The 41-trillion-dollar man

Richard Lofthouse meets the man who captures the world's carbon data

Paul Dickinson co-founded the not-for-profit Carbon Disclosure Project in 2000. The result is a remarkable testimony to the power of a small organisation to unleash large market forces for progressive change.

In last year's fifth report, unveiled by Bill Clinton in New York in September, the CDP collected 1,300 carbon emission 'disclosures' from companies on behalf of 315 institutional investors with $41trn ('€28trn) under management.

'That's the CDP in a nutshell,' says Dickinson. 'We gather the data and publish it on our website.' The published reports, available at www.cdproject.net, are authored and funded by partner organisations.

Dickinson adds that he has just 15 employees in London, UK, where the CDP is based, and an annual budget of just '€1.2m funded by governments, companies and foundations. He quips, 'For every dollar invested in us, $15m speak on the subject of climate change.

'We can't have a view that represents over 300 investors. But we can support a process that produces huge amounts of data, and then encourage other people to have views on it.'

Merrill Lynch hosted the New York unveiling; AXA and the French environment ministry support CDP in France while in Germany BVI, the investor association, elicited the direct support of Angela Merkel. Giant pension funds are prominent among the investors represented by the CDP.

Critics cite the CDP's main weakness as being its reliance on the companies' own estimation of its emissions. The third-party authored CDP reports show a company like BP getting a triple A rating, a measurement of the quality of its disclosure, not reduced emissions.

Dickinson responds, 'You can't reduce what isn't measured. Secondly, the standards for basic reporting of emissions are solid as a rock ' I mean Scopes 1 and 2 of the GHG Protocol ( www.ghgprotocol.org).

'What we fervently wish for is clearer agreement on standards for Scope 3 reporting, which covers everything from business travel of employees to supply chain emissions.'

Dickinson has launched supply chain initiatives with Walmart, Tesco, Cadbury, Unilever, Nestle and L'Oreal.

'What is heartening is that the investment community acts fast and globally. The reason they are acting fast and globally is because they have a finely honed understanding of risk, and the risk of uncontrolled climate change is intolerable.'