skip navigation
back to Ford.com

Assurance

In recent years, Ford has used various external assurance models to improve the report's thoroughness, transparency and utility to stakeholders. For our 2004/5 report, we worked with Ceres and SustainAbility to create a Report Review Committee made up of 13 external stakeholders who advised us on the development of the report. Their feedback on our process and on the content of the report itself was included in the report.

Ceres Stakeholder Committee

For this report and our previous two reports, Ceres convened Stakeholder Committees to advise us. Ceres is a network of investors, environmentalists and other public interest groups that works with companies and investors to address sustainability challenges. Ford agreed to work with a stakeholder team that was selected for it by Ceres. The Ceres Stakeholder Committee that was selected is an independent group of individuals drawn primarily from the Ceres coalition and representing a range of constituencies that have expertise in environmental, social and governance issues.

In reviewing this report, the Committee considered whether the Company adequately reported on its sustainability performance and key impacts, including goals, targets, systems, data and initiatives. The Committee met twice: once to review and comment on the report plan, and once to review and comment on a nearly final draft of the material issues sections of the report.

In this report, we have responded to several suggestions the Committee made during reviews of previous reports, notably the publication of our CO2 reduction target and a detailed roadmap for achieving it. In addition, the Committee raised a number of questions and made suggestions for improvements to the report, including:

  • Questions about the alignment of Ford's product CO2 goal with U.S. policy alternatives
  • Interest in Ford's goals and targets across a range of issues and the suggestion that the Company expand its targets, including setting a target to reduce operational CO2 emissions
  • A suggestion to expand reporting on Ford's political contributions, including contributions to membership organizations that take public policy positions
  • Comments on the materiality matrix

Some suggestions were addressed in this report, including:

Other recommendations will be considered for future reporting. For example, we are exploring providing a list of organizations that we support, including some that lobby on behalf of their members.

Data Assurance

Some of the data in our reports have been subject to various forms of internal and third-party verification, as follows.

  • Financial data were audited for disclosure in the Ford Annual Report on Form 10-K.
  • More than two-thirds of Ford's global facility greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are third-party verified. All of Ford's North American GHG emissions data since 1998 have been externally verified by FINRA, the auditors of the NASDAQ stock exchange, as part of membership in the Chicago Climate Exchange. In addition, all emissions data covered by the EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) and voluntary UK Emissions Trading Scheme are third-party verified. All EU-ETS verification statements are provided to Ford by facility from CICS for UK facilities, Lloyds for Germany and Spain, and Flemish Verification Office for Belgium. North American facilities are verified against the World Resources Institute's GHG Protocol. European facilities are verified against the EU-ETS rules and guidelines.
  • Ford voluntarily reports facility CO2 emissions to national emissions registries in Australia, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines and the United States.
  • Various environmental data are reported to regulatory authorities.
  • Ford's facility environmental data are managed using the Global Emissions Manager database, which provides a globally consistent approach to measurement and monitoring.

Whether and how data have been assured is noted in the data sections of this report.