The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)--provider of the world’s most widely-used sustainability reporting guidance--today launched new guidance on transparency and sustainability for electric utility companies at the 2009 Ceres conference in San Francisco.
The new guidance will enable electric utility firms to measure and publicly disclose their performance on a range of economic, environmental and social indicators--information that is increasingly sought by investors, consumers, corporate buyers and other industry stakeholders.
The guidance marks the latest addition to GRI’s series of Sector Supplements for specific industry sectors. The Sector Supplements tailor GRI’s Reporting Framework to the needs of the industry and include additional sector specific reporting guidance. Late last year GRI released a Sector Supplement for the Financial Services Sector, and others, including mining and metals and oil and gas, are at various stages of development.
Electric utilities firms face unique sustainability challenges relating to, for example, their greenhouse gas emissions, programs to improve or maintain access to electricity, the reliability of electricity and provisions for the decommissioning of nuclear power stations.
The GRI Electric Utilities Sector Supplement was agreed by an international multi-stakeholder group comprised of individuals from the electric utilities industry, NGOs, labor unions and investors.
Veena Ramani, Manager, Corporate Programs at Ceres said: “The GRI Guidelines and the Sector Supplement are integral to material, standard and comparable extra-financial reporting in the industry. This helps key constituencies, including investors and NGOs, assess a company’s plans and performance on sustainability issues/”
To download a copy of the Electric Utilities Sector Supplement visit the website below.
