News | Energy Efficiency

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-25/climate-spending-rises-at-biggest-companies-ernst-young-says.html

(Bloomberg) -- Seven in 10 of the world’s biggest companies plan to increase their spending on programs to fight climate change, the accounting firm Ernst & Young said.

Nearly 50 percent of executives surveyed at 300 businesses, from airlines and banks to chemical makers, said they intend to spend at least 0.5 percent of revenue on measures such as energy efficiency, the firm said today in an e-mailed study. Almost 90 percent said they were driven to act by customer demand.
The results show businesses around the world took steps to slow climate change even as the economy contracted and United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen last December failed to produce a treaty, the report said.
“With all the uncertainty following Copenhagen, many business commentators were expecting the momentum in climate change investments to slow,” Doug Johnston, the firm’s U.K. director of climate change and sustainability, said in a statement. “Our research has shown something very different.”
The companies, based in 16 countries including the U.S. and China and with annual revenue of $1 billion or more, weren’t named. More than four in five said they intend to invest in energy efficiency over the next year, and 65 percent plan to develop new products and services relating to global warming.
At 36 percent of the companies, the chief executive officer was responsible for climate change measures, according to the study. At 63 percent of the companies, executives planned to increase the transparency of their reporting on environmental performance such as energy use and carbon emissions.
“Market drivers such as equity analysts’ growing interest in climate change performance and consumer demands are all requiring further clarity in climate-change related business plans and disclosures,” Johnston said.