New research published by Belfast's Queen's University Management School identifies significant differences in the sustainable performance of chemical companies. Air Liquide and BASF shown to use their resources up to five times more efficiently than their competitors.

The research, Sustainable Value Creation by Chemical Companies, uses the 'Sustainable Value' approach, jointly developed by Queen's University and Euromed Management School Marseille and follows similar research in the automotive sector. The Sustainable Value approach claims to be the first monetary assessment of corporate sustainability performance, taking account of the financial, environmental and social resources.

According to Prof. Frank Figges of Queen's University, “Sustainable value is created when a company uses its resources more efficiently than the market average. Companies have developed tools to measure their use of the economic capital - the sustainable value approach now allows them to measure the use of their environmental and social resources in economic terms."

In addition to measuring sustainability, the Sustainable Value approach highlights imprecision or inaccuracies in company's CR reporting. Professor Figge cites the example of engineering group ABB misstating its NOX and SOX emissions by a factor of 1,000 over several years - to their disadvantage. "Their CR report had been audited but no one had picked this up."

Figge says these mistakes and anomalies are widespread. "There is, for example, the case of an automobile manufacturer that operates a power plant, owned to 95% by a utility company. Neither the automobile manufacturer nor the utility include the power plant in their sustainability reports. The one because they operate a power plant without owning it and the other because they own a power plant without operating it."

"In general our experience shows that a lot of the data that you find in sustainability reports is wrong, incomplete or misleading."