18 September 2006Business ReportSaeed Shah
Most of the world’s 500 biggest companies have no programme in place, with explicit targets, to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, despite mounting evidence that the earth is heading towards environmental catastrophe.The most comprehensive study of the environmental behaviour of the world’s biggest corporations, by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), found that emissions from these businesses are rising at an alarming rate and most are not acting to tackle the issue.Among the worst performers in the research, which rates companies on a scoring system, were Pepsi, the soft drinks giant, Nintendo, the computer gaming group, and the financial services giant American Express. Among the 33 British companies, the company doing the least, by far, to address the issue is BAE Systems, the arms manufacturer that employs thousands of people in this country.CDP is an international coalition of institutional investors, which together manage assets worth $31.5 trillion. It includes the likes of Aberdeen Asset Management, Hermes Investment Management and HSBC in the UK. The research, which examines companies in the FT500 global index, is based on the extent to which businesses are aware of climate change issues and how much they are doing to reduce their emissions of harmful greenhouse gases, rather than which companies have the greatest absolute level of emissions.Of the 500 biggest companies in the world, 360 provided information to the CDP and although 87 percent of them recognised climate change as a key risk, 52 percent of these businesses had no targets to reduce their emissions.
