Aviva calls for CDP to launch ‘Carbon Mitigation Project’

London, 8 October: The chairman of financial services group Aviva today called for the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) to move from disclosure to mitigation – a proposal which was met with an enthusiastic reception by the CDP’s chairman and chief executive.

“We need to go further,” said Colin Sharman, chairman of the world’s fifth largest insurance group, speaking at the London launch of two reports from the CDP. “The CDP should develop something like a ‘Carbon Mitigation Project’.”

Sharman added he had no specific recommendations for how such a ‘CMP’ might work, but believed that the idea “would bear study and consideration”. He later told Environmental Finance: “We don’t want to go on just measuring [emissions], we need to start reducing.” 

The CDP brings together investors representing more than $55 trillion in assets and writes in their name to thousands of the world’s largest companies, asking them to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and investment-relevant information about the climate change risks and opportunities they face.

The initiative has successfully attracted ever-greater numbers of investor signatories since its launch in 2000, and increasing levels of corporate climate change disclosure – with 95% of FTSE 100 companies and 51% of the world’s 500 largest listed companies responding to its latest information request.

However, the CDP’s signatories do not currently call upon companies to actually reduce their emissions – a situation some of its critics, staff and now signatory investors would like to change.

Paul Dickinson, CDP chief executive, told the conference that Sharman’s comments “would have lit a lot of lights in the organisation”, which has long discussed increasing the pressure on the companies it targets.

However, the CDP leadership and its trustees have felt that they should focus on the more consensual goal of seeking disclosure of financially-relevant information, rather than act as an advocacy group for emissions reductions.

However, its chairman, James Cameron, executive chairman of investment management company Climate Change Capital, agreed that “it may be time to accelerate down the path towards emission reduction targets,” noting that when it comes to climate change, “we are facing a ticking clock.”

Dickinson later told reporters that a CMP might involve “a vanguard group of investors to partner with the CDP to perhaps encourage companies to adopt emission reduction targets – or explain why they haven’t”.

He added that Aviva, which was one of the CDP’s first signatories, “is one of my largest investors – it felt a bit like I was being given some advice”. 

“Last year, the CDP operated on a budget of less than £2.6 million [$4.2 million] … if a commercial organisation, foundation or government granted me £1 million a year, I could resource this very easily,” he added.