Commercial, Energy Efficiency  -  October 27, 2020

Study finds 65% interest in sustainability reporting within corporate sector

A new study found that 65% of Russell 1000 companies published sustainability reports in 2019, up from 60% in 2018, reflecting a growing interest in sustainability within the corporate world.

Governance & Accountability Institute released on Oct. 26 its 2020 Russell 1000 Research Report, which also divulged sustainability trends such as the fact that 90% of the largest 500 companies by market cap in the index published sustainability reports in 2019, an increase from 86% in 2018. The number of those from the smaller 500 companies by market cap that published sustainability reports also increased in 2019, up to 39% compared to 34% in 2018.

“The dramatic increase in sustainability reporting that we have seen over the past five years in large-cap U.S. companies is beginning to be seen in smaller companies, as represented in our research on the smaller half of the Russell 1000 Index,” Hank Boerner, Chairman & Co-Founder of G&A Institute, said in a statement. “Public companies of all sizes are responding to increased adoption of ESG and sustainable investing strategies by institutional investors, including pension funds and mutual funds.”

G&A Institute has researched sustainability reporting trends within the Russell 1000 Index for the last nine years, conducting studies on a list of companies of which the top half generally overlap with the S&P 500 Index.

The new study found that in 2019, out of the companies from the Russell 1000 that published sustainability reports, 47% used the widely accepted GRI Standards and 23% in some way referenced or aligned with SASB. Additionally, 41% responded to the CDP Climate Change questionnaire and 32% presented alignments with the SDGs.