Aviva has topped rankings of Europe’s largest 300 companies by their carbon intensity, which also shows strong performance from Nokia and Swisscom.
The ET Europe 300 Carbon Ranking by non-profit research group the Environmental Investment Organisation (EIO) ranks the companies by Scope 1 and 2 emissions and by levels of disclosure and verification.
U.K. investment and insurance firm Aviva, with a carbon intensity of 0.85 tons of CO2 equivalent per million dollars of revenue (tCO2e/$M) is closely followed by Dutch insurance and finance firm Aegon, with 1.35 tCO2e/$M.
Aviva Investors is a founding signatory to the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Carbon Action and has been vocal in its demands for companies to report on and reduce emissions. Last month it joined other Carbon Action signatories to call on FTSE Global 500 global companies to institute cost-effective carbon reduction programs.
The top three non-financial companies are Switzerland's leading telecoms provider Swisscom, followed by Nokia (11th, 5.61) and U.K. broadcaster BSkyB (13th, 6.69).
The study found that 129 of the 300 companies publicly report complete and verified data for their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, while 38 of the firms do not publicly report any emissions data. Polish mining company KGHM had the highest intensity among non-reporting firms, at 5,350.62.
The highest carbon intensities, however, belonged to companies that do report emissions data. The most intense emitters, all with 11,182.12 tCO2e/$M, were Veolia Environnement, Ceske Energeticke Zavody and International Power – which was the only company with full, verified disclosure to rack up more than 6,000 tCO2e/$M.
In terms of transparency and verification, Spain and Italy rank highest, while Switzerland and France rank lowest, EIO said.
The EIO said the rankings can motivate companies to reduce their emissions. Mining company Randgold Resources previously came last in the ET U.K 100 Carbon Ranking for failing to disclose its emissions. The company has now begun reporting publicly, and moved off the bottom spot in the updated UK 100.
The EIO plans to roll out regional rankings for North America, Asia-Pacific and BRIC nations, as well as a global scorecard. It also says it will use the carbon rankings to create a series of real-time mainstream investment indices, with the UK 100 and Europe 300 due to be released as “live” indices in May.
