Introduction:
The CSO Awards, held at the World Economic Forum in Davos, is a prestigious event that recognises and celebrates exceptional sustainability leadership among European companies. This year, we are proud to announce a groundbreaking collaboration between the Chief Sustainability Officer Awards and ClimateGPT, starting at the European CSO Awards 2025. ClimateGPT is a cutting-edge AI model family, the first foundational models to have been built on climate change provides unparalleled insights into human effects of climate change.
The Judging Process:
Companies that are eligible are companies with over $1B in annual revenue, an headcount of over 5K employees, for the Eurpean Awards be headquartered in Europe, and not include Oil & Gas, defence, advisory, etc. Full criteria nominees and winners are listed in the award booklet.
ClimateGPT gave us a radical new voice on the panel. As an AI Judge it grounded ESG reports in reality.
It is this difference that charts the path forward for Chief Sustainability Officers and was an invaluable voice in our CSO Awards selection process. We look forward to empowering every CSO on Earth with this intelligence.
-Harald Neidhardt, Chairman CSO Awards
The CSO Awards employed a rigorous, science-based model to evaluate and rank the top 100 European companies and CSOs. The judging process involved four dimensions, each with its own set of criteria and data scores. These dimensions included:
As one of the judging partners, ClimateGPT played a crucial role in grounding and evaluating the self reported CSO performance against the Erasmus.AI massive corpora of global events. ClimateGPT’s focus was on providing external validation, deeper understanding of the ground truth, and understand the context of ESG Reports. By leveraging ClimateGPT groundbreaking foundational AI models combined with planetary scale datasets platform from Erasmus.AI, ClimateGPT helped to identify areas of alignment and misalignment between companies’ reported sustainability performance and their actual environmental impact.
- Science & Behaviour based Maturity Index: Developed by the Leonardo Centre at Imperial College, this index assesses the maturity levels of companies in various sectors and geographies.
- ESG Qualitative Rating: Utilizing publicly available ESG Ratings, this dimension evaluates companies that exceed regulatory requirements in their advancements on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria.
- Planet & People: This dimension involves an AI-powered analysis of sustainability reports, extracting information on Greenhouse Gas emissions, Biodiversity measures, and Water usage. Additionally, partners Rainforest Partnership and Denominator conducted in-depth analyses on tropical rainforest ecosystem impact and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) matrix scores.
- Survey & Self-Assessment: Based on external ESG Ratings and the Imperial College Maturity Index, this dimension involved a survey and self-assessment of the top 100 CSOs.
ClimateGPT’s Role:
The CSO Awards and ClimateGPT collaboration marks a significant milestone in the evolution of sustainability reporting and analysis. ClimateGPT grounded evaluation of company written ESG reports with real world events. Exploiting the power behind ClimateGPT, creator Erasmus.AI’s leveraged its planetary scale corpora in combination with the models to provide insights not yet seen, to ground reports in reality and to challenge practice, where the community can learn faster.
By combining the expertise of the Leonardo Centre at Imperial College, Denominator, Rainforest Partnership, and ClimateGPT, the CSO Awards were able to provide a comprehensive and accurate assessment of sustainability leadership among European companies.
The Winners:
The winners of the CSO Awards were announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, recognizing companies that have demonstrated exceptional commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship. ClimateGPT’s contribution to the judging process helped to ensure that the winners were truly deserving of this recognition.
The CSO Awards and ClimateGPT collaboration sets a new standard for sustainability reporting and analysis. By leveraging the power of AI and data-driven insights, we can better understand the true sustainability performance of companies and recognise those that are truly leading the way. We look forward to continuing this collaboration and to supporting the development of more sustainable business practices in the years to come.
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