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The following is part of a series by our friends at CSRHub (a 3p sponsor) - offering free sustainability and corporate social responsibility ratings on over 5,000 of the world’s largest publicly traded companies. 3p readers get 40% off CSRHub's professional subscriptions with promo code “TP40“.
By Bahar Gidwani
Our friends at Climate Counts have just released their 2011 Scorecard. It is the fifth time they've reviewed the climate and environmental performance of leading corporations—they scored 136 companies this year on a number of different climate-related measures.
Climate Counts has earned wide respect for its careful and thoughtful measurement approach. When we started setting up our CSRHub database, they were one of the first groups we reached out to for advice, and their approach to measuring climate performance had a big impact on our methodology. We showcase their 2010 data on our site and were able to incorporate their information into 117 of our ratings in 2010. It looks like we’ll be able to use their data to help us rate 119 companies, this year. (Climate Counts rates some private companies—including some in special interest areas such as baby equipment.)
We took a quick look at how well our scores match up with the new Climate Count scores. We currently have 457 different environment-area measurements from 53 of our sources. They contribute 1.2 million data points to our environment category ratings. (We have a total of 7.5 million data elements in our system, from about 135 sources). We were pleased to see a very strong 75% correlation between our Environment category rating (which includes resource management, environmental reporting, and climate change performance) and the Climate Counts score (which includes data on whether or not a company reviews its climate position, commits to reduce its climate effect, has an appropriate policy, and reports its policy).
We rarely see more than a 25% or 35% correlation between our scores and any single source of data. The strong relationship continues even when we drop down a level of detail and compare a subscore like the Climate Counts “REPORT” rating to our “Environmental Transparency & Reporting.”
We plan to offer more analysis of this update to one of our most-trusted data sources, in a future blog post.
Bahar Gidwani is a Cofounder and CEO of CSRHub. Formerly, he was the CEO of New York-based Index Stock Imagery, Inc, from 1991 through its sale in 2006. He has built and run large technology-based businesses and has experience building a multi-million visitor Web site. Bahar holds a CFA, was a partner at Kidder, Peabody & Co., and worked at McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to both large companies such as Citibank, GE, and Acxiom and a number of smaller software and Web-based companies. He has an MBA (Baker Scholar) from Harvard Business School and a BS in Astronomy and Physics (magna cum laude) from Amherst College. Bahar races sailboats, plays competitive bridge, and is based in New York City.
CSRHub is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings tool that allows managers, consultants, academics and activists to track the sustainability performance of major companies. We aggregate data from more than 125 sources including seven leading socially responsible investing (SRI) analysts, Carbon Disclosure Project, indexes, NGOs, crowd sources, and government agencies to provide our users with a comprehensive source of employee, environmental, community, and governance information on nearly 5,000 publicly traded companies in 65 countries. CSRHub is a B Corporation.
CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on nearly 5,000 companies from 135 industries in 65 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.
CSRHub rates 12 indicators of employee, environment, community and governance performance and flags many special issues. We offer subscribers immediate access to millions of detailed data points from our 140-plus data sources. Our data comes from six socially responsible investing firms, well-known indexes, publications, “best of” or “worst of” lists, NGOs, crowd sources and government agencies. By aggregating and normalizing the information from these sources, CSRHub has created a broad, consistent rating system and a searchable database that links each rating point back to its source.
