Results of NewReport Showing Economic Benefits of Strong MPG

Strong fuel efficiency/GHG standards would create nearly 700,000 jobsnationwide, including 63,000 jobs in auto sector; Consumers would save $152billion at the pump

BOSTON – As President Obama announces the nextround of a coordinated national program to improve fuel efficiency for model year2017-2025 cars and light-duty trucks, Ceres, a national coalition ofinvestors and public-interest organizations, today released “More Jobs PerGallon,” an economic analysis by the independent firm Management InformationServices, Inc. that quantifies what stronger fuel economy/GHG standards wouldmean for the U.S. economy.  

“We commend the Obama Administration on today’s importantstep to boost fuel economy and reduce vehicle emissions, which will createjobs, drive innovation, save consumers money and reduce our dependence onforeign oil,” said Mindy S. Lubber, president of Ceres. “Our report makes clearthat the stronger the standards, the greater the economic benefits, and we urgethe Administration to ensure a strong national program.”

Ceres’ new report, available at www.ceres.org, evaluated different regulatoryscenarios under consideration for CAFE mileage and GHG emissions improvements –specifically, improvements of three, four, five and six percent per year for modelyears 2017-25.

Among the report’s key findings:

·     The sixpercent scenario (roughly 60 MPG) would generate an estimated $152 billion infuel savings for consumers in 2030 compared to business as usual. Of the$152 billion saved at the pump, $59 billion would be expected to be spent inthe auto industry as drivers purchase cleaner, more efficient vehicles. Theremaining $93 billion will be spent across the rest of the economy, boostingconsumers’ discretionary income for everything from retail purchases to restauranttrips to increased spending on health care.

·     Nearly700,000 new full time jobs would be created under the six percent scenario, compared to only about 350,000 jobsunder the three percent (roughly 47 MPG) scenario.

·     63,000new, full-time domestic auto industry jobs would be created in 2030 under thesix percent scenario; more than double the 31,000 jobs under the threepercent scenario.

·     Statesseeing the biggest gains in terms of relative impact on their job markets alsohave some of the largest auto industry sectors.  Again, job growth would be significantly higher underthe six percent scenario.  The top12 states in terms of percentage job increases include Indiana, Michigan,Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Vermont, Oregon,New York and Missouri.

·     Net jobsgains in 49 states, and greatest job gains under strongest standards. Eachof the four regulatory scenarios analyzed would bring substantial economic andjob benefits for the U.S. economy in 2030.

·     Effectson state GDPs would be overwhelmingly positive. States seeing the biggestpercentage GDP gains under the strongest fuel efficiency standard have largeauto industry sectors. The biggest gainers would be Michigan and Indiana,followed by Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Alabamaand Oregon. Comparedto the three percent scenario, the six percent scenario would bring 382,000more jobs, a $15.7 billion increase in gross economic output (sales), $10.3billion more in personal income, and $9.5 billon more in tax revenue for cash strappedfederal, state and local governments.

For more details and to read the full report, visit: www.ceres.org/more-jobs-per-gallon

Organizer: Ceres

Date: 05.11.11, 07:30AM – 05.12.11, 03:00PM

Location: Oakland, California

Sponsor: Ceres

Website: www.ceres.org/conference

HURRY! Room block for this event ends Sunday (4/17)!

Join us May 11-12 in Oakland, CA as we work together to accelerate corporate, investor and capital market solutions on global sustainability challenges.

Inspiring world business leaders are innovating to meet the urgent climate and resource challenges of the 21st century. They recognize the imperative, and opportunity, of building a sustainable global economy - and are filling the leadership vacuum left by our policymakers.

This year's Ceres conference is about igniting this leadership and innovation into something far bigger and impactful. It's about scaling up smart, sustainable technologies that use fewer resources and emit far less carbon pollution - and making those solutions more available and affordable across an ever-more populous world.

This year's plenary program is jam-packed with exciting speakers and provocative themes, including:

--A CEO Conversation with John Anderson, president and CEO of Levi Strauss, and Andrea Moffat, vice president of the corporate program at Ceres

--An opening keynote from Jim Woolsey, former CIA director and current senior advisor at VantagePoint Venture Partners, on the importance of a clean energy future

--A panel discussion about the race between the U.S. and China to develop a clean energy global economy, moderated by Liza Tucker, senior sustainability editor at Marketplace Radio, and featuring Dr. Zhengrong Shi, CEO of Suntech, Jon Krahulik, managing director and global head of Clean Technology Investment Banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Jiang Lin, senior vice president and director of the China Sustainable Energy Program at the Energy Foundation

--Engaging and relevant workshops, including one on energy efficiency financing and another exploring what’s needed to bring sustainable agriculture to scale

Please join fellow leaders in the corporate, investors, labor and NGO worlds as we develop the path forward to build a truly sustainable global economy. To learn more or to register, please visit www.ceres.org/conference.

by Robert Kropp

Ceres and Fund Votes conduct annual survey of voting by mutual funds on shareowner resolutions relating to climate change, and find they have declined for first time since 2007.

SocialFunds.com -- A report published earlier this year by Mercer declared that the economic cost of climate policy could lead to as much as a 10% increase in portfolio risk in the next 20 years. Responding to the report, Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, stated, "No prudent investor can disregard a risk as great as 10 percent on portfolio performance."

Evidently, many of the nation's largest mutual funds appear to be doing just that, according to the sixth annual analysis of voting by 46 mutual funds on climate-related shareowner resolutions. The analysis by Ceres and Fund Votes, a project started in 2004 that tracks mutual fund proxy voting in the US and Canada, found that for the first time since 2007, overall voting in favor of such resolutions declined, to 23.8% from 26.9% in 2009.

Votes opposed to such resolutions increased for the first time since 2005, to 60%.

The analysis found that eight mutual fund families continued to support a majority of climate resolutions, led by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association - College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), which voted in favor of such resolutions 82.6% of the time.

On the other hand, some of the nation's largest funds, including State Street and Vanguard, did not vote in favor of a single climate resolution. Fidelity voted in favor of such resolutions in just 1.6% of 246 total votes. According to the report, 27 mutual fund companies supported less than a quarter of climate resolutions.

"One possible reason for diminished support could be that mutual fund managers perceived reduced regulatory risk as the prospects for passing a federal climate bill dimmed during the 2010 proxy season," the report stated.

The report recommended that investors encourage mutual funds to update their proxy voting guidelines, and consider switching to investment managers that better understand the risk to portfolios presented by climate change.

"Investors can also outsource the voting of their proxies" through such sites as Moxy Vote, the report concluded.

"Large fund families know, just as we do, that climate change is a real and material risk," Jackie Cook, founder of Fund Votes, stated. "Yet their proxy voting guidelines are silent. Climate and sustainability are central to performance and need to be specifically addressed in voting policy reviews."

Lubber of Ceres stated, "All mutual funds should develop and follow proxy voting guidelines to respond to the very real risks and opportunities of climate change. Those that do stand to outperform their peers."

March 24, 2011

by Robert Kropp

Ceres announces that resolutions on water management filed with three electric utilities have been withdrawn after successful engagement.

SocialFunds.com -- Shareowner engagement with energy companies has increased markedly this year. In mid-February, Ceres announced that resolutions addressing climate and energy had increased by 50% over 2010 totals, with 66 such proposals having been filed with 41 companies.

The resolutions include 29 filed with 19 electric power companies, addressing issues from water scarcity to management of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and mountaintop removal. Water scarcity in particular has gained increasing attention recently, as concerns about the effects on the resource by climate change and population growth led the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) to launch its CDP Water Disclosure project.

According to a press release this week from Ceres, "Prolonged droughts, growing water demand and climate change place increasing stress on water supplies and create challenges for electric power producers in many parts of the United States."

"Power plants, including nuclear, coal, oil and natural gas, account for 40 percent of the nation’s freshwater withdrawals, requiring an estimated 136 billion gallons a day for generating and cooling the steam that drives electric turbines," the release continued.

Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, stated, "Water scarcity is a growing risk to many public utilities and investors want to know how companies are preparing for increased competition for supplies, emerging regulations and potential revenue losses from shortages."

In this week's press release, Ceres announced that coalitions of sustainable investors have succeeded in their engagements with three major electric utilities thus far, allowing the investors to withdraw shareowner proposals at those companies.

The Office of the Connecticut State Treasurer was the lead filer of a resolution at Atlanta-based Southern Company. The company has agreed to prepare a report "describing its water management philosophy, water use and consumption by generation type, water discharges, and emerging risks, including water risks in its fuel supply chain," according to Ceres.

A resolution filed at Virginia-based Dominion by Ceres was withdrawn when the company agreed to report to CDP Water Disclosure on its water management practices.

At PPL, a resolution filed by Miller/Howard Investments persuaded the company to include information on water intensity, water resources and cooling system types, and water rights in its corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting.

Resolutions still on proxy ballots include a request that First Energy report on efforts to reduce water risks from its coal ash operations. In addition, a number of resolutions still outstanding address hydraulic fracturing, a drilling process which requires the injection of as much as 7.5 million gallons of water per well, as well as often toxic chemicals, to crack open rock and allow natural gas to flow to the surface.

Read the original article here.

Last year the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued interpretative guidance on what public companies should disclose to investors concerning risks related to climate change.  While the interpretive release did not create any new legal requirements, it provided SEC registrants a framework by which they could outline climate change-related material risks in annual, quarterly, and proxy statement reports.

For companies that chose to disclose their climate change risks, the SEC’s directive was not necessarily bad news.  Climate change could open new opportunities for businesses that offer low-carbon products, benefit from increasing investment in clean energy, or gain revenues from carbon emissions trading markets.  While a manufacturing company may face risks from increased greenhouse gas regulations, that same firm could open new markets because of the growing demand for wind turbines around the globe.  The public interest group Ceres recently reflected on SEC registrants’ climate disclosure best practices, and found that the most filers needed much more practice articulating their risks associated with climate change.

Ceres concluded that while large companies that register with the SEC have overall improved their climate change risk disclosures in recent years, more work needs to be done.  In assessing companies’ quality of reporting, Ceres hardly indulged in grade inflation.  No company filings the organization evaluated were deemed “excellent,” few were “good,” and most were “fair” or “poor” in the quality and detail of their climate related disclosures.  The issues companies faced are analogous to what advocates of financial and sustainability integrated reporting, like the Global Reporting Initiative, (GRI) must confront:  in the United States, numbers talk, and many companies either face difficulty or decline to articulate hard numbers associated with climate change risks.

One reporting star is AES Corp, a global power company based in Arlington, VA.  AES disclosed the hard numbers associated with regional greenhouse gas emission requirements, the methodology it used to reach those figures, and the acknowledgement that any actual fiscal impact could be different than the estimated US$17.5 million spent on regulatory costs annually over past decade.  Ceres then contrasted AES with Dean Foods.  The food processing company and distributor merely stated that its operations are subject to “numerous environmental and other air pollution control laws,” and that new legislation

. . . could require us to replace equipment, install additional pollution controls, purchase various emission allowances or curtail operations. These costs could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

While Ceres laments the vague information and “boilerplate” language that are endemic throughout SEC filings, scant information that often is cut-and-pasted into those filings is a fact of life.  In an era of Sarbanes-Oxley regulations and the constant fear that companies will be sued, SEC registrants and their attorneys often use precedent language to protect the companies’ interests and to avoid any unwanted attention.  Financial analysts have long caught on to this trend:  they skip the text, ignore the flowery text typical of most annual reports (often copied from the 10-K, the equivalent filed with the SEC), and focus directly on the financial tables.

Hence is the reality that advocacy groups like Ceres and standards organizations like GRI will face:  “guidance” from the SEC is not legally binding; what we insist is ethical is not necessarily the “law”; and until sustainability data can be broken down into numbers that the financial community will understand and appreciate, do not expect nebulous statements in the pages of 10-Ks or 10-Qs related to social or environmental issues to cease anytime soon.

Read the original article here.