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A new carbon ranking of BRICS nations could provide a wake up call for levels of transparency within Indian firms when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.
The Environmental Investment Organisation (EIO), a UK-based non-profit organisation, places firms into one of four categories based on their disclosure and verification mechanisms for carbon emissions, and then ranks them by their carbon intensity to create an overall ranking system.
It will publish its rankings of the BRICS 300 – Brazil, Russia, India China and South Africa – along with Asia Pacific and North American data on Tuesday morning UK time. The first European and British rankings were released earlier this year.
Business Line gained advanced access to the BRICS 300 ranking, which reveals few Indian firms making it into the categories of highest disclosure, providing complete verified data on their greenhouse-gas emissions.
Twelve South African firms make it into the highest level of disclosure, including miner Gold Field, which tops the list. There are 13 Brazilian firms in the top category, including miner Vale and energy firm Petrobras.
By contrast just four Indian firms make it into the highest disclosure level, with Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC) coming in 5th overall, and Larsen & Toubro in twelfth position. Bharat Petroleum and Reliance Industries also make it into the top category, with Tata Power the highest Indian firm in the second highest transparency and verification category. (On the up side, three Hong Kong-based firms but no Russia-based firms are in the top category.)
Thirty-eight Indian firms fall into the lowest category of the BRICS 300, where no public data was available.
The carbon rankings are the first step in EIO's plans to inject greater transparency into the carbon footprints of companies, encouraging companies to clean up their act.
The firm has already launched an environmental tracking index in Europe, based on the rankings and hopes to launch a similar BRICS index in the next few months.
“The overarching objective is to provide the investment community with a mainstream tool to incentivise the world's largest companies to improve their levels of disclosure,” says Sam Gill, operational director at the EIO.
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