General Electric tops Climate Innovation Indexes as US business engagement grows

General Electric has been named as the leader of US clean-tech innovation and carbon management in the third cycle of investment risk research company Maplecroft’s Climate Innovation Indexes.

The energy and technology conglomerate has topped each of the three index cycles, having invested $5bn in clean technology and implemented a sustainable business research strategy, called ‘ecomagination’, over the last five years.

Ford, Alcoa and Johnson Controls retained their top five positions, but were also joined by Intel, which rose to fifth position this year.

GE’s strategy has proved a great success, with those business units developing solutions and products to address climate change significantly outperforming other parts of the group and generating $100bn in revenues.

The company has also significantly cut its own carbon emissions and saved $140m in energy costs.

The CII indexes come in three parts: the Maplecroft CII Benchmark, which screens just under 350 of the largest US companies; the Maplecroft CII Leaders, which consists of the 100 top performing companies from the Maplecroft CII Benchmark; and the Maplecroft CII US 100, the 100 largest US companies by market capitalisation.

Taken together, this is the most comprehensive study available of US companies and their clean-tech innovations and new products, as well as their adoption of climate change mitigation strategies.

This year, it rated 37 more companies this year than in its first cycle in 2009, an increase attributed to greater engagement among US companies with climate change issues and the subsequent rise in the number of businesses passing Maplecroft’s pre-screening process.

The CIIs assess companies on more than 100 criteria, including technological innovation, management of climate-related issues, adaption to physical climate-related risks throughout the supply chain and CO2 emissions.