Assurance

For this report and our previous four reports, Ceres convened Stakeholder Committees to advise us. Ceres leads a national coalition of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies to address sustainability challenges. Ford agreed to work with a stakeholder team that was selected for us 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 once by teleconference to review and comment on the materiality analysis and report plan.

The Committee largely agreed with the positioning of issues on Ford’s materiality matrix, and they affirmed the importance of the newly identified top material issues of supply chain and water. In addition, stakeholder committee members requested more information about the materiality analysis methodology and stakeholder inputs used to generate it. They also had some suggestions to change the position of a few issues in the matrix. In response, we have:

• Provided additional detail on how the analysis was conducted and the inputs used to prioritize issues
• Elevated the importance of innovation management so it is considered of moderate importance to Ford and its stakeholders
• Elevated the importance of mobility to the highest-priority level

Moving the issues on the matrix reflects that they are higher priority to stakeholders than our original analysis suggested. Some other suggestions – for example, providing details on how Ford is addressing fuel economy across its range of products – were already included in the report. Others, such as reorganizing issues and sub-issues, will be considered for future reports.

The Committee also made suggestions based on its review of previous reports and the outline for this report. Major points of feedback and Ford’s responses are shown below.1

Recommendation	Response
Provide increased disclosure about the Company’s industry collaborations and its policy stances on issues such as human rights, in the context of ensuring policy alignment between the Company’s public policy, products and strategy.	We have expanded the public policy section of the report to cover some additional issues. The new section on raw materials sustainability discusses Ford’s collaborations and policy engagement around conflict minerals.
Detail both short- and long-term goals and provide increased performance disclosure in areas such as diversity (board and employee level) and human rights/supply chain as well as more discussion of challenges.	Ford has complemented its near-term energy-efficiency targets with a long-term goal to reduce CO2 emissions per vehicle built by 30 percent by 2025, compared to 2010. We will review the presentation of our goals and targets for future reports.
Reassert the importance of mobility in the materiality matrix and corresponding report content, and provide more detail regarding Company innovations and actions in this area.	The mobility issue was repositioned as a result of the feedback. We have refocused our reporting on innovative new initiatives in urban and rural mobility.
Expand discussion of supply chain management, including how Ford engages with suppliers, builds capacity within the supply chain and encourages suppliers to improve performance. Provide more detail around goals and targets in this area.	This year for the first time, we have developed a stand-alone section on sustainable supply chain management. It details Ford’s work to build capacity in the automotive supply chain around human rights and environmental sustainability issues. Also, responding to the previous round of stakeholder input, there is extensive new information on raw materials sustainability, including Ford’s response to conflict minerals challenges.
Conduct scenarios allowing consideration of how Ford would be impacted if actual levels of carbon in the atmosphere go much higher than initially projected, and take a leadership position on issues such as vehicle efficiency and consumer education. Develop updated vehicle-efficiency targets in addition to the broad stabilization goal. Discuss the benefits and challenges of supplier engagement around Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions.	For this report, we have added a detailed discussion of Ford’s science-based climate stabilization goal, including how it might be adjusted in light of changing external factors. We provide very detailed discussion of how we are implementing changes across our global vehicle portfolio to cut CO2 emissions. In the Supply Chain section, we have added a discussion of our participation in pilot supply chain greenhouse gas footprint efforts and what we have learned from them.
Disclose how Ford is assessing its water risk locally and globally – both within the Company’s owned and operated, as well as its supplier, facilities – and how it is collaborating with others.	This report includes a new material issue section on water, which summarizes our updated water strategy and approach to managing risks and opportunities related to water availability and quality.

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 the 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 or other authorities in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Mexico, the Philippines and the U.S.
• 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.

The kind of assurance used for each data set is noted in the data charts.