News & Analysis

Partners Group’s nine portfolio ‘ESG indicators’

The listed private markets firm will gather data on areas such as CO2 emissions, employee turnover and data maturity across its PE and infrastructure portfolios.

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Partners Group has outlined in its latest Corporate Sustainability Report nine “select ESG indicators” that it will apply to portfolio companies. The data points form part of the private markets firm’s new sustainability strategy, and will be implemented across private equity and infrastructure assets to assess their ESG performance.

The indicators are as follows:

Environmental
  • GHG emissions Scope 1 and 2 (tCO2e): As of the end of 2022, 92 percent of portfolio companies included in the indicators has provided their Scope 1 and 2 data.
  • Non-renewable energy consumption and production.
  • Percentage of waste that is recycled.
Social
  • Employee turnover rate.
  • Accident frequency rate ratio: This is calculated by dividing the total number of accidents by the number of direct and indirect full-time employees (FTE), a spokesperson from the firm confirmed.
  • Board-level diversity.
Governance
  • Whether the company has implemented a cybersecurity policy: 85 percent of Partners Group’s portfolio companies had a policy in place by the end of 2022.
  • Data maturity: “The average is taken between the maturity of portfolio companies’ responses to the quantitative and qualitative elements of the annual ESG data collection template,” explained the spokesperson. Quantitative elements assess an asset’s ability to monitor areas such as carbon footprint and FTEs. The qualitative elements include whether the portfolio company has in place “cyber policies, carbon reduction plans, etc”.
  • Whether the company has published a CSR policy.

The indicators have some overlap with the data points recommended by the ESG Data Convergence Initiative (EDCI), of which Partners Group is not currently a member. The EDCI recommends that its members gather data on Scope 1 and 2 emissions, renewable energy usage, board diversity, work-related accidents and employee turnover rate, though does not include metrics relating to cybersecurity or data maturity.

“We see a lot of initiatives coming out of the market and want to ensure that we share those that make sense, and streamline the collection through our existing practices in order to not overwhelm an already very complex data collection process,” the spokesperson said. “We continuously assess the appetite for existing and new initiatives, including the EDCI.”