NAMED AND SHAMED: The 25 Aussie companies failing at climate change

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – NOVEMBER 30: Students gather to demand the government take action on climate change with the attendance of their parents and teachers in Melbourne, Australia on November 30, 2018. Thousands of students around the country skipped school to protest and demand their politicians act urgently to stop further dangerous climate change. (Photo by Recep Sakar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Last year saw a number of investors exercise their shareholder power to make big companies rethink their approach to climate and energy policy.

Westpac, for example, was forced to back down and re-examine the impact that lobby groups like the Business Council of Australia were having on its approach to climate policy.

But not all companies have caught up.

While most of Australia’s heavyweights have explicitly come out and acknowledged climate change, reviewed risks and readjusted business practices, some companies still have their heads buried in the sand.

“Investor engagement and regulator rhetoric are failing to ensure robust climate risk disclosure, let alone effective climate risk management,” said Market Forces analyst Will van de Pol.

Environmental finance group Market Forces analysed publicly available disclosure documents of Australia’s top companies (such as annual reports, sustainability reports, investor presentations, and CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) responses) that operate in sectors that face the highest climate risks in order to determine how much the firms have acted on these risks.

In order to be considered by Market Forces as “accepting the science of climate change”, it’s not enough for companies to just mention the words ‘climate change.

Companies have to “unequivocally acknowledge the aims of the Paris Agreement,” or “the need to decarbonise by the second half of the century”.

According to Market Forces’ latest report, which covers 72 ASX100 firms, these are the major ASX100 companies that haven’t acted on the science of climate change (as at 31 December 2018):

1. Coles

2. ASX Limited

3. The A2 Milk Company

4. Evolution Mining

5. Qube Holdings

6. CYBG Plc

7. Oz Minerals

But it doesn’t mean that the other 93 ASX100 companies have acted in response to climate risks without a shadow of a doubt. These 18 companies have been exposed for using “unclear language”:

1. Goodman Group

2. Newcrest Mining

3. QBE Insurance Group

4. Treasury Wine Estates

5. James Hardie Industries

6. Alumina

7. Challenger

8. Ausnet Services

9. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank

10. Northern Star Resources

11. Atlas Arteria

12. Whitehaven Coal

13. Bank of Queensland

14. Spark Infrastructure

15. Adelaide Brighton

16. Iluka Resources

17. IOOF Holdings

18. Janus Henderson

Progress on climate risk disclosure across the Australian business landscape has been “glacial”, van de Pol said.

Businesses that fail to disclose their climate-related financial risks will become “uninvestable”, he warned.

When compared to the rest of the world, Australia has something of an atrocious track record when it comes to climate protection performance.

According to the latest Climate Change Performance Index, our nation ranks an abysmal 55th out of 60 countries.

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