Summary: Suppliers are now expected by some of their global customers to demonstrate greenhouse gas emissions management, awareness and action, in order to maintain business relationships, a Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) report shows.

The second annual CDP Supply Chain Report, produced by A.T. Kearney, summarizes climate change information from 710 suppliers.  Members, who include global customers, such as Dell, Juniper Networks, National Grid, PepsiCo and Reckitt Benckiser are requesting their suppliers to disclose data via the CDP Supply Chain program.  Although this report shows significant improvement in best practices over last year’s results, suppliers still have a long way to go.

The 44 CDP Supply Chain member companies (see below) are leading in carbon management within their own businesses and expecting their suppliers to demonstrate strong carbon management strategies too:

• 89% of CDP Supply Chain members have an established strategy to engage with suppliers on carbon related issues.
• 91% of members have a board level executive responsible for climate change, compared to 80% within the Global 500 constituents.
• 90% have an emissions or energy reduction plan in place, compared to 51% in the Global 500.

The majority of CDP Supply Chain members (56%) have also stated they actually expect to deselect some suppliers in the future for failing to meet carbon management criteria set by the companies. This is an increase from just 6% of members who would deselect suppliers today for failure to manage carbon. Some also indicate that they intend to develop contracts which require improved carbon management.

Participating companies include:

Acer, BAE Systems, Bank of America, Baxter International, Cadbury, Carrefour, Colgate-Palmolive Company, ConAgra Foods, Dell, EMC Corporation, ENEL, FIJI Water, GlaxoSmithKline, Google, H.J. Heinz Company, HP, IBM, Imperial Tobacco Group, Johnson & Johnson, Johnson Controls, Juniper Networks, Kao, L’Oréal, Logica, National Australia Group, Europe, National Grid, Newmont Mining Corporation, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble Company, Reckitt Benckiser, Royal Mail Group, Sony Corporation, Unilever, Vivendi, Vodafone Group.

Date Released: February 1, 2010

More Information: The full report is available at https://www.cdproject.net/CDPResults/CDP-Supply-Chain-Report_2010.pdf

Prepared by: This message was distributed by Kellen Mahoney, who may be reached at e-mail: kmahoney@eetnews.com