Climate Change Spurs Industry Restructuring - Survey
Date: 24-Sep-07
Country: NORWAY
Author: Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Even so, some big firms were still doing far too little to
identify risks and opportunities from climate change, according
to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), representing 315
institutional investors managing US$41 trillion in assets.
A record 77 percent of the world's top 500 firms, rated by
market capitalisation in the FT500, answered a request for
information about their responses to global warming, up from 72
percent in 2006, it said.
"One trend above all is becoming increasingly clear: climate
change and the various regulatory, policy and business responses
to it are driving what amounts to a worldwide economic and
industrial restructuring," a 92-page survey said.
"That restructuring has already begun to redefine the very
basis of competitive advantage and financial performance for
both companies and their investors," it said.
The project, in its fifth year, seeks to guide investors by
getting companies to give details of their greenhouse gases and
strategies for everything from energy efficiency to recycling.
"Seventy-six percent of responding companies reported
implementing a greenhouse gas emissions reduction initiative",
up from 48 percent in the previous FT500 survey, it said.
UN climate experts say that warming, blamed mainly on
greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, will bring
more droughts, heatwaves, floods, rising seas.
CROPS, CARS
In a series of examples of change, the survey said brewer
Anheuser-Busch was trying to develop crops resistant to extreme
weather. Oil group Total aimed to cut flaring of associated gas
50 percent by 2012 compared to 2005.
Alcoa had increased its purchase of recycled aluminum by 20
percent in 2006 while a range of carmakers was working to
develop more hybrid electric-petrol vehicles.
"Investors are looking for the next big thing. If the
company is part of the problem on climate change it hasn't a
clear run at the markets of the 21st century," Paul Dickinson,
chief exective officer of the CDP, told Reuters.
The CDP sent requests in total to 2,400 companies around the
world and got 1,300 responses. In the FT500, Europe-based
companies led in response rates. US-based firms lagged and
none of seven Chinese companies replied.
The CDP also published a first index of firms with what it
said were best carbon disclosure practices, including mining
group Rio Tinto, energy firm Iberdrola, computer firm Hewlett
Packard or Westpac Banking.
Still, it said too many firms failed to reply, such as Apple
Computer, Bank of China, Berkshire Hathaway, Gazprom or Philips
Electronics.
"We find it absolutely incomprehensible why a company will
fail to respond to a legitimate request from its shareholders,"
said Dickinson. "Have they got something to hide? Do they think
they operate in a complete vacuum?"
In a linked survey of top US companies in the SP500,
response rates were 56 percent -- a majority for a first time
and up from 47 percent a year earlier. The United States is
outside the UN's Kyoto Protocol for curbing emissions.