Brand Emissions Methodology

The Brand Emissions Leaders Project aims to provide an annual rating of the carbon performance of the leading brands operating in the UK. In 2009, it has ranked over 600 brands divided into 31 sectors. To be a Brand Emissions Leader a brand must pass the following criteria.

In summary, it must be reducing its emissions, or already have relatively low emissions; have ambitious targets to reduce emissions further; and publish the evidence necessary to verify these facts.

Brand Emissions Leaders – Qualifying Criteria¹

Reductions

Brand Emissions Leaders have either

Delivered absolute carbon emissions reductions over the last year or a longer period OR
Delivered emissions intensity³ reductions of greater than 2.5%² per year over the last year or a longer period OR
A sector-leading (best 10%) carbon emissions intensity

Targets4

Brand Emissions Leaders have either

Absolute carbon emissions reduction target above 1.7%² per year OR
Carbon emissions intensity³ target above 4.2%² per year OR
A sector-leading (best 25%) carbon reduction target

Reporting

Brand Emissions Leaders have publicly reported their Scope 15 and Scope 2 emissions for at least 2007/08 against an accepted standard, and publish their targets

Brands are ranked against their sector competitors in the following categories.

Brand Emissions Leader

Brands pass all criteria

Brand Emissions Runner Up

Brands pass some criteria and fail others by a small margin

Brand Emissions Competitor

Brands provide good data so performance can be assessed, but fall short on one or more tests by a larger margin

Data comparability issues

Brands publish some but not all the carbon data required for analysis or publish in a format which does not enable comparisons

Qualitative disclosure only

Brands publish qualitative information on climate change activity but no quantitative carbon emissions data found

No carbon information found

No carbon data or reference to climate change activity found for brand

Information issues - brands in categories 4, 5 and 6 are not necessarily worse at managing carbon emissions than those in categories 1-3. Some of these companies may have excellent carbon performance. However, the data that we have been able to find does not permit a fair evaluation against the Brand Emissions Leaders criteria.

Brand universe - the Project surveyed over 600 of the biggest brands operating in the UK, including brands owned by private companies and public brands like the BBC. We consulted various listings of major consumer brands including the Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands, the Superbrands Top 500 UK brands, and sector specific and ‘Green’ lists.

Source of data - the Carbon Disclosure Project has provided us with the core data used for this survey. We have supplemented this data from company websites and corporate responsibility reports.

Brand data - to assess brands our preference is to use information directly related to the brand. Where this is not available we have used the carbon performance information of the organisation that owns the brand, unless this is clearly not representative of the brand’s performance. Where possible we have used UK data, otherwise we have used the global emissions performance data.

Company contact - CEOs and environmental managers of the organisations that own each brand were contacted asking to confirm whether they have published carbon information, and whether the information used by ENDS Carbon for analysis was accurate.

Product brands - the focus this year is brands that are associated with companies and organisations (e.g. Tesco, Vodafone, BP) rather than those associated primarily with specific products (e.g. Ariel, Special K, Nurofen). This is because published carbon emissions and targets information exists for most organisations, but product-level carbon information is only starting to become widely available. In future years we would like to include product level brands.

Full survey report - a full Leaders Report providing the detailed analysis of the performance of the brands in the survey is available from www.endscarbon.com/article_006_Brand-Emissions-Leaders-2009-Carbon-Performance-Review.html

Contact - brands wishing to discuss data, criteria and calculation methods should contact Dermot Hikisch, Research Manager on 0131 651 5241 or research@endscarbon.com.

Notes

1. For details of the assessment method, see www.bit.ly/brandemissions2009. The Project Team are grateful to its expert Advisory Board for their help in developing these indicators.

2. We have followed levels set by the UK Carbon Trust Standard or Climate Change Committee budgets where relevant

3. Emissions intensity is based on emissions per £ turnover, with some consideration of sector specific metrics

4. Targets have been compared on an annualised basis (20% reduction over 10 years = -2.21% per year)

5. Scope 1 refers to direct emissions; Scope 2 refers to indirect emissions (see GHG Protocol, 2005)