On Wednesday last, many news establishments diligently reproduced a press release announcing Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) as the first Indian company to partner with the Global Goals Campaign that aims to reach seven billion people in seven days with news of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Among other things, this campaign seeks to tackle climate change for everyone by 2030.
What went unnoticed, however, was that this news came just a few days after RIL figured miserably in the findings of a study that looked at how the 100 largest global industrial companies are dealing with climate change issues. Not only did RIL figure in the bottom rung, its scores indicated that the group has an “obstructionist behaviour” towards climate change legislations. The three other organisations figuring in the bottom F group were Duke Energy, Phillips 86 and Koch Industries.
The F category of corporations scored 40% or less in the scoring system developed by London-based non-profit InfluenceMap. The ranking, created in collaboration with Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy organisation based in Cambridge, US, was meant to look at corporate influence over the climate change debate and policy process that have been repeatedly cited as a key reason for the relatively slow progress of both the UN COP process and national-level climate legislations.
The study remarked on Reliance Industries: “Reliance Industries appear to have very limited engagement with climate change policy. They reportedly support increased exploitation of shale gas, which appears to be at odds with their apparent concern to transition their own operations. Their ranking is reduced by the lack of transparency about any engagement with climate change policy. It is further reduced through their membership of the American Chemistry Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry, which appear to be negatively engaged with some areas of climate legislation.”
The press release announcing RIL’s partnership with Global Goals had waxed eloquent on how it would raise awareness about the Global Goals for Sustainable Development to “as many Indians as possible,” but a look at the scoring matrix developed by InfluenceMap showed that RIL could not even score on most parameters, and secured negative points on many counts. The study evaluated companies based on 12 climate change criteria across eight different data sources.
This news about RIL’s ranking went virtually unreported despite the fact that it was the only Indian corporate group to figure in the rankings. Moreover, its transparency and performance indicators on climate change issues showed an apparently obstructionist behaviour.
The study, in fact, found that 45% of the 100 largest global industrial companies are obstructing climate change legislation, while 95% of these companies are members of trade associations demonstrating the same obstructionist behaviour. No company scored above the B performance band.
“Unilever received the highest organisational score at 94%, which indicates strong and proactive support for low-carbon policies and regulations. However, its membership of trade associations that have opposed climate change regulations (such as CEFIC) places it in a lower performance band than its organisational score would suggest. Tech giants Google and Cisco Systems make up our current top three in terms of overall score,” the researchers said on the InfluenceMap website.
Reliance Industries was found to be considerably opaque about climate change. The researchers commented, “InfluenceMap has not been able to find any evidence on their positions towards, or engagement with, climate change policy.” RIL scored 16% on its organisational score which represented the degree to which the organisation influences climate policy and legislation.
It managed to score only 10% in engagement intensity (EI), a metric meant to ascertain whether a company is engaging on climate change policy matters. Since energy companies are more affected by climate regulations and would tend to have a higher EI, InfluenceMap gave such companies the benefit of the doubt, “An EI of more than 35 indicates a relatively large amount of climate policy engagement.”
The only other Indian entity to figure in the list was the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which figured in the C- performance band with a 55% organisational score. CII, however, performed miserably on EI with just 19%. The InfluenceMap comment was: “The CII does not appear to be transparent about its relatively active engagement with climate policy.”
InfluenceMap's research found that despite their public communications, few corporations have actually supported the progressive climate policies being proposed by governments globally. There is also a lack of transparency around their relationships with trade associations, with few companies willing to publicly challenge them despite clear misalignment between their climate positions and the actions of the associations. The new InfluenceMap tool seeks “to present investors with a quantitative corporate ranking on climate influence so they can, within a sector, distinguish the progressive from the obstructive corporations in this area.”
