FirstCarbon Solutions Expands Its Partnership with CDP, Enhancing Sustainability Scoring Capabilities

IRVINE, Calif., June 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- FirstCarbon Solutions (FCS) and CDP today announce their expanded partnership to increase services that measure supply chain carbon management and extend sustainability scoring to CDP's climate change program in the Nordic and Benelux regions, Australia, New Zealand and India.  FCS, a pioneer and industry leader in environmental sustainability solutions for business, and CDP, an international not-for-profit organization that works with the world's largest investors and corporations to motivate companies and cities to disclose their impacts on the environment and take action to reduce them, have been working together since 2011.

As the exclusive scoring partner of CDP's supply chain program, FCS reviews and scores thousands of responses provided by participating suppliers. Leveraging its proven sustainability reporting systems and data management and carbon accounting expertise, FCS has built a system based on CDP's global methodology to evaluate and score CDP responses in a comprehensive, standardized way. These scores allow the 65 members of CDP's supply chain program – including multinationals like Unilever, The Coca-Cola Company, and Walmart – to benchmark environmental performance, examine practices and develop year-on-year performance improvements.

"Partnering with FCS makes perfect sense due to their global reach and proven capabilities helping participating suppliers develop and implement carbon and climate change strategies that enhance business innovation, strengthen customer relationships and drive cost savings," said Nigel Topping, chief innovation officer, CDP. "In fact, in 2012 alone, 29% of the reporting suppliers saved approximately $13.7 billion after implementing more sustainable business practices."

"Transparency is critical to reducing emissions, driving operational efficiencies and reinforcing the business case for sustainability at scale," said James Donovan, chief executive officer of FCS. "As we extend our partnership with CDP, we look forward to bringing additional insights and analysis to the global market through our proven data management and carbon management expertise that will significantly benefit companies in terms of increased scores and reduced environmental impact."

As part of the expanded relationship, FCS will also score submissions from major companies in the Nordic and Benelux regions, as well as in Australia, New Zealand and India on their climate change performance. The scored submissions, from several hundred of the largest companies including Qantas Airways, Ahlstrom Corporation, Tata Chemicals, Skanska AB and Bang & Olufsen, will be delivered to the 722 investors that request this vital climate data via CDP. These scores will also be delivered to the markets via financial data providers including Bloomberg and Google Finance to inform business, investment and policy decisions.

Topping added, "As an invaluable partner to CDP, not only does FCS score more than 50% of all CDP disclosures, they also offer companies a performance review of their responses to help them identify and prioritize projects that will improve their climate performance, CDP scores and bottom line."

This partnership extension also includes FCS acknowledgment as a CDP Silver Carbon Calculation Partner, Gold Consultancy Partner and CDP Response Check provider. As a Silver Carbon Calculation Partner, FCS is featured as a leading service provider of enterprise-wide carbon calculation tools that help support the disclosure process for the thousands of companies reporting to CDP. As a Gold Consultancy Partner, FCS continues to demonstrate a commitment to working with CDP to encourage high quality disclosure of climate change related data from global corporations.  Exclusive to CDP Consultancy Partners, FCS will provide CDP Response Check, a high-level 'checking' service for CDP-responding companies that have completed their 2013 CDP response. "This will prove a useful additional check for some of the thousands of companies that report through CDP," said Topping.

"Sustainability is an increasingly important topic to the business and investor communities around the world," said Robert Francisco, President, FCS. "By expanding our relationship for the 2013 disclosure period, it allows both organizations to provide more insight and better service to the global sustainability community, and ultimately will provide the information companies need to reduce risk and their environmental impacts."

About FirstCarbon Solutions
FirstCarbon Solutions advances sustainable practices around the world and helps organizations responsibly grow and operate their businesses. Seamlessly delivering fully integrated, cost-effective consulting, data management and software solutions, FirstCarbon Solutions helps clients save time, reduce costs, optimize resource use, and drive operational efficiencies in a world where sustainability matters. With more than 30 years of environmental and sustainability consulting experience, FirstCarbon Solutions has offices throughout Asia, Europe, Australia and North America to ensure we meet our clients' ever-evolving environmental and compliance needs in energy, air and carbon management; environmental assessments and planning; supply and life cycle assessments; permitting and compliance; software and data processing. For more information, visit www.firstcarbonsolutions.com or follow us @firstcarbon.

About CDP
CDP is an international, not-for-profit organization providing the only global system for companies and cities to measure, disclose, manage and share vital environmental information. CDP works with market forces, including 722 institutional investors with assets of US$87 trillion, to motivate companies to disclose their impacts on the environment and natural resources and take action to reduce them. CDP now holds the largest collection globally of primary climate change, water and forest-risk information and puts these insights at the heart of strategic business, investment and policy decisions. Please visit www.cdp.net or follow up @cdp to find out more.

SOURCE FirstCarbon Solutions