Emissions targets of big brands fall short of Government’s Copenhagen goals

‘Brand Emissions’, commissioned by Marketing magazine and Brand Republic, looked at the carbon reporting of more than 600 of the UK’s biggest brands and identified just 121 of them as ‘Brand Emission Leaders’.

These are the companies that have set emissions reduction targets above the UK Government’s Climate Change Committee target of 1.7 per cent a year, are reducing emissions, and report their carbon emissions in compliance with accepted international standards.

The remaining 400 brands covered by the research are either increasing emissions, have targets weaker than the government target, or do not publish information on their carbon emissions.

The publishers of Brand Emissions intend it to provide an annual league table for the carbon reporting of major UK brands.

“For brands in the UK it is no longer enough to have a statement of intent on carbon reduction,” said Rachael Stilwell, publishing director, Marketing magazine. “Year-on-year the Brand Emissions survey will track progress against the Government’s goals. 

“With Copenhagen around the corner and the consumer agenda becoming ever more green these results will become an important reputational milestone for brands.”  

Among the organisations ‘named and shamed’ in this first report are Google and Burger King for being among the 250 brands for which the researchers found no carbon emissions information reported.

Under the Climate Change Act the Government must introduce mandatory reporting by 6 April 2012 (or explain to Parliament why it has not done so) and it is expected that large organisations will be the first required to comply.  

The Brand Emissions report suggests many have a lot of work to do in preparation for this new requirement, although it may be the case that some of these companies are active in their management of carbon emissions but currently choose not to report on this publicly. 

Of the companies that did report their emissions data, the report shows more than half (54 per cent) – including Barclays, Sky and Ebay – increased their emissions in 2008. 

Carbon reporting is clearly not synonymous with carbon reduction. Research published by Mintel last month looking at the carbon footprint of major retailers, highlighted the essential conflict between commercial expansion and reducing emissions. 

The analysis for the report, which was conducted by Edinburgh University Business School and the ENDS Carbon team, was based on data from the Carbon Disclosure Project (the largest carbon database in the world) a survey of company websites and reports.

“We had a technical partnership agreement with the Carbon Disclosure Project which allowed us access to their vast database,” explained Dermot Hikisch, who lead the research team at ENDS Carbon.

“This helped us locate the proper emissions data reported in the public domain and allowed us to verify the reporting boundaries for emissions were comparable across brands in the same sector.”

Asked how the report’s methodology compared with that of the Carbon Trust Standard (CTS), he said the Brand Emissions Criteria it was partly inspired by the CTS. “One key difference [...] is that our approach does not conduct any onsite visits. As a result, we will only rely on carbon information placed in the public domain, which is a good indicator of companies trying to be transparent and honest about their carbon performance.

“The Brand Emissions Criteria also goes to great lengths to assess the quality of reduction targets set by companies. For this year, we have set this threshold in line with the UK Government's climate change budget reduction level of 1.7 per cent.”

He added that brands that have received the Carbon Trust Standard have definitely proven their strong carbon management performance.