Carbon Disclosure Project releases its Canada 2011 report today at the Toronto Stock Exchange. More Canadian companies than ever publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions. Contrary to the common belief that going green slows growth, businesses who take the lead into a low carbon economy delivered twice the financial return compared to their peers.
Unilever is the top Food & Beverage company on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Through Bullfrog Power, Unilever recently became the largest commercial purchaser of renewable energy in Canada at 59,000 MWh per year. What is Unilever’s sustainability strategy and why do they do it? To find out, I took a tour of their Brampton plant and talked to John Coyne, Vice President and General Counsel of Unilever Canada.
Would a BP style disaster happen to a company you invest in? That’s a question increasingly asked by Canadian investors. A range of proposals and resolutions has been filed in the past two years by shareholders to management of Canadian companies in various industries. What do shareholders want? How does management respond? What are the trends? Let’s take a look.
Canadian luxury hotel giant Fairmont partners with World Wildlife Fund Canada to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. We look at how Fairmont Waterfront, Chateau Lake Louise, Château Laurier, and Château Montebello implement their climate change projects in solar, hydro, wind, lighting retrofit and heat recovery, with project costs between $15,000 to half a million and payback time between 2 to 5 years. Future savings after payback could be very substantial.
Eighty-two percent of Canadian executives believe that a response to climate change is imperative today and plan immediate increases on spending for climate change initiatives, according to the new report Action Amid Uncertainty: The Business Response To Climate Change, based on a survey from Ernst & Young. Read this post on what Canadian companies are doing and what their future plans are for climate change, sustainability, and environmental initiatives.