Two striking trends emerge from our 2024 Global Sustainability Study.
Firstly, the different pace which corporates are integrating sustainability. Some of our respondents cite bold 2030 Net Zero commitments; flag their company’s inclusion in ESG indices and say treasury has successfully tapped green finance.
Others are much earlier on the journey with no net zero target and in some cases, unaware of what Scope 3 even means. One group of global corporates have bought-in to sustainability, yet to see real, meaningful progress, corporates with different views also need to be persuaded to act.
Respondents’ emphatic response that integrating sustainability and climate considerations neither improves the bottom line nor boosts the share price, but significantly adds to costs, particularly the reporting burden, also stands out. It suggests that the market still isn’t pricing in climate risk and corporates that integrate sustainability aren’t tapping a lower cost of capital.
Many respondents have agreed policies and procedures to address sustainability and it also a board level issue amongst most of them.
Emissions reporting and data gathering is time-consuming – a majority of respondents (72%) cited reporting and the lack of standardisation as a burden and lean heavily on advisors.
We find climate action and gender equality are the most popular SDGs and companies are increasingly integrating KPIs to reduce emissions. Over a quarter of respondents (29%) have issued sustainability linked loans and a similar number have sold a green bond. Just over a quarter of respondents have invested in ESG MMFs, but half of our respondents felt green investment had lowered returns.
Although none of the respondents said that ESG integration improves the bottom line or share-price, positively, over a quarter of respondents said that a sustainability strategy creates positive customer and investor relationships.
Our respondents said regulation would have the single biggest impact on spurring progress – alongside positive customer feedback.
