The CAQ’s review of S&P 500 publicly available ESG disclosures as of June 18, 2021, revealed these key takeaways:
- 95% of companies publicly disclosed detailed ESG information – typically in a standalone ESG sustainability, corporate responsibility, or similar report.
- Most companies referenced at least one, and a majority of companies referenced multiple, of these frameworks and standards:
Some companies fully adopted their referenced framework(s) or standard(s), some adopted in part, and others used the framework(s) or standard(s) as a reference to inform their own disclosure approach.
- More than half of companies provided some form of assurance or verification, most commonly from an engineering or consulting firm and relating to GHG emissions.
- About 6% of companies obtained outside auditor assurance of some of their information – most commonly “limited” assurance (in lieu of “reasonable assurance”) over select information, with GHG and a select number of additional metrics being the most prevalent disclosures for which such assurance was provided.
See our prior report on the CAQ’s S&P 100 analysis: “S&P 100 ESG Disclosure Benchmarking” and additional resources on our Sustainability page.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!