InfluenceMap maintains a global system for tracking, assessing and scoring companies on their engagement with climate change policy against Paris-aligned benchmarks, currently covering around 300 companies along with 150 of their key industry associations. Full details of our methodology can be found here.
How do you define policy engagement? InfluenceMap defines "policy engagement" based on the UN Guide for Responsible Corporate Engagement in Climate Policy (2013), which defines a range of corporate activities as engagement, such as advertising, social media, public relations, and direct contact with regulators and elected officials.
How do you define climate policy? InfluenceMap’s system considers existing, evolving, and likely future climate-related policy measures proposed by mandated bodies. “Mandated bodies” are defined here as various levels of government or government-authorized bodies responsible for or supporting efforts to implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in their regions. InfluenceMap’s system also captures high-level corporate communications that influence the broader public narrative concerning these policies (e.g. concerning the role of different low-carbon technologies).
How do you collect evidence? Each entity’s engagement activities on climate-related policy are assessed using publicly accessible data sources to gather reliable and representative evidence. These data sources include organizational website disclosures and social media channels, top management statements, financial disclosures and investor communications, regulatory consultation comments, and reliable media reporting.
How do you assess evidence? This research process can collect hundreds of items of evidence pertaining to an entity’s engagement with climate-related policy. This evidence is analyzed against Paris Agreement-aligned Governmental Policy and Science-Based Policy benchmarks (drawn from IPCC analysis of achieving 1.5°C aligned emission reductions) to provide a robust assessment of whether an entity’s climate policy engagement activities are aligned with the Paris Agreement’s goals.
How is the overall assessment calculated? Metrics describing each entity’s overall climate policy engagement - direct and indirect - are produced by InfluenceMap’s proprietary platform, with weightings to adjust for factors such as time (e.g. with more recent evidence heavily weighted in the final scores). InfluenceMap's system is updated continuously as new information becomes available. The results are freely available and in the public domain, along with all the primary evidence used in the analysis. InfluenceMap's metrics are explained below:
Organisation Score (expressed as a percentage from 0 to 100) is a measure of how supportive or obstructive the company’s direct engagement is towards climate policy aligned with the Paris Agreement, with 0 being fully opposed and 100 being fully supportive.
Scores below 50 indicate increasingly significant misalignment between the Paris Agreement and the company’s detailed climate policy engagement, with scores below 25 indicating material and significant opposition. Scores between 50 and 75 indicate mixed engagement with Paris-aligned policy. Scores above 75 indicate broad alignment with, and support for, Paris-aligned policy. If limited evidence has been collected on a company's direct policy engagement, the Organisation Score is signified with an ‘n/a’ (not available).
Relationship Score (expressed as a percentage score from 0 to 100) is a measure of how supportive or obstructive the company’s industry associations are towards climate policy aligned with the Paris Agreement, with 0 being fully opposed and 100 being fully supportive.
The Relationship Score is an aggregate assessment of the climate policy engagement of a company’s industry associations and measures the extent to which this is in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. This calculation accommodates an assessment of the strength of the relationship between a company and an industry association, for example a stronger weighting will be attributed where a company has a representative on the board of an industry association.
Scores under 50 indicate increasingly significant misalignment between the Paris Agreement and the detailed climate policy engagement of the company’s industry associations, with scores below 25 indicating material and significant opposition. Scores between 50 and 74 indicate mixed engagement with Paris-aligned policy. Scores above 75 indicate broad alignment with, and support for, Paris-aligned policy by the company’s industry associations. If limited evidence has been collected on a company's industry association links, the Relationship Score is signified with an ‘n/a’ (not available).
Performance Band (A+ to F) is a full measure of a company’s climate policy engagement, accounting for both its own engagement and that of its industry associations. For companies, the ‘Organisation Score’ and ‘Relationship Score’ are combined to result in a total score that places the company in a Performance Band. Industry associations do not have a ‘Relationship Score’, so the Performance Band for industry associations is made up of only the ‘Organisation Score’.
There are 16 Performance Bands from A+ (representing a total score from 95-100%) through to E- (a score of 25-30%), with scores below 25% falling in the red "F" band. Grades from A+ to B (i.e. above 75%) indicate broad support for Paris-aligned climate policy, with grades from D to F (i.e. below 50%) indicating increasingly obstructive climate policy engagement. If limited evidence has been collected either on a company's direct policy engagement (Organisation Score) or industry association links (Relationship Score), the Performance Band is signified with an 'n/a' (not available).
Engagement Intensity (expressed as a percentage score from 0 to 100) is a measure of the level of policy engagement by the company, whether positive or negative. Scores above 12 indicate active engagement with climate policy, and scores above 25 indicate highly active or strategic engagement with climate policy. Scores below 5 indicate low-level engagement with climate policy. Entities with scores below 5 are not attributed a Performance Band.
