Global warming could melt your portfolio: enviros, investors advise

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CNNMoney/Fortune: Global warming could melt your portfolio
A coalition of environmentalists and institutional investors lays out which companies will be better prepared for climate change.
By Marc Gunther, FORTUNE senior writer

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - Long-term investors, take heed: Global warming will have a significant impact on the financial performance of companies in your portfolio.

Some companies -- General Electric, DuPont, Cinergy, American Electric Power, BP, Toyota and Honda -- are seriously grappling with the risks and opportunities posed by climate change. They will be better prepared as governments and shareholders focus on the issue.

Many others -- ExxonMobil, Dominion Power, Sempra Energy, Nissan, BMW and Volkswagen -- have been slow to address climate change, and they could put their owners at financial risk.

Those, at least, are the findings of a report released Tuesday that takes a close look at how 100 of the world's largest companies are positioning themselves to compete in what's called a "carbon-constrained world" -- that is, a world in which emissions of greenhouse gases are regulated, as they are today in Europe and Japan and probably will be before long in the United States.

The report, which ranks the companies on a 100-point scoring system, comes from a group called Ceres, a coalition of environmentalists and institutional investors, including government pension funds, socially responsible mutual funds and religious investors, with $3 trillion in assets. It's worth checking out at www.ceres.org....

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/21/news/international/pluggedin_fortune/?cnn=yes