The Carbon Disclosure Project

Before I head home, I just wanted to point out this article about another carbon footprint registry: The Carbon Disclosure Project, which has attracted the likes of Hewlett-Packard, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and eight other multinational corporations.

Each picked as many as 50 of their suppliers to reply to questions from the Carbon Disclosure Project by March, the CDP said in an e-mailed statement. The nonprofit project coordinates environmental data requests on behalf of 315 investors with $41 trillion of assets under management.

Just like the ones I wrote about Friday, these companies and the people who run them understand that the time has come for them to factor the cost of carbon into their business models. Doing so now puts them ahead of the game.

The data will be fed to banks and funds to help guide their lending and investment decisions. Goldman Sachs Group, Merrill Lynch and HSBC Holdings are among the investors cooperating with the project.

Smart investors know that being caught with money in a corporation that isn't addressing its greenhouse gas emissions is a losing bet.