Read on Twitter
Which businesses are the world& #39;s biggest polluters?
Disclosure on this subject is still patchy, so we went through dozens of annual reports to show the 63 companies that account for 2/3 of the world& #39;s fossil fuel emissions:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-opinion-climate-global-biggest-polluters-scope-3-emissions-disclosures/?sref=5JzLFdzD">https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/...
Disclosure on this subject is still patchy, so we went through dozens of annual reports to show the 63 companies that account for 2/3 of the world& #39;s fossil fuel emissions:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-opinion-climate-global-biggest-polluters-scope-3-emissions-disclosures/?sref=5JzLFdzD">https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/...
These are so-called Scope 3 emissions, and for mining and petroleum companies they& #39;re the vast majority of their emissions -- the CO2 that enters the atmosphere when their products are used.
But measuring them is an emerging and inexact field.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-14/zero-emissions-targets-challenge-miners-oil-majors?sref=5JzLFdzD">https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...
But measuring them is an emerging and inexact field.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-14/zero-emissions-targets-challenge-miners-oil-majors?sref=5JzLFdzD">https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...
To take one recent example of how companies are just getting to grips with this data, Campbell& #39;s Soup recently claimed in their disclosures to account for ~14% of the world& #39;s carbon emissions. They& #39;d got the number out by a factor of 1,000: https://twitter.com/davidfickling/status/1299169230454059008">https://twitter.com/davidfick...
And some companies just don& #39;t report the numbers at all.
Exxon Mobil gives a wordy explanation that they don& #39;t report Scope 3 because it& #39;s none of their business whether their customers burn their petroleum or, I dunno, bathe in it?
https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/Global/Files/energy-and-carbon-summary/Energy-and-carbon-summary.pdf">https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/G...
Exxon Mobil gives a wordy explanation that they don& #39;t report Scope 3 because it& #39;s none of their business whether their customers burn their petroleum or, I dunno, bathe in it?
https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/Global/Files/energy-and-carbon-summary/Energy-and-carbon-summary.pdf">https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/G...
They can save some words in the next report because we& #39;ve done the numbers. The figure is roughly 528 million tons of CO2-equivalent, more or less the emissions of Indonesia or Mexico.
Mining companies are also a large, and underappreciated source of emissions -- with iron ore arguably a bigger deal than coal, at least among listed companies:
The biggest figures are the titans of coal, oil, and gas -- Coal India, Saudi Aramco, and Gazprom -- each accounting for a Japan-sized carbon footprint of more than 1bn tonnes of CO2 per year:
And let& #39;s not forget the unlisted national oil companies, which account for a huge slice of emissions but mostly don& #39;t report Scope 3, or financial data or even production numbers (we estimated their numbers based on BP& #39;s Statistical Review of Energy):
The key thing to remember is that these numbers aren& #39;t actually all that hard to calculate using standard emissions factors and production data.
Most of our numbers are pretty close to the company-reported data even though we used a very basic spreadsheet model.
Most of our numbers are pretty close to the company-reported data even though we used a very basic spreadsheet model.
So companies shouldn& #39;t hide the figures. As always in finance, failure to publicize risks doesn& #39;t make the risks go away. Shareholders and lenders need to demand better disclosure, so that they know the risks they& #39;re taking on. (ends) https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-opinion-climate-global-biggest-polluters-scope-3-emissions-disclosures/?sref=5JzLFdzD">https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/...
