Lattice Group has jumped straight into joint top place in Business in the Environment’s (BiE) sixth annual Corporate Environmental Engagement Index published at the end of last month.
The gas distribution group had not entered the index before, but took the number one spot with IBM (up from 27th place last year) and ScottishPower, which had been in the number two spot.
Other significant new entrants were Jaguar, which moved straight into fifth place, the electricity company Innogy Holdings, which went in at 18, and Volkswagen, in at 22.
Among the most improved in terms of their ranking were Blue Circle, up from 58th last year to third this year, Scottish & Southern Energy (40th to 8th), Marks & Spencer (108th to 14th), and Legal and General (90th to 25th).
The index, which measures company performance on factors such as energy use, waste and water pollution and environmental management systems, this year showed improvements across the board in most sectors.
But there was under par performance among food producers and processors. Two companies in this sector (not named by BiE) had yet to make a board level commitment to environmental management or to develop a communication programme on the environment with their employees.
BiE, the business-led campaign for corporate environmental responsibility, said it was particularly disappointed by the small number of supplier monitoring programmes in the sector.
By contrast, companies in the pubs and breweries sector were praised for their 100 per cent participation in the survey – a ‘very significant’ increase on 57 per cent last year.
The securities of ‘environmentally conscious’ companies are less volatile than those of ‘companies with low environmental consciousness’, a City University business school study published last month suggests.
By comparing the financial performance of publicly-held UK companies with their performance in the BiE index over five years, it found a ‘statistically significant negative correlation between high environmental standards and stock price returns volatility’. Companies ranking highly in the index have less volatile shares and, arguably, lower cost of capital, it concludes.