Insurers Aviva and Aegon landed at the top of the heap of Europe's 300 largest companies for their low levels of publicly-reported greenhouse gas emissions, relative to their revenue. Rounding out the bottom were KGHM, a Polish mining company, and Sodexo, a food services and management company.
A company's value declines on average by $202,000 for every additional thousand metric tons of emissions, according to researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame.
Air emissions have been on the decline for the electric power company since 1990, a time period during which its generation fleet has grown 249 percent.
The nonprofit took its mission a step further this week with the unveiling of a new effort that asks companies to go beyond mere climate change disclosure and take action.
The latest version of the company's Acco2unt software includes emissions analyses for ICT equipment, helping companies map their entire energy and carbon footprint more accurately.
A ruling last week finalizes a tentative decision in lat January that concluded that the state violated the California Environmental Quality Act when it approved a Scoping Plan to carry out the state's climate change law.
In its annual Environment poll, Gallup found that 51% of Americans worry a fair amount or great deal about climate change, just one percentage point higher than the poll's lowest mark in 1997.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011 Tuesday on a 34-19 vote, with all Republicans and three Democrats in support.
