by Shane Henson — January 10, 2014—Despite the many eco-friendly initiatives launched in recent years by leading companies, 51 percent of the top 100 are emitting unsustainable levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), according to a new study, Assessing Corporate Emissions Performance through the Lens of Climate Science, conducted by Climate Counts and the Center for Sustainable Organizations.
The purpose of the study was to assess the emissions performance of 100 companies from 2005 to 2012 within the context of climate science to identify the number of companies on a sustainable emissions path, the organizations say. While sovereign nations must come to an agreement on how global emissions reductions are achieved, there is also a role to be played by the business community, as 40 percent of the 100 largest economic entities in the world are corporations, the organizations assert.
“There has been great progress made in how companies measure, manage and report their CO2 emissions” said Mike Bellamente, executive director of Climate Counts, “but it’s clear from this report that the time has come for corporate carbon targets to be grounded in science.”
To assess sustainability performance, the organizations used factors such as emissions output and financial performance (contribution to gross domestic product) to assign a company-level carbon budget and to determine whether a company’s emissions are on track with the reductions called for by the scientific community. For this effort, any company scoring less than or equal to one (≤1) is considered “sustainable,” while any company scoring greater than one (>1) would be considered “unsustainable.”
“Most of what passes for best practice in sustainability measurement and reporting today falls short of the mark, precisely because it fails to take real social and environmental thresholds into account,” said Mark McElroy, founder and executive director of the Center for Sustainable Organizations. “What businesses need, instead, are science- and context-based tools that bring meaning to measurement. The context-based carbon metric used in this study can help show the way.”
Other findings from the study:
- Forty-nine of the 100 companies studied are on track to reduce carbon emissions in line with scientific targets to avert dangerous climate change. Of these, 25 exhibited revenue growth even as their emissions declined, proving that decoupling of growth and emissions is possible.
- The top two companies ranked, Autodesk and Unilever, have known histories of using a science-based approach to setting carbon targets. However, of the 100 companies reviewed, most are still not using science-based thresholds to set emissions targets.
- Of the top 10 companies that rated sustainably, seven have scored 50 points or better (out of 100) on the annual Climate Counts company scorecard.
