Investor group says lobbying 1,300 companies prompted sharp rise in responses
Carbon Action, an investor action group with $22 tn in assets under management, has helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 640 mn tons this year by lobbying more than 1,300 companies, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which helped organize the group.
In a presentation at the COP21 summit in Paris, the CDP says the group of investors also helped drive a 130 percent increase in the number of carbon-reduction projects, such as improved transportation use, the purchase and installation of low-carbon energy infrastructure, process emissions reductions and improvements in energy efficiency.
Carbon Action itself has grown to now include 304 investors from a base of 35 investors with $6.7 tn in assets under management when it was launched in 2011, CDP says in a press release.
The group ‒ which targets companies with requests to reduce emissions, has publicly announced emission-reduction targets and invests in emissions-reduction projects with a positive return ‒ includes Crédit Agricole, Calvert Investment Management, First Swedish National Pension Fund, Trillium Asset Management, and others.
The number of companies that responded to Carbon Action’s requests increased to 552, up 150 percent on last year, representing a six-fold increase since 2011, CDP says. Investments by companies targeted by Carbon Action rose 121 percent this year to $86 bn and emissions reductions achieved rose by 77 percent to 640 mn tons. But 23 percent of the companies targeted by Carbon Action requests had no emission targets as of this year, which CDP says is a ‘cause for concern’.
‘Next year we’ll be regrouping to capitalize on the CDP data cleaning announced today, globalize the Carbon Catalysts Group that oversees the initiative from among CDP’s growing membership, and align the 2017 Carbon Action requests with CDP’s new sector research notes,’ says Helen Wildsmith, strategic adviser to CDP’s investor initiatives team.
