The Environmental Tracking (ET) Global Carbon Rankings system made its debut in London this week.

It’s the brain child of father and son team Michael and Sam Gill who will run the scheme through the not-for-profit Environmental Investment Organisation (EIO).

The scheme links the world’s biggest companies and aims to use information about their carbon footprint this to ‘pressure’ to reduce emissions.

The rankings are based on their absolute green house gas emissions, as well as the different levels of disclosure and verification the firms have run.

Michael Gill said: “The real crux of this concept is its potential to alter the supply and demand for a company’s shares, and therefore ultimately a company’s share price.

“Once a large enough pool of investors begins to track these hybrid mainstream environmental indexes, then the supply and demand for a company’s shares will be altered in line with their total emissions.

“A company with the highest emissions will have fewer shares bought by index funds following the index than it otherwise would in a conventional index and vice versa.

“If a significant amount of money is invested in this way, then in future a

company will be forced to take account of its emissions in order to avoid damaging its share price”.

“The question is, will the world’s leading investment institutions live up to their public pledges and environmental responsibilities by adopting environmental tracking?”

To find out more click here.

Watch sustainability expert Cheryl Hicks at the launch the (ET) Global Carbon Rankings system.

Luke Walsh

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