Further pressure on business over its climate change impacts has come
with a decision by 211 institutional investors to ask the world’s 1800
largest companies to disclose information on their greenhouse gas
emissions.
The investors, who have assets of $28.9trillion (£16.3trillion) under
management, are all members of the Carbon Disclosure Project, which was
formed to allow them to pool their resources on climate change and
begin a concerted effort to spur companies into action to reduce
emissions. Until now they have concentrated on the world’s 500 largest
quoted companies by market capitalization. In all, 1800 businesses will
now be sent letters seeking disclosure of their emissions within four
months. The investors will share the information and make the reports
publicly available online, starting in September.
Project co-ordinator Paul Dickinson said that the signatories had
joined in the call for information in order ‘to reduce the number of
requests’ being
made. Of the 500 companies previously targeted, those that responded
have
been invited to report progress and those that did not have been told
to do so – or explain why they don’t believe the request is relevant to
them. Among the companies now being targeted are 40 of Asia’s largest
businesses outside Japan.
One sign of greater disclosure of emissions emerged last month with a
study of 1263 companies by the research company Sustainable Asset
Management. This showed the proportion of companies failing to provide
emissions data fell from 24 per cent in 2002 to 12 per cent in 2005.
