Record number of firms sharing their impact through global climate platform

A record number of companies have shared their environmental impact with a global climate platform in the wake of unprecedented temperatures this year.

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a non-profit organisation to which companies can voluntarily disclose information on their climate performance, said 1,800 UK companies, including 94% of the FTSE 100, have shared this data in 2023.

This comes as a 25% increase since 2022 as the trend towards corporate transparency continues to grow, the CDP said.

UK companies sharing their data for the first time this year included The Body Shop, The City of London Corporation, Highland Spring and Hollywood Bowl Group.

However, the CPD criticised Southern Water, Boohoo.com, Clarion Housing Group and Eddie Stobart Logistics, saying they were among the 735 who did not share their impact with the platform despite requests from investors or buyers to do so.

More widely, the project also saw a record 23,293 companies globally disclosing their impact to the CDP in 2023, including listed companies worth over two thirds of market capitalisation.

The US, China, Japan, UK and Germany lead the way as home to the most disclosing companies while South Korea and Cambodia more than doubled their number, the data showed.

However, the CDP said only 1% of companies worldwide reported on all three areas, climate change, water security and deforestation, underlining the need to enable better disclosure on nature.

The organisation says information obtained from its disclosure system is essential to tracking progress between the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5C and the first Global Stocktake, which is set to conclude at Cop28 this November.

“To take decisive action for the future of our planet, we need organisations to be measuring and managing where they are on their sustainability journey through disclosure.

“Without data we lack accountability.

“This accountability is vital and timely especially ahead of Cop28 in Dubai which will deliver the first Global Stocktake.”

The latest figures from the CDP come ahead of the Sustainability Disclosure Standards being launched in the UK next year, setting set a baseline for companies to report on sustainability and climate-related risks.

The CDP is integrating the new International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) global standards in its own reporting framework from 2024 while working to align it with the new Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures standard which was launched last month.

Ms Madera said: “UK companies sharing data through CDP will have the tools to navigate an expanding global landscape of mandatory disclosure.

“As the demand for sustainability data becomes increasingly intense and complicated for organisations to negotiate, we have the expertise to prepare organisations, large and small, to meet the needs of their stakeholders.

“These stakeholders also include their investors, customers, value chain, partners and employees.”

Michelle Papayannakos, BBC Group senior sustainability manager said: “CDP has really helped the BBC to engage internally on climate change, increasing our maturity as an organisation and providing a robust valuation of our current activities.

“CDP is also a core part of our decarbonisation strategy for our supply chain, asking our top 450 suppliers to also disclose has enhanced engagement, transparency of data and most importantly, led to a ripple effect of development and action on climate change.”

A spokesperson for Clarion Housing Group said: “We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint and cutting energy bills for our residents.

“We regularly engage with our investors to understand the most valuable methods of disclosing sustainability data.

“This feedback shapes our disclosures of sustainability data, including through our own annual report which sets out our performance against a range of environmental, social and governance (ESG) measures.

“We will publish an external climate transition plan in the next 12 months and will continue to be transparent in declaring our targets and how we intend to reach them.”