We have expanded the list of climate policies we assess company engagement with to incorporate land-use related policy, referring to legislative or regulatory measures to enhance and protect ecosystems and land where carbon is being stored. Assessments under this category are currently underweighted in terms of their contribution to the overall company metrics. This weighting will be progressively increased over the next 6 months.
We adjusted the terminology used to describe the queries running down the left-hand side of our scoring matrix and added additional explanatory text to the info-boxes. This has no impact on the scores and methodology. It has been done following user feedback to improve clarity.
In this section, we depict graphically the relationships the corporation has with trade associations, federations, advocacy groups and other third parties who may be acting on their behalf to influence climate change policy. Each of the columns above represents one relationship the corporation appears to have with such a third party. In these columns, the top, dark section represents the strength of the relationship the corporation has with the influencer. For example if a corporation's senior executive also held a key role in the trade association, we would deem this to be a strong relationship and it would be on the far left of the chart above, with the weaker ones to the right. Click on these grey shaded upper sections for details of these relationships. The middle section contains a link to the organization score details of the influencer concerned, so you can see the details of its climate change policy influence. Click on the middle sections for for details of the trade associations. The lower section contains the organization score of that influencer, the lower the more negatively it is influencing climate policy.
Climate Lobbying Overview: Severstal has limited engagement with specific climate-related policies. The company appears to support climate change policy with some exceptions surrounding, for example, carbon taxes, and has expressed top-line support for climate action.
Top-line Messaging on Climate Policy: Severstal appears generally supportive of climate change policy in its top-line messaging. In October 2021, in a press release, the company supported reducing GHG emissions reductions in the short- and long-term to achieve net-zero by mid-century. However, in other publications, such as its 2021 Sustainability Report published in June 2022, Severstal recognized that metals account for over 7% of the world’s GHG emissions, but did not take a clear position on climate action in line with IPCC recommendations. In a February 2021 position paper, Severstal welcomed Russia’s climate policy, giving support for the implementation of mechanisms focused on GHG emissions reductions. Severstal stated support for the goals of the UN Paris Agreement in its 2021 Sustainability Report.
Engagement with Climate-Related Regulations: Severstal appears to have limited transparent engagement with specific climate change policies. In its CDP disclosures from 2020 to 2021, Severstal disclosed that it had engaged with government agencies and industry associations on national carbon regulations, however, no further detail was provided on these engagements nor the outcomes sought. In the same CDP disclosures, the company appeared supportive of a carbon tax and advocated for mandatory carbon reporting. However, in a ‘Climate Memorandum’ published in November 2021, Severstal opposed the introduction of “unjustified carbon taxes” and seemed to advocate against carbon border adjustment mechanisms, stating opposition to “the discrimination of goods on climatic grounds.” In a position paper, published in February 2021, the company stated it would cooperate with “legitimate” mechanisms to reduce GHG emissions in the steel industry.
Positioning on Energy Transition: Severstal appears to take mixed positions on the energy transition. In a press release published in June 2021, the company advocated for the transition from coal to fossil gas in a way that appeared to promote the fuel over other zero-carbon options, without reference to the need for CCS or methane abatement measures. However, in a position paper published in February 2021, Severstal supported the implementation of policy in Russia to scale up low-carbon technologies to decarbonize the steel industry. In a February 2022 press release, the company stated support for low-carbon hydrogen, seeming to refer to methane pyrolysis, a method of hydrogen production which creates solid carbon as a byproduct.
Industry Association Governance: Severstal has disclosed a list of its memberships to industry associations, but with no further details of the company's role within each organization's governing bodies, nor their climate change policy positions. The company has not published a review of alignment with its industry associations. Severstal’s Chairman, Alexey Mordashov, is on the executive board of the World Steel Association, which has shown mixed engagement with climate change policy over the past few years.
InfluenceMap collects and assesses evidence of corporate climate policy engagement on a weekly basis, depending on the availability of information from each specific data source (for more information see our methodology). While this analysis flows through to the company’s scores each week, the summary above is updated periodically. This summary was last updated in Q2 2022.
Additional Note: Severstal is headquartered in Russia, where InfluenceMap’s LobbyMap platform can currently only make a provisional assessment of corporate climate policy engagement, due to limited capability to access publicly available data on this issue. As it is possible that InfluenceMap is not yet able to fully capture evidence of Severstal's climate policy engagement activities, these scores should be considered provisional at this time.