Report released on attempted corporate mitigation of GW

[Guardsman Bass]

Here it is.

Corporations have become better about disclosing their greenhouse gas emissions and somewhat better about curbing them. But few investors are using that information to decide where to put their money.

That was the gist of the fifth annual report of the Carbon Disclosure Project, a nonprofit group that monitors corporate disclosure related to climate change. The group, which gathers its data through surveys, represents 315 institutional investors that manage a total of $41 trillion in assets.

“Large companies are finally taking their jackets off, rolling up their sleeves and examining how they use energy and otherwise deal with climate change,” said Paul Dickinson, chief executive of the project.

The report said that 79 percent of respondents saw risk in climate change, and many were trying to mitigate it. Several food and beverage companies reported steps to ensure their water supplies, while several insurance companies said they were quantifying risks from severe storms.

And 82 percent of respondents spotted opportunities in curbing climate change, through investing in carbon credits and renewable energy projects, creating products and refining processes.

Automotive companies, for example, reported more research into hybrid electric vehicles, while chemical companies said they were developing storm-resistant construction materials and crop-protection products.

But there was little agreement among companies within industries on the effect of climate change. Boeing, for example, said it had not identified any “specific physical risks” from climate change, while Northrup Grumman detailed the damage that “severe weather conditions” could cause its operations.

More troubling to the project’s executives, though, is that few companies include climate-related data in their filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The result, the report said, is that the ramifications of climate change have not yet translated into “concrete investment decisions on any scale.”

The project released the report, which included responses from 1,300 companies, at a standing-room-only event yesterday at Merrill Lynch headquarters in Lower Manhattan. The data is available at www.cdproject.net.

“We provide a huge stage on which corporate actors can say their piece to investors,” Mr. Dickinson said.

There was ample star power on stage. Harold E. Ford Jr., the former congressman who became a vice chairman of Merrill Lynch this year, moderated.

Former President Bill Clinton gave the keynote address, in which he said that the United States was way behind countries like Denmark and Britain, which had created many jobs from the process of curbing greenhouse gases. He cited plentiful “anecdotal evidence” that curbing climate change can be an economic boon to wealthy and emerging nations alike.

“But I can’t prove that,” he said, “because we don’t have the data and systems in place to demonstrate the likelihood of best outcomes.” The project is important, he said, “because the payouts are measurable only if you keep score.”

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the News Corporation, appeared on video, reiterating his company’s commitment to curbing global warming. And John Fleming, the vice president for merchandising at Wal-Mart Stores, announced a pilot program that his company is initiating with suppliers of seven common items — DVDs, toothpaste, soap, milk, beer, vacuum cleaners and soda — to measure and reduce the amount of energy they use.

“We are reaching out to the next generation of consumers, who may well choose stores on the basis of climate change practices,” Mr. Fleming said.

The project is working with Wal-Mart on that initiative, and Mr. Dickinson said he hoped to set up similar collaborations with automotive and aviation companies, consumer products manufacturers, and other retailers.

“We look forward to other global corporations following Wal-Mart’s lead,” he said.

While the overall tenor of the written report and the oral presentations was optimistic, there were notes of caution. The project operates on the honor system, in that there is no independent verification by which to judge corporate claims. In fact, the report specifically cautions investors against acting on unverified information.

Nor are environmentalists uniformly supportive of the report. The Rainforest Action Network displayed banners outside the event, protesting Citigroup and Bank of America — both companies that reported low levels of emissions — for continuing to invest in coal projects. The carbon project “does ask about that, but it is an often ignored question,” said Brianna Cayo Cotter, a spokeswoman for the Rainforest Action Network.

I bolded the Rupert Murdoch part because that struck me as kind of surreal, considering that he employs a large number of pundits who think it's a fraud.