Word: carbonic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...there's a problem. Despite the flurry of green boasts and sustainability reports, hard numbers on corporate environmental performance remain frustratingly difficult to find. Carbon neutral may be the reigning Oxford Dictionary term of the year, but too few companies can and do size up their carbon footprints accurately. "You have CEOs making commitments on carbon, but they haven't even measured anything yet," says Mike Wallace, a vice president at Trucost, an environmental-research firm based in London. "How can you be carbon neutral without any numbers...
Getting those numbers is not easy. For electric utilities, it might seem relatively straightforward to count the carbon burned through smokestacks, but even there, emissions need to be weighed against the size of a company and its plans for growth. For retailers with long and varied supply chains, it can be almost impossible to tell where a carbon footprint begins or ends...
...companies in the S&P 500 reported that their earnings had been affected by Hurricane Katrina--the kind of superstorm scientists believe will become more common as the globe warms. And as Washington finally begins to consider legislation that would cap greenhouse-gas emissions, companies that produce lots of carbon dioxide could be forced to purchase costly carbon offsets to meet the new regulations. These are material financial risks, the same as high oil prices or a falling currency, yet many U.S. corporations are entirely unprepared for them and could pay a steep price among both consumers and stockholders. "Climate...
...there to be carbon transparency, however, there first must be carbon measurement--and the field is still in its infancy. The big accounting firms are slowly entering the market, but for now carbon assessment is usually done either in-house--in which case investors should be wary of the numbers--or with the help of environmental consultants like Trucost, which does appear to have a more objective formula, factoring in such variables as overall emissions and annual revenue (see graphics...
Even Trucost doesn't pretend this is the only formula, and the market for carbon accounting will likely explode once companies realize they have no choice but to embrace openness. That will happen only when investors vote with their money, not just their mouths. The market forces that helped make the mess may then play a big part in cleaning...