With growing interest from stakeholders for climate risk and opportunity analysis and disclosure, electric power companies are increasingly being called upon to publish climate reports. Concurrently, a growing number of organizations are creating recommendations, guidance, and methodologies they would like companies to apply (e.g., 2ii, Carbon Tracker, Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), Ceres, United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative). However, this type of analysis and disclosure — including a “1.5 or 2-degree scenario analysis” — is technically challenging for both companies to perform and stakeholders to assess. Scientific understanding is a baseline requirement to inform these efforts, and EPRI has been developing a technical foundation over the last few years to inform company climate scenario analysis, climate-related risk assessment, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions goal setting efforts. This report expands that technical foundation further, providing information on utility climate reporting practices and trends (e.g., approaches, content, and frequency) that can help inform companies as they make strategic decisions around their analysis and reporting.
This report summarizes results from our survey of 2019 activity and is the second year this survey has been administered. In the initial year of the survey (2018 activity), EPRI expanded its annual Sustainability Reporting Trends survey to understand reporting and disclosure trends related to climate-specific risks, opportunities, and planning. The 2018 questions were based on technical issues EPRI had identified for climate-risk assessment methodologies from evaluating the scientific literature (EPRI 3002014510, 3002018053). The 2019 activity survey includes two new climate reporting questions — the first on incorporation of the TCFD recommendations, the second on whether companies are developing their own scenarios for quantitative analysis, or using "off-the-shelf" scenarios developed by others.
The enclosed results can help companies better understand disclosure and reporting activity to date — information useful to decision-making and disclosure planning. Results also provide insights to stakeholders interested in climate risk disclosure, as they seek to understand current activity and reporting.