Frustrated investors are increasingly making their own sustainability assessments. Deutsche Bank AG’s asset-management arm, DWS Group, is using a natural disaster mapping tool to forecast the impact of climate change risks on its investment portfolios. UBS Asset Management worked with university researchers to come up with scientific methods to build comparable measures it could use to evaluate companies on climate change, air quality, water and public health.
As investors develop more sophisticated tools to measure corporate environmental stewardship, even just a slightly misleading ad campaign can stir up activists.
It’s an important distinction retailers frequently rely on claims that may be more nuanced than they initially appear. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA, for instance, claims its beer is made 100 percent from renewable energy. That is, Budweiser, the king of beers, is fully fossil-free. Other beverage from the company, like Corona, Stella Artois, Beck’s and even Bud Light, can’t make that claim.
Tony Milikin, AB Inbev’s chief sustainability officer, defended the company’s labeling, pointing out they only put the label on Budweiser bottles and cans, not the other brands. “We’re working to spread clean energy to all of our brands by 2025,” he said.
The brewer last year became one of the 140 corporations to join the RE100 coalition, a coalition of companies committed to cutting out fossil fuel power.
“The 100 percent renewables [commitment] is for our energy use worldwide,” Milikin said in an July 30 interview. “That’s just the way we communicate with our customers.”
This article provided by Bloomberg News.