Disclosure Progress

Last week was one of those that deserved a timely post or two, but didn’t get them because there was so much going on.

The week started at the Carbon Disclosure Project annual event in NYC. This was commemorating CDP5, the fifth reporting cycle for the project. From the website: “The CDP website is the largest repository of corporate greenhouse gas emissions data in the world.” With over 2,400 companies reporting this year, and over 300 of the S&P 500, the CDP is playing a critical role in transparency and reporting of GHG’s. Want to see what a particular company is up to? Look ‘em up!

This was our first year, and I was proud of our response. Apparently they thought it was good also, as we were named to the Climate Disclosure Leadership Index.

We were a sponsor of the event in NYC, which was hosted by Merrill Lynch. Bill Clinton gave the keynote, which I thought was outstanding. Many of the same themes we’ve been pushing (measurement, transparency, tie to economics, innovation). If you get the chance, I’d highly recommend reading it or listening using the links on the CDP homepage.

One of the reasons I’m a fan of the CDP is that they keep themselves small, but carry a big punch. They now represent over $41T in investors (that’s right, that’s a ‘t’ as in ‘trillion’), and I believe you are going to see them applying more pressure to the folks who aren’t yet reporting.

The key messages about this year’s reports were that a) there are more of them, b) they are getting richer and more accurate in content, and c) they are describing more and more proactive action on the part of the reporting companies. Hard to argue with that!