Efforts to Control Climate Change Undermined by Top 50 Global Emitters

Collaborative efforts to control and manage the escalating global warming and resulting climate change have unfortunately been found being undermined by the continued carbon emissions of 50 of the world's biggest-emitting companies.

In the latest Global 500 Climate Change Report 2013 released by CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, it revealed that controlling carbon emissions will continue to be nay because these companies continued to improperly release them. In fact, the carbon these companies have emitted over the past four years 2009 to 2012 has jumped by 1.65 per cent to 2.54 billion metric tonnes.

The 50 companies were led by BMW, Daimler, Philips Electronics, Nestlé, financial firm BNY Mellon, Cisco Systems, utility Gas Natural SDG, Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen, Hewlett-Packard and Samsung.

Sixteen U.S. firms have been included in the list of the top 50 highest emitting companies - Walmart, Apache, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, FedEx, Air Products & Chemicals, Dow Chemical E.I du Pont de Nemours, Praxair, AT&T, American Electric Power, Duke Energy and Exelon.

Collectively, these 50 companies, which primarily operate in the energy, materials and utilities sectors, churned out 75 per cent of all emissions reported by the Global 500. Of these three sectors, as expected, it is the energy sector that gives off the highest overall emissions.

"The [Energy] sector is responsible for 28.3 per cent of total reported Global 500 scope 1 and 2 emissions - efforts to reduce emissions in the energy sector are essential to the global mitigation of climate change. However, 50 per cent of energy companies have a performance band of C or lower. Since 2009, the overall emissions of the ten biggest emitters in the sector have increased by 53 per cent. The sector also has the highest number of companies without emission reduction targets (24 per cent), which companies justify by concerns that targets would constrain growth in their companies and in the wider economy," the report stated.

"Clear scientific evidence and increasingly severe weather events are sending strong signals that we must pursue routes to economic prosperity whilst reducing emissions," Paul Simpson, chief executive officer of CDP, said in a statement. "It is imperative that big emitters improve their performance in this regard and governments provide more incentives."