Climate change spurs industry restructuring: survey

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Climate change is spurring a "worldwide economic and industrial restructuring" as more and more of the world's largest companies seek to confront global warming, an investor survey said on Monday.

Even so, some big firms were still doing far too little to identify risks and opportunities from climate change, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), representing more than 315 institutional investors managing $41 trillion in assets.

A record 77 percent of the world's top 500 firms, rated by market capitalization in the FT500, answered a request for information about their responses to global warming, up from 72 percent in 2006, it said.

"One trend above all is becoming increasingly clear: climate change and the various regulatory, policy and business responses to it are driving what amounts to a worldwide economic and industrial restructuring," a 92-page survey said.

"That restructuring has already begun to redefine the very basis of competitive advantage and financial performance for both companies and their investors," it said.

The project, in its fifth year, seeks to guide investors by getting companies to give details of their greenhouse gases and strategies for everything from energy efficiency to recycling.

"Seventy-six percent of responding companies reported implementing a greenhouse gas emissions reduction initiative," up from 48 percent in the previous FT500 survey, it said.

U.N. climate experts say that warming, blamed mainly on greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, will bring more droughts, heatwaves, floods, rising seas.