Top three companies in each of the nine energy intensive sectors like cement, chemicals & fertilisers, iron & steel, metals & mining, oil & gas, paper & pulp, power, banking, and IT/ITES will be felicitated for their initiatives to turn green and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The winners have emerged as top rankers from 66 companies after in person interviews of their CXOs or senior executive nominated by them. The respondent companies were selected after purposive sampling of the FE 500 company list, which is based on net sales, total assets, gross profits, market capitalisation, and return on net worth, return on assets and return on sales.

Respondents were interviewed with the help of a qualitative questionnaire containing 102 questions, which were both general and sector-specific. The general questions covered awareness and understanding, level of involvement of the company, recognition of triggers for undertaking climate change mitigation initiatives, emission accounting, achievements in climate change management, and disclosure.

The responses were assessed with the help of a framework developed by experts like Gireesh Shrimali of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Pradeep Nair of Clinton Foundation, Rajat Gupta of McKinsey, Ajay Mathur of Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Razvan Maximiuc of Cleantech, Sujeet Kishen of E&Y, Bobby Mathew of CII, and David Fuente of IFMR.

The framework used four broad parameters like awareness and recognition of drivers, prioritising climate change within the organisation, actual actions taken and indicators of achievements to assign scores to participant companies.

All four parameters were assigned a weight, which was used to calculate the final score of a company. Questions in each category, further, had different weights. The points scored in each question were added up to give the parameter score. The sum of the parameter scores (after adjusting with the weights) gave the final score of a company. Thus, the companies which achieved the top three scores within a sector have been judged as the top companies in that sector.

The event will be rounded of with a panel discussion on ‘Post-Copenhagen: Expectations from Indian Industry’. The panel, comprising eminent industry leaders like Stuart Davis, CEO, HSBC; RS Sharma, CMD, ONGC; Partha Bhattacharya, CMD, Coal India and Anil Razdan, former power secretary, will deliberate on the topic. They will be joined by senior members from The Financial Express, Bloomberg UTV and Emergent Ventures India.