Corporate Governance and Climate Change: Making the Connection
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Corporate Governance and Climate Change: Making the Connection Authored by A Publication of Douglas G. Cogan March 2006 Ceres commissioned this report from the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC). Ceres is a national coalition of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a group of more than 50 institutional investors from the U.S. and Europe managing nearly $3 trillion in assets. IRRC is a research firm that has been a leading source of high quality, impartial information on corporate governance and social responsibility issues affecting investors and corporations since 1972. IRRC was acquired by Institutional Shareholder Services in August 2005. IRRC wrote and prepared this report for informational purposes. Although IRRC exercised due care in compiling the information contained herein, IRRC makes no warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of the information, nor does it assume, and expressly disclaims, any liability arising out of the use of this information by any party. The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not constitute an endorsement by IRRC or Institutional Shareholder Services. Changing circumstances may cause this information to be obsolete. This report was made possible through grants from the Energy Foundation, the Henry P. Kendall Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the United Nations Foundation/Better World Fund, and the Wallace Global Fund. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors. The author wishes to thank Peter DeSimone, Sol Kwon and Susan Williams of the Investor Responsibility Research Center for their critical role in conducting primary research on the companies profiled in this report. The author also wishes to thank Heidi Welsh of IRRC for her help in building a database to manage this flow of information. This report could not have been completed without their efforts. The author also wishes to thank Dan Bakal, Debra Hall and Andrew Logan of Ceres, who reviewed company profiles and provided valuable insight and information. The author also wishes to thank Carolyn Mathiasen of IRRC, Jim Coburn and Dan Mullen of Ceres, as well as Miranda Anderson of David Gardiner and Associates, who reviewed drafts of this summary report and provided helpful editing suggestions. The author wishes to thank Christopher Clark of Cave Dog Studio, for his instrumental role in preparaing the final report, which required patience and perseverance. Finally, the author wishes to thank Peyton Fleming of Ceres, who helped manage this project from beginning to end. His contributions are reflected throughout this report, for which the author is especially grateful. Copyright 2006 by Ceres Copyrighted IRRC material used with permission by Ceres Ceres, Inc. 99 Chauncy Street Boston, MA 02111 www.ceres.org Investor Responsibility Research Center, Inc. 1350 Connecticut Ave., NW Washington, DC 20036 www.irrc.com Contents Click on section titles below to hyperlink to actual content. Hyperlinks also available on company scores table (page 4). Foreword by Mindy Lubber, Ceres President v Executive Summary 1 How Companies are Scored 3 100 Company Scores 4 Climate Change: A Growing Sense of Urgency 7 Climate Change and Corporate Governance: Making the Connection 11 Why Companies Must Act Now 11 What CEOs Are Saying 14 What Companies Should Do 14 Investor Actions 15 How Companies were Selected for this Report 17 How Companies Are Scored 19 High Scoring Industries 20 Middle Scoring Industries 22 Low Scoring Industries 23 Company Scores (by Industry) 25 Appendix: Profiles of 100 Companies Chemicals Air Products & Chemicals Inc. 32 BASF AG 35 Bayer AG 38 Dow Chemical Co. 41 DuPont (EI) de Nemours 44 Imperial Chemical Industries PLC (ICI) 47 Monsanto Company 50 PPG Industries Inc 53 Praxair Inc. 55 Rohm and Haas Co. 58 Electric Utilities American Electric Power Co. Inc. 62 AES Corporation 65 Calpine Corp. 67 Cinergy Corp. 70 Constellation Energy Group Inc. 73 Dominion Resources Inc. 75 DTE Energy Co. 78 Duke Energy Corp. 81 Edison International 84 Corporate Governance & Climate Change Contents Entergy Corp. 87 Exelon Corp. 90 FirstEnergy Corp. 93 FPL Group Inc. 96 PG&E Corp. 99 Progress Energy Inc. 102 Sempra Energy 105 Southern Company 108 TXU Corp. 111 Xcel Energy Inc. 114 Motor Vehicles BMW (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG) 118 DaimlerChrysler AG 120 Ford Motor Co. 123 General Motors Corp. 126 Honda Motor Co. 129 Nissan Motor Co Ltd. 132 Toyota Motor Corp. 135 Volkswagen AG 138 Industrial Equipment ABB Ltd. 142 Caterpillar Inc. 145 Deere & Co. 147 General Electric Co. 149 Hitachi Ltd. 152 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. 155 Siemens AG 157 United Technologies Corp. 160 Metals & Mining Alcan Inc. 164 Alcoa Inc. 167 Anglo American PLC 170 BHP Billiton Ltd. 173 Mittal Steel Company NV 176 Newmont Mining Corp. 178 Nippon Steel 180 Nucor Corp. 183 Phelps Dodge Corp. 185 United States Steel Corp. 187 Forest Products Abitibi-Consolidated 190 Georgia-Pacific Corp. 192 International Paper Co. 194 MeadWestvaco Corp. 196 Weyerhaeuser Co. 198 Corporate Governance & Climate Change Contents Petroleum Amerada Hess Corp. 202 Anadarko Petroleum Corporation 204 Apache Corp. 207 BP PLC 209 Burlington Resources Inc. 212 Chevron Corp. 214 ConocoPhillips 217 Devon Energy Corp. 220 El Paso Corp. 222 Exxon Mobil Corp. 224 Marathon Oil Corp. 227 Murphy Oil Corp 229 Occidental Petroleum Corp. 231 Royal Dutch Shell plc 233 Statoil Asa 236 Sunoco Inc. 239 Tesoro Corp. 241 Total SA 243 Valero Energy Corp. 246 Valero Energy Corp. 247 Williams Companies Inc. 248 Coal Arch Coal Inc. 250 CONSOL Energy Inc. 252 Foundation Coal Holdings Inc. 254 Peabody Energy Corp. 256 Rio Tinto PLC 258 Food Production Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. 262 Altria Group Inc. 264 Bunge Ltd. 266 ConAgra Foods Inc. 267 General Mills Inc. 268 Nestlé SA 270 PepsiCo Inc. 272 Unilever PLC 274 Airlines Air France-KLM Group 278 AMR Corp. 280 British Airways 282 FedEx Corp. 285 Southwest Airlines 287 UAL Corp. 288 United Parcel Service Inc. 289 Corporate Governance & Climate Change Foreword Companies and investors can no longer afford to ignore global warming. A preponderance of evidence shows that worldwide temperatures are rising, glaciers are melting and hurricanes are becoming more fierce. This confluence of events is forcing governments worldwide to enact limits on the pollutants that are trapping heat in the atmosphere. These trends present enormous risks and opportunities for companies and investors. With the launch of the Kyoto Protocol and expanding greenhouse gas limits, power companies and other energy-intensive businesses face growing risks from the energy they use and how efficiently they use it. Companies also face risks from direct physical impacts, including stronger and more frequent storms, droughts, floods and sea level rise. In turn, forward-thinking companies that fine-tune their operations and develop new climate-friendly products can prosper from climate change. This report is the first comprehensive measurement of how 100 leading global companies are preparing and positioning themselves to face these challenges. It pays particular attention to the job that corporate executives and board members are doing to enact well-functioning governance systems to face the climate challenge. The report employs a “Climate Change Governance Checklist” to evaluate how 76 U.S. and 24 non-U.S. companies are addressing climate change through board oversight, management performance, public disclosure, emissions accounting and strategic planning. The results are encouraging. In 2003, Ceres released a report on 20 companies showing that major U.S. businesses were largely ignoring these issues. By contrast, this report shows that corporate leaders in many key industries are now facing the challenge head-on—companies such as DuPont, Cinergy, American Electric Power and General Electric, which earned the highest scores in their respective industries. Yet for all of the positive momentum in elevating climate as a governance priority, most American companies lag behind their international peers—a trend that is already resulting in competitive advantages for overseas companies developing low-carbon technologies in the auto and power sectors. No less worrisome, dozens of U.S. businesses in various climate-vulnerable sectors—including power, oil and gas, coal, air transportation and food products—are ignoring the issue with ‘business as usual’ responses that are putting their companies, and their shareholders, at risk. This report is a valuable tool for company executives, board members, investors and Wall Street analysts. Here’s how each group should use it: • Company executives should evaluate their own company’s performance relative to their particular set of circumstances and their industry peers. If their governance scores fall short, they should pursue the four key steps to manage climate risks and opportunities outlined later in this report. • Board members at low-scoring companies should address the issue with management and begin educating themselves on the business and financial dimensions of this issue. • Investors should evaluate how companies score relative to their industry peers—especially in high-risk sectors such as electric power, oil/gas and the auto industry—and should engage with poor corporate performers. • Wall Street analysts should use the information in this report as a basis for rewarding companies that are responding to these challenges, and assigning risk to those that are not. Tackling these issues is an enormous challenge. It requires that corporate leaders deliver short-term financial returns while also building capacity for the challenges that climate change presents in the long term. Companies such as GE and DuPont have stepped up to the challenge, but many other U.S. companies have not. There’s simply too much at stake for that not to change. Mindy S.