This report shows that power companies are heavily involved in climate policy engagement and are taking steps forward by advocating in support of certain climate policies. But they are also undoing that progress by advocating against other climate policies.
100% of the companies in this assessment agree with the scientific consensus concerning the causes of climate change and 100% have lobbied either individually or as part of a coalition for Paris–aligned climate policies in the last three years.
Yet, at the same time, 100% of the companies have company assessed lobbied in opposition to Paris-aligned climate policies, illustrating the contradictory nature of the utility sector’s advocacy efforts.
This analysis is a follow-up to the second Responsible Policy Engagement benchmark Ceres released in November 2022, assessing the climate policy lobbying of the S&P 100 companies
Other findings show that compared to the 2022 Benchmark, in which only 50% of S&P 100 companies had lobbied in favor of climate policies, the electric utilities sector is significantly more active in voicing its support compared to other sectors. In addition, the utilities sector has a better track record than S&P 100 companies in terms of conducting trade association alignment assessments, with 33% of utilities having completed an alignment assessment, compared to only 8% of companies overall in the S&P 100.
Climate engagement on risk management and policy advocacy in the utilities sector has never been more critical. While the largest power companies in the U.S. have set goals to reduce emissions and are shifting away from coal toward renewable energy and energy storage, there is more work that needs to be done by the sector to take advantage of the enormous business opportunity throught policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act that will help them solve the challenges they face in ways that can also address longstanding issues of equity and energy burden.