded policy interventions to align business emissions with climate targets.