How Marsh & McLennan Companies Works with Clients on Environmental Sustainability

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Increasing awareness of environmental sustainability issues and government regulation has made the "green" space an important area of interest and concern for clients. The businesses of Marsh & McLennan Companies have developed a range of services and provide consulting advice related to environmental sustainability issues, such as:

Enterprise Sustainability: Marsh Risk Consulting (MRC) is working with clients to assist them with the development and measurement of their enterprise sustainability plans. MRC's Enterprise Sustainability Program helps companies to clearly articulate their sustainability goals, understand the drivers within their industry and among their stakeholders, and develop cost/benefit and ROI analyses. MRC's Enterprise Sustainability Program compares an organization's current sustainability initiatives to industry best practices to improve their operations, mitigate environmental impacts, and enhance corporate social responsibility. MRC's independent assessment helps the client define its strategic and financial goals for reducing its impact on the local and global community and environment. The result is a practical enterprise sustainability plan that is tailored to an organization's corporate culture, financial goals, and risk tolerance strategy. Integrating expertise from various Marsh and Marsh & McLennan Companies consulting practices, MRC can assist clients with the implementation of their plans. For more information, please contact Neal Drawas at or Andrew Staniar at .

Green Building: Marsh's Green Building Team includes Marsh experts from all risk and insurance disciplines associated with design and construction, real estate development and management, and environmental issues. Focused on the sustainable construction industry, the team provides information, tools and resources for Marsh colleagues and clients to identify, assess, and manage the wide range of potential risks associated with green design, construction, and building ownership. The Green Building Team has produced a host of materials, including papers entitled, The Green Environment in the United States and Green Building: Assessing the Risks. For more information, contact Teresa Kavan at .

Carbon Footprint Analysis: Mercer provides clients with a carbon footprint analysis of their portfolios and compares it to a chosen benchmark, such as the FTSE All-Share, S&P 500 or Russell 1000. This tool was developed as more institutional investors have expressed an interest in assessing and better managing the risks and opportunities associated with the impact of their investments on the environment and climate change. It helps clients understand the carbon exposure of their portfolios and provides an indication and analysis of their subsequent carbon footprint. For more information, contact Jane Ambachtsheer at . Also see Mercer's Responsible Investment pages at www.mercer.com/ri.

Global Energy Challenge: For many countries, energy security is a global concern that requires decisive action to be taken now in order to prevent a future crisis. However, issues ranging from competing stakeholders' interests to variable policy priorities make the path to a successful energy roadmap a difficult task. Oliver Wyman's report entitled, Keeping the Lights on Sustainability, urges a new approach to energy security that considers three key issues: productivity improvements that may be achieved through energy efficiency and energy substitution; changes in demand emerging from gradual macro-economic trends or disruptive technological innovations; and a supply mix that best suits a country's particular circumstances. For more information, contact Lucy Nottingham at .

Energy Efficiency and Real Estate: Mercer and the CERES organization, a national coalition of investors, environmental groups and other public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges, collaborated on a report, Energy Efficiency and Real Estate: Opportunities for Investing. The report outlines the business case that investing in energy enhances the value of real estate portfolios. For more information, contact Katherine Burstein at .

Regulation and Sustainability: In response to the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) recent guidance to public companies on disclosure requirements as they relate to climate change, NERA prepared an article detailing the importance of developing a process for determining whether the effects of climate change on company decisions and performance are "material," thus triggering disclosure requirements. It further discusses NERA's Carbon Financial Impacts Model, and how it can be used to assist companies in several ways. These include helping to make key decisions affected by climate change, developing the assessments called for by the SEC and likely to be requested by auditors, and providing a due diligence review of analyses and procedures the company has developed on its own. For more information, contact David Harrison at .

Economic and Financial Impact of Sustainability: Mercer, together with 14 institutional asset owners and investors from around the world, the Carbon Trust and IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, launched a climate change strategic asset allocation study exploring the potential impact of climate change scenarios on asset allocation. The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Vivid Economics have been engaged to lead components of the research on the economic and financial impact of climate change scenarios. Mercer will lead the research on the impacts on asset classes in geographic regions. The study will culminate in a publicly available report, which will launch in the fourth quarter of 2010. Each study partner will also receive their own tailored report assessing the effects of the scenarios on its asset mix, highlighting both the investment risks and opportunities. For more information, contact Danyelle Guyatt at .