Roche, Con Edison and Mackies scoop FT/Citi awards

London, 20 September: Hoffman la Roche, Consolidated Edison and Scottish ice cream company Mackies were named yesterday as the winners of the inaugural FT / Citi Private Bank environmental awards.

Swiss healthcare giant Roche was the winner among large-cap European companies and was also named the global winner, Con Edison was the leading large-cap entry from the Americas, and Mackies was the winner among European small and medium-sized companies.

The intention of the awards was to recognise the “greatest improvement in carbon efficiency” by small/medium and large companies in three regions: the Americas; Europe, Middle East and Africa; and Asia Pacific.

However, the judges said the Asia-Pacific region submitted “too few entries to usefully compare results”. They also noted that American entries were dominated by large companies and made no award for small/medium companies in this region.

Roche achieved a 31% improvement in its carbon efficiency between 2005 and 2006, with an absolute reduction of 19% – or 120,000 tonnes – in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Carbon efficiency is defined as the companies’ direct emissions (in tonnes of CO2) per unit of turnover. Since 1996, the company claims to have increased its carbon efficiency by more than 70%.

US energy company Con Edison, over the same period, managed an efficiency improvement of 20% and an absolute reduction in direct emissions of 17%, or 1.3 million tonnes.

Mackies has installed three wind turbines on its Aberdeenshire farm to meet all its electricity needs and sells the surplus to renewable energy supplier Good Energy. This means it improved its carbon efficiency by almost 70% and its absolute emissions by 66%.

Technical support for the judges was provided by Trucost, which provides quantitative research on environmental impacts.