Blue Chip firms wait on politicians to deliver carbon targets

More businesses than ever before are reporting publicly on their carbon footprint, but bosses are still reluctant to set ambitious medium to long-term emission targets until world leaders deliver an international agreement to replace the Kyoto Treaty when it expires in 2012.

That is the conclusion of the latest report from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the investor-backed lobby group which requests that firms report publicly on their carbon emissions and climate change strategies.

Its annual survey of the world's largest 500 companies, which was released at an event in New York to mark the start of the city's climate week, found that 82 per cent of businesses responded to requests for information, up from 77 per cent last year. Moreover, 83 per cent of those respondents provided detailed data on their carbon footprint and climate change strategy.

However, the study revealed that relatively few firms had set medium to long-term emission reduction targets. Only 51 per cent of the companies surveyed currently have emissions targets, while just 36 per cent of firms have a target that goes beyond 2012.

The report comes just weeks after a separate CDP study revealed that current corporate emissions targets were lagging well behind what climate scientists say will be required to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, CDP chief executive Paul Dickinson said that businesses were waiting for world leaders to agree an international climate change deal at the UN's forthcoming Copenhagen talks before setting themselves longer-term emission targets.

"Only 36 per cent have a target that goes beyond 2012, but that is a direct consequence of the world's governments having not yet reached a deal on Copenhagen," he said. "Businesses require governments to send them a signal – they can't operate in a legislative vacuum."

However, he added that the growing number of companies reporting to the CDP suggested that they were taking climate change seriously and were putting in place the reporting mechanisms that will provide the foundation for future action to curb emissions. "There are still some big companies like America Movil, PetroChina and Philip Morris who are not responding, which is a cause for concern," he said. "But overall the number responding is up to 83 per cent and we now have reports from 1,850 different firms available on our website."

The new report was accompanied by the launch of a pilot initiative designed to assess how successfully firms are executing against their climate change strategies. Dickinson said the new performance scoring initiative would undertake a more detailed assessment of firms' efforts to cut carbon emissions and provide investors with information on which firms are making good on their climate change strategies.