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Salesforce and Google: rising stars in S&P 500 Carbon Survey

The Carbon Disclosure Project S&P 500 survey results are released on Tuesday and while Cisco leads the real story is Google and Salesforce's rapid climb up the rankings. Yahoo! trails at the back of the pack, HP out performs Dell and Apple just ignores the whole thing.
Written by James Farrar, Contributor

The Carbon Disclosure Project on Tuesday releases the results of it's annual survey of carbon emissions of S&P 500 companies carried out on behalf of 551 institutional investors carrying $71 trillion in assets. The survey ranks companies according to the quality of the disclosure and performance towards reducing emissions.

Cisco takes the top spot but the real story is the arrival of Google and Salesforce on to the scene. Google improved its disclosure score from 44% last year to 89% this year while Salesforce participated for the first time this year and scored an impressive 85% on disclosure quality. However, while Google scored an A- for performance against strategy Salesforce scored a middle ranking C. But both companies were amongst only seven companies out of the seventy five analysed who took the trouble to have their carbon data independently assured and this alone signals serious intent to manage sustainability in a serious way going forward.

The other company worthy of a mention in the despatches is HP who improved their disclosure score eighteen points over last year & ranked a B for performance - proof enough that sustainability management systems are alive and well. Dell, in comparison, scored 72% for disclosure and a C for performance.

At the other end of the spectrum Yahoo! scored just 36% in disclosure quality meaning that the data quality was considered too poor to rank performance. Apple again declined to disclose its carbon emissions.

For more analysis and background as well as the global IT & telco industry perspective see also:

Following is a list of responders ranked by disclosure quality and performance. (click for better viewing)

 

And following is a list of companies whose disclosure was of low quality and therefore performance could not be determined. Also a list of firms who did not respond or declined to participate. (click for better viewing)

Disclosure: I am employed by SAP who is a partner with CDP and a survey participant. As always, views are my own only. Please see my bio.

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