The role of Earth Day is to bring awareness to core environmental issues facing us all, and to highlight the role businesses, individuals, communities and governments can collectively play to improve the world around us.
- The Refinitiv Environment Pillar Scores provides a measure on a company’s environmental performance.
- A variety of companies make the best performing list based on our Environment Pillar Score.
- European companies are leading the way for environmental disclosure and measurement.
In celebration of Earth Day 2019, we have looked at our ESG data in relation to how businesses, countries and industries are performing across environment metrics. Our Environment Pillar Score measures a company across different themes including resource use and protection, climate change and emissions, and product innovation. The scoring provides a holistic measure of their relative performance and impact on the environment and what they are doing to improve, manage risks and uncover opportunities.
Who’s leading the way?
Our analysis of companies against Refinitiv’s Environment Pillar Score metric showed that they belong to a variety of industries and locations which highlights that environmental leadership exists across sectors and regions.
The companies above are leading the way because they have comprehensive environmental policies, targets and positive performance that are embedded into their culture.
Industry view
We also looked at industries in relation to their aggregated environmental performance:
Whilst many would expect fossil fuel and resource heavy industries to perform poorly, surprisingly we see the Automobile sector as a top performer, alongside service focused firms. Will they continue to rise with the growth of hybrid and green vehicles?
The industries performing less well heavily use natural resources as part of their production. When looking at other metrics in Refinitiv’s ESG database, we see these industries are making efforts to reduce waste and recycle more which can have a positive impact on the scores for these industries in the years to come.
Europe leading the way
On a global scale, Europe is leading the charge for environmental disclosure and performance, thanks to leaders France, Spain, and Sweden. Regulation is a big driver for this and will only continue to increase as greenwashing comes under greater scrutiny.
We see that 7 of the top 10 performing countries are in Europe, but it may be worthwhile to note that powerhouses US and China are not present in the top 10, possibly negatively influenced by the lower degree of disclosure when compared to Europe.
Refinitiv’s role
Refinitiv’s ESG data and solutions are an incredible resource for both the investment community, looking to preserve capital and manage risk, and the corporates, looking to improve their environmental strategies and impact. Now more than ever, there is a greater focus on companies to ensure they are delivering against environmental goals, and investors to ensure they are investing in sustainable companies.
Our ESG data is crucial to helping customers fulfill their ESG mandates. Our data can be used to screen companies, can be incorporated into investment strategies and can be used as the basis of investment products/vehicles.
Visit our website to learn more about ESG Data from Refinitiv.
