Assurance

For this report and our previous three 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. In addition, the Committee raised a number of questions and made suggestions for improvements to the report, including:

• Strengthen the discussion of links between environmental performance, fuel economy and economic performance.
• Expand disclosure about public policy and political contributions, including how Ford deals with conflicts between the public policy positions of organizations of which it is a member and Ford's own positions.
• Discuss how Ford's 2020 climate change goal may change as a result of new regulations and scientific data and/or expansion to other regions.
• Expand discussion of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard.
• Discuss human rights impacts in metal mining.
• Comment on potential electromagnetic interference in vehicle safety systems.
• Expand disclosure of water strategy and performance.
• Articulate goals in the supply chain in the next report.

We were able to at least partially address most of these recommendations. For example, we:

• Created a separate public policy section that includes expanded discussion of Ford's public policy stances and policies on political contributions; however, we were not able to expand the data provided on political contributions for this report.
• Created a separate discussion on low-carbon fuels in the climate change section. We state how our product CO₂ goal is under constant review but disagree with the Committee's view that the goal, which is based on the science of climate stabilization, should routinely be changed based on regulatory developments.
• Added discussion of how we are assessing potential human rights issues related to the raw materials used in electric vehicles and how Ford monitors potential issues with electromagnetic interference in our vehicles.
• Discussed development of our water strategy and Ford's participation in the Carbon Disclosure Project's Water Disclosure program.

Other Committee recommendations will be considered for future reporting.

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 Climate Change Agreements are third-party verified. All EU-ETS verification statements are provided to Ford by facility from BSI for UK facilities, Lloyds for 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, China, 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.