TransCanada Recognized for Leadership in Corporate Sustainability

It’s something many of us ask ourselves, especially around the start of a new year – what have I learned and how can I do better? From a company standpoint, opening ourselves up to evaluation by leading agencies is one way we can learn and improve.

Each year, TransCanada participates in a number of surveys and assessments by global leaders in sustainability-related fields and publishes a Corporate Social Responsibility report to outline how we are performing when it comes to the most important issues facing our company. It’s about holding up a mirror to our activities – taking an honest look and inviting feedback.

“Sustainability reporting and disclosure is about putting our performance – positive and negative – out there and embracing the opportunity to hear feedback from outside sources on where we are doing well and where we can improve,” says Kristine Delkus, Executive Vice President of Stakeholder Relations and General Council.

So how was our performance reflected in the mirror? Read on to see how we did in the eyes of two expert organizations.

Gold class award

For the second year in a row, TransCanada has received the Gold Class award for excellent sustainability performance and is included in the 2017 Sustainability Yearbook. The recognition comes from RobecoSAM – a global investment specialist focused exclusively on sustainability investing. Each year, companies are scored for their performance on nearly 120 industry-specific questions focusing on economic, environmental and social factors.

How do we compare? Only the top 15% of companies in each industry are included in the 2017 RobecoSAM Sustainability Yearbook, and the companies with the best performance are awarded gold class.

Best sustainability report

fsi-logo-ftrTransCanada received another honour when we were selected as the winner of the Award for Best Sustainability Report in the Non-Renewable Resources – Oil & Gas category for 2017 by the Montréal-based Finance Sustainability Initiative.

“Without a doubt, corporate sustainability reporting is key to helping investors get the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information they need, so that they can make better investment decisions,” states Marie-Josée Privyk, Vice President of the Board at the FSI and one of the organizers of the competition. “The FSI believes it’s important to promote good reporting practices; to recognize the work that companies are already doing, and to encourage them to hone in on reporting ESG information that is material, reliable, comparable, measurable, and tied to value creation – in other words, information that is decision-useful for investors.”

The selection of the best report in each of several specific industry sectors is made by a jury of university students. The students are enrolled at participating Quebec universities including Concordia, HEC Montréal, École Polytechnique, Sherbrooke University, and UQÀM.

Continuous improvement

While we are pleased and humbled with recognition of our sustainability practices, we will never stop striving to do better. Reviewing and evaluating our performance is one way we can learn and improve in areas that matter to you and to us.

“When an organization that is objective and expert tells us our performance is leading in our industry, it’s extremely encouraging,” says Kristine, “But that doesn’t mean we stop listening to constructive and critical feedback. There are always ways for us to do better for our company, for our employees, and for our stakeholders.”

Last year, TransCanada was also named to Corporate Knights’ 2016 list of Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada and scored at the 100th percentile on DJSI and earned rankings on DJSI’s North America and World indices.