UK’s Aviva performs well, topping new European green ranking
The UK financial company Aviva performed well in a new European emissions league, released by the Environmental Investment Organisation, taking the top spot. The ranking see Europe’s 300 biggest companies ranked on their carbon emissions compared to their overall profits, their transparency and disclosure of emission levels to the public.
UK’s Aviva secured the top spot in the European emissions league, taking first place in the list of 300 of the biggest companies in Europe.
The ‘ET Europe 300 carbon ranking’, set up by the Environmental Investment Organisation (EIO), a UK based not-for-profit. The ranking rates companies on their emissions, as well as their transparency and emissions disclosure, hoping to raise carbon awareness from private sector companies.
As the rankings rate companies emissions against profits, those companies who are less energy intensive, with large profits are likely to do better in the scheme, while companies with small amounts of profit but high energy intensity, such as the National Grid which rated 211, will do worse off on the ratings.
Sam Gill, Operational Director of the EIO said: “The purpose of the Carbon Ranking is two-fold: to highlight the carbon emissions and levels of disclosure of the world’s largest companies with the aim of fostering greater transparency. The rankings will form the basis of a series of stock market indexes, designed specifically to provide the investment community with a viable tool for tackling climate change.”
“Despite most companies producing corporate social responsibility reports there remains a remarkable lack of transparency and clarity in greenhouse gas emissions reporting.”
Aviva is followed closely by Dutch firm Aegon, which offers life insurance, pensions and asset management services. The three top non-financial companies are Swisscom, Nokia and BSkyB, all of which fall in the top 15 companies.
The companies are also rated in categories of how much data is available for them, from full disclosure to no disclosure. 129 of the 300 companies fall under the full and verified disclosure category, while 38 firms did not report their emissions at all, and 43 published unclear results.
E.ON is the largest absolute emitter for which information was available, while Polish mining company KGHM ranks last, as the largest non-disclosing company.
The EIO say this is due to those companies with more profit being more able and have more resources to both improve their reporting of their emissions and put in place a low-carbon business model.
The EIO previously launched their ET UK 100 Carbon Ranking in February, and say this brought some success. For example, mining company Randgold Resources, which came last in the UK ranking for failing to disclose their emissions have now begun reporting publicly.
The ET carbon-ranking make the first phase of a planned Environmental Tracking concept, that will see the EIO creating real-time mainstream investment indexes. The ET UK 100 and the ET Europe 300 are due to be released as ‘live’ indexes in mid May.
The EIO also plan further rankings including the ET North America 300, Asia-Pacific 300 and ET Global 800.
Image: Philippe Put | flickr
