Thomson Reuters Launches Latest Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report

Thomson Reuters today released its report, Global 250 Greenhouse Gas Emitters: A New Business Logic, in tandem with the United Nation’s flagship emissions gap report. Both reports were released in advance of the upcoming Climate Change Conference (COP 23).

The report was written in collaboration with CDP, an international not-for-profit organization holding the world’s largest collection of self-disclosed corporate environmental data, Constellation Research and Technology, a team of sustainability experts from Yale University, and BSD consulting, a global sustainability consultancy. Key contributions were also made from Baker McKenzie, KPMG, State Street Global Exchange, the United Nations Gigaton Coalition, and the Norwegian Climate and Environment Ministry, and the European Space Agency.

Global 250 Greenhouse Gas Emitters: A New Business Logic presents the latest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data from the world’s 250 largest publicly traded emitters. The Global 250 is a group of businesses in the oil, gas, utility, automotive, aircraft, manufacturing, steel, mining and cement sectors. This report looks at best practices across the economy and aims to demonstrate the relationships between decarbonisation and long-term financial performance. This information is critical to investors and policymakers, alongside the demands for increased transparency and accurate and comparable performance metrics.

Key findings include:

• This small group of companies are responsible for 1/3 of global annual emissions (including their value chains) and will help determine the fate of efforts to address climate change
• Comparing the relationship between multiyear decarbonisation trajectories and a broad set of financial performance metrics, there is no evidence of a trade-off between financial and environmental performance among the G250
• Roughly 20% of the G250 have strategies in place to drive business transformations necessary to reduce their climate impacts
• A meaningful number of that 20% are demonstrating that their transformation strategies create real business value through cost structure improvements and new revenue growth opportunities, as well as risk mitigation
• New strategy centric metrics are introduced to better understand how firms can be assessed along their sector based decarbonisation pathways

David Craig, President Financial and Risk, at Thomson Reuters, commented, “Firms that are transitioning to lower carbon business models are building competitive advantage and reputational equity for the long-term. Sustainability considerations in corporate strategic planning will be increasingly important to global economic prosperity and increasingly important to investors who are looking for this leadership.”

Erik Solhiem, head of UN Environment shared, “As global policymakers regulate to reduce emissions, going green is increasingly a requirement for doing business. The markets are moving rapidly, and the private sector is where some of the most exciting low-carbon innovations and new business opportunities are taking place. This leadership is essential to close the emissions gap and ensure long-term economic prosperity.”

Tim Nixon, Head of Sustainability Thought Leadership, at Thomson Reuters, and co-author for the report commented, “Current emission trends are flat when they should have been going down by roughly 3% per year. This delay in reduction will increase the cost and complexity of the required transformations in the future, and decreases the probability of meeting targets required for limiting disruptive climate events. The urgent commitment of non-state actors is critical.”

David Lubin, Co-Chairman and Managing Director of Constellation Research and Technology, remarks, “Our team has been at work with Thomson Reuters for more than two years developing a new framework for assessing the business value of sustainability strategies, including deep decarbonisation. This report reveals how leading firms climb the curve, exploiting a historic opportunity to enhance their competitiveness today and ready themselves to prosper in our fast approaching low carbon future.”

Lance Pierce, President of CDP North America, commented, “What’s powerful about this report is it highlights in a new way what business leaders are doing to innovate and find a pathway to success in a carbon-constrained world. At CDP we are delighted to partner with Thomson Reuters and Constellation Research & Technology in helping show how the “Sustainability Premium” is real, and to pull back the curtain on the trend toward how the businesses of the future will be managing themselves.”

Patsy Doerr, Global Head of Corporate Responsibility & Inclusion, commented, “Providing clients with the information they need to do their jobs effectively is at the heart of what we do at Thomson Reuters. Every year, a rapidly increasing percentage of total managed assets are allocated to ESG investing. Analysts need to know which companies are operating responsibility so they can make smart investment decisions for the long haul.”

In collaboration with CDP, data for the report was gathered from publicly available GHG emissions data from businesses and from estimates either from CDP or Thomson Reuters environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) research data. Thomson Reuters ESG research data gathers standardized, objective, quantitative and qualitative ESG data from an estimated 5,000 publicly listed companies. (PR Newswire)