Top 5 companies for small carbon footprint

A machine-learn­ing analy­sis of the per­for­mance of 50,000 list­ed com­pa­nies against the UN’s 17 Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) has revealed the five that out­rank the rest. Results, from Lon­don-based AI start­up Util, pin­point the amount of rev­enue that aligns pos­i­tive­ly with the SDGs, offer­ing an objec­tive view of each company’s envi­ron­men­tal impact and respon­si­bil­i­ties towards cli­mate change

1. Tesla

With the largest total amount of rev­enue that pos­i­tive­ly aligns with Unit­ed Nations’ sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, elec­tric car giant Tes­la tops the list. After pop­u­lar­is­ing and glam­ouris­ing the idea of elec­tric car own­er­ship, the com­pa­ny has also branched out into domes­tic solar ener­gy, with its stock val­ue qua­dru­pling this year.

Accord­ing to Sta­tista, it is the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of elec­tric vehi­cles, tripling the num­ber sold from 2017 to 2019, with its Mod­el 3 the world’s best-sell­ing plug-in mod­el.

Yet as it pio­neers the move­ment towards main­stream use of clean ener­gy, Busi­ness in the Com­mu­ni­ty (BITC) envi­ron­ment direc­tor Gudrun Cartwright high­lights the need to phase renew­able gen­er­a­tion along­side the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of vehi­cles.

“In the UK, the Nation­al Grid sug­gests that if we elec­tri­fied all vehi­cles then we would need an extra 10 per cent of elec­tric­i­ty. Under­stand­ing how we can gen­er­ate that in a car­bon-neu­tral way is crit­i­cal if we are to make the most of the ben­e­fits of elec­tri­fi­ca­tion,” says Cartwright.

And as Util chief exec­u­tive Patrick Wood Uribe points out, Tes­la tops the list from an over­all rev­enue per­spec­tive, not by per­cent­age of total rev­enue. He acknowl­edges that it can be con­sid­ered to have a more sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact than oth­er busi­ness­es in the list with a larg­er per­cent­age, but it’s down to the influ­ence of scale on impact.

2. Vestas Wind Systems

With more than 117 gigawatts (GW) of wind tur­bines in 81 coun­tries, near­ly 20 per cent of the world’s 650GW of installed wind capac­i­ty, Ves­tas claims to have installed more wind pow­er than any oth­er provider.

Not only does it con­sid­er “spear­head­ing the renew­able ener­gy tran­si­tion” as cen­tral to its posi­tion­ing, a key goal is to become “the safest, most inclu­sive and social­ly respon­si­ble work­place in the ener­gy indus­try”. This includes its human rights due dili­gence frame­work, which it claims is unique to the renew­ables indus­try, requir­ing all projects to hold a social licence to oper­ate that can be revoked at any point.

This is cru­cial work to become a holis­ti­cal­ly respon­si­ble busi­ness, says BITC’s Cartwright, because one prod­uct doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly indi­cate a social­ly good com­pa­ny. “Clean ener­gy com­pa­nies are not excused from tack­ling these issues just because of their work else­where,” she says.

3. Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy

Like Ves­tas, Siemens Game­sa is a big play­er in the wind tur­bine busi­ness, present in 90 coun­tries. Most recent­ly and notably it has helped ease pow­er short­ages in Pak­istan by rolling out eight wind farms in one year, along­side launch­ing its Forests of Siemens Game­sa ini­tia­tive to plant 50,000 trees to extract more than one mil­lion kilo­grams of CO2 from the atmos­phere. The ini­tia­tive forms part of the company’s new social com­mit­ment strat­e­gy to reduce pover­ty and pro­mote STEM (sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and maths) edu­ca­tion, while improv­ing the envi­ron­ment.

Indeed, as BITC’s Cartwright says, the cli­mate cri­sis must be tack­led “in a way that cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple, builds resilience for com­mu­ni­ties and restores the health of nature”, areas she believes renew­able ener­gy com­pa­nies have a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to impact.

“Access to afford­able, reli­able ener­gy is crit­i­cal to tack­ling pover­ty, lack of social mobil­i­ty or chal­lenges to a good, sta­ble edu­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for women and girls,” says Cartwright. 

4. RusHydro (Federal Hydro Generating Co)

RusHy­dro is the lead­ing pro­duc­er of renew­able ener­gy in Rus­sia, with the country’s gov­ern­ment recent­ly boost­ing its stake as pri­ma­ry share­hold­er from 60.56 to 61.73 per cent. Its main goal is to be the dom­i­nant provider of hydro­elec­tric­i­ty in the Far East and its 2025 strat­e­gy estab­lish­es the company’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to sup­port the socio-eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment of these regions.

This is an impor­tant bal­ance to over­come the some­times neg­a­tive side of hyr­dro­elec­tric­i­ty devel­op­ment, says Dr Ale­jan­dro Gal­lego Schmid, lec­tur­er in cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and life-cycle sus­tain­abil­i­ty assess­ment at the Tyn­dall Cen­tre for Cli­mate Change Research, Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter.

“Hydropow­er is nor­mal­ly quite good from an envi­ron­men­tal per­spec­tive, but there have been a lot of socio-eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties asso­ci­at­ed with it. There are some cal­cu­la­tions that it has caused the dis­place­ment of com­mu­ni­ties of between 40 and 80 mil­lion of peo­ple and there has been bio­di­ver­si­ty loss,” he notes.

But with share­hold­ers hav­ing a size­able influ­ence on com­pa­ny direc­tion and deci­sions, could RusHydro’s own­er­ship be an area of con­cern, despite the anti-cor­rup­tion pol­i­cy it out­lines on its web­site?

“Com­pa­nies do what their share­hold­ers want,” says Gal­lego Schmid. “We have start­ed to see more NGOs part­ner­ing with clean ener­gy com­pa­nies to influ­ence them, so gov­ern­ments need to be par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive. While pro­vid­ing clean and safe ener­gy, they have to pro­tect people’s rights too.”

5. Verbund

Oper­at­ing 131 hydropow­er plants in Aus­tria and Ger­many, Ver­bund has also part­nered with steel­mak­ers voestalpine and Siemens to run the world’s largest pilot plant for car­bon-neu­tral pro­duc­tion of hydro­gen to be used in steel pro­duc­tion.

The pilot will show whether the tech­nol­o­gy can be used to replace fos­sil fuels on an indus­tri­al scale, accord­ing to Reuters, which reports that the com­pa­ny, 51 per cent owned by the Aus­tria gov­ern­ment, is push­ing for greater Euro­pean Union sec­tor reg­u­la­tion to jus­ti­fy a €5‑billion invest­ment in car­bon-emis­sion low­er­ing projects.

This is where con­sumer spend­ing pow­er comes into play, says the Uni­ver­si­ty of Manchester’s Gal­lego Schmid. “Sad­ly, pol­i­cy changes are nor­mal­ly reac­tive, as pol­i­cy­mak­ers are often reluc­tant to change the sta­tus quo if there’s no demand from cit­i­zens. As con­sumers, we have a real­ly impor­tant role to pres­sure pol­i­cy­mak­ers to change things,” he says.