CalPERS, leading investors, and other organizations worldwide launched a new effort in May 2005 to improve corporate disclosure of the risks and opportunities posed by global climate change—the Climate Risk Disclosure Initiative. The CRDI Steering Committee developed a draft Framework for climate risk disclosure, and circulated it for review by investors, companies, financial analysts, and other experts. More than 50 reviewers have commented on the drafts.

The Framework was created to clearly communicate the information investors require in order to analyze a company’s business risks and opportunities resulting from climate change, as well as the company’s efforts to address those risks and opportunities. The Framework also encourages standardized climate risk disclosure to make it easy for companies to provide and for investors to analyze and compare companies.

The Framework consists of four elements of disclosure including:

1. Emissions disclosure;
2. Strategic analysis of climate risk and emissions management;
3. Assessment of physical risks of climate change; and
4. Analysis of regulatory risks.

CalPERS strongly encourages companies to improve their disclosure of environmental risks through the application of this Framework in their reporting process.

Please click on the following link to access the standardized report developed by the CRDI Steering Committee: Global Framework for Climate Risk Disclosure Report (PDF) .

Also, to assist companies with applying this Framework, the CRDI created the guide for Using the Global Framework for Climate Risk Disclosure (PDF) . This guide provides companies with specific information about how to disclose the four elements of disclosure detailed in the Framework as well as examples of disclosure from the most common reporting mechanisms for climate risk: the Carbon Disclosure Project, the Global Reporting Initiative, and securities filings.

For more information on a number of other initiatives aimed at improving environmental data transparency, please click on the following link: Corporate Governance Environmental Strategy.