Climate change disclosure in SEC filings

Automobile, Insurance, Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, and Utilities Companies

This report is Friends of the Earth’s fifth annual review of climate change reporting in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings of automobile, manufacturing, integrated oil & gas, insurance, petrochemicals, and utilities companies. It indicates that over the past five years, climate reporting in general has steadily increased in quality and quantity.

The overall climate reporting rate is 49 percent (2005 SEC filings), compared with 26 percent in 2000. However, reporting rates between the various sectors varies substantially. Over the past five years, dramatic improvement has occurred among the oil and gas sector, which now has an impressive reporting rate of 78 percent; today, compared with 37 percent five years ago.

Notably, the electric utilities sector achieved complete reporting rate with 100 percent of the utilities surveyed providing climate risk; five years ago only half of the electric utilities offered climate reporting to shareholders. Unfortunately, disclosure rates in other sectors are holding steady and remain much lower, with significant underreporting among the insurance and petrochemicals sectors.

Read the 2006 Report