The JSE’s Top 100 companies are highly rated for their responsiveness in disclosing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and for voluntarily working to reduce them, but these companies are still major contributors to South Africa’s high emissions, the latest 'Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)' report has shown.

As many as 83 of the top 100 companies listed on the local bourse have responded to the 2011 CDP, which is the second-highest response rate among 60 countries in which some 3 700 of the world’s largest corporations were surveyed.

This was an increase from the 74 companies that responded last year.

The CDP report, launched at the seventeenth Conference of the Parties in Durban this week, stated the high response rate suggested that climate change remained high on the South African corporate agenda, notwithstanding short-term concerns and the pressures associated with the economic downturn.

The CDP ranks companies on two key issues: the nature of the disclosure of their emissions and activities, and the quality of their performance in responding to climate change. A Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI) rates companies in terms of the levels of transparency and quality of disclosure of their GHG emissions. A Carbon Performance Leadership Index (CPLI) ranks the companies in terms of their emissions reduction targets and progress in meeting them.

Mining group Gold Fields achieved the highest scores in both indices, followed by Nedbank in the CDLI. Gold Fields shared the top spot with British American Tobacco in the CPLI.

Some 99% of responding companies disclosed their GHG emissions, which is an increase on last year’s 94% disclosure rate.

There is also an increase in the number of companies with GHG emission reduction targets. This year, 40 companies reported having emission-reduction targets, compared with 31 companies in 2010 and 20 in 2009.

More companies disclosed emission-reduction initiatives, with the greatest focus being on energy efficiency initiatives. Reported levels of investment in emission-reduction activities have increased from R9.5-billion to R17.9-billion.

But the report stated that South Africa’s industrial GHG emissions “continued to be dominated by a few companies”. The country’s total emissions level from all sources has been estimated at about 510-million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e).

The JSE Top 100 companies, together with power utility Eskom, account for 65% of the country’s emissions.

For the 78 of the JSE companies that reported their emissions, including those companies whose emissions have not been made public, the total scope 1 emissions, excluding emissions associated with electricity use, for the South African operations is 100.4-million tons of CO₂e.

The report stated that in terms of direct local emissions, the data highlighted the predominant contribution of Sasol (with 61.2-million tons of CO₂e), followed by Arcelor Mittal South Africa (11.9-million tons of CO₂e), Pretoria Portland Cement (4.8-million tons of CO₂e), BHP Billiton (3.1-million tons of CO₂e), Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium (2.8-million tons of CO₂e), Anglo American (2.7-million tons of CO₂e), Sappi (2.7-million tons of CO₂e), Harmony Gold (1.5-million tons of CO₂e ), Mondi (1-million tons of CO₂e) and Gold Fields (1-million tons of CO₂e).

Placing this in context, the report stated that power utility Eskom’s publicly reported calculated emissions of CO₂e for the year ended March, was 230.3-million tons, representing 45% of South Africa’s total emissions.

The CDP report noted that there was considerable room for improvement.

“The valuable improvements in disclosure and performance evidenced over the last few years through the CDP analysis process, are not sufficiently widespread within and between sectors, or appropriately ambitious, to constitute the level of leadership and action that many observers deem necessary to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change,” said Incite Sustainability director and lead author of the CDP report Jonathon Hanks.

He said that there were still high-profile companies and sectors, such as real estate, that did not appear to have sufficiently considered the potential risks and opportunities that climate change presents.

The CDP report is backed by 551 institutional investors, holding $71-trillion in assets under management, and provides them with information on the extent to which companies are meeting the climate change challenge.