While most enterprises are familiar with environmental reporting, social and community impact metrics present a new set of challenges. From data collection difficulties to evolving regulatory requirements, businesses often struggle to integrate social impact into their sustainability strategies.
Sustainability reporting is evolving. As businesses face growing pressure to report on their social and community impact alongside environmental metrics, many struggle with data collection, compliance, and analysis. That’s where Rio comes in.
Themes across the room today were consistent. Energy, transportation, real estate/homes, financing the net zero transition, hearing views from across UK government ministries and government departments was exciting. There is clearly more acceleration taking place from around 8-10 years ago, when this one topic might have appeared as one agenda item for 45 minutes. Now we see such catalysing momentum behind solving these problems.
The New Statesmen Energy and Climate conference was a great opportunity to connect with different policy experts on the real current state of sustainability in the UK. The key points were promising, because we see more non partisan behaviour, which is not divisive. The pace of change requires significant improvement. I think that consensus was broadly shared. The UK Committee on Climate Change had not long ago issued a clear analysis that progression has been lacking.
1.5 degrees is a scientific necessity, not a political target. This was the Stockholm Institutes latest update attempting to focus on priorities. The role of technology in the sustainable transition, is to act as a scientific, mechanical, industry and government led, supported by finance, orchestrally. Governments independently cannot be the conductor alone. We must have G20 collaboration on minimum standards for what Net Zero translates into, as an economic, financial and social theory. The UK Government has done well in implementing a world leading Climate Change Act, and then a legally binding Net Zero target. I wonder what the legal consequences will be for the ministers of the day that fail on that agenda.
Despite clear rumbling in the audience that we’re not going quick enough – particularly that the energy sector is not transitioning at pace and scale – indications are the sector continues to leap further than they themselves had sceptically forecast. Needless to say, renewable energy is possibly the clearest success story. As battery technology and electric mobility follow suit, it’s clear housing (20% of the UK’s country emissions, source), cooperation across the private, public and financial sectors must rapidly get behind what will be looked back at as a new industrialisation.
Today it felt remiss the UK did not focus on agriculture, which presents and equally similar quick win. Undoubtedly the journey to 2030 will bring to life more discourse on emissions related calculations. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Lifecycle Analysis, ISO standards, and of course the various interpretations of these frameworks and standards is a minefield of ambiguity to new groups. Ownership of territorial emissions from imports, and facilitated through exports can be resolved through strong advice based change.
ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) is a series of standards that are used to measure the impact that a business or organisation has on the environment and society. It also measures how accountable the business or organisation is for its actions, as well as how transparent it is.
What is TCFD, and why is it important for your organisation? What are the TCFD recommendations and how are they used?
On 27 June 2023, under the IFRS Foundation (International Financial Reporting Standards), the ISSB (International Sustainability Standards Board) released the S1 and S2 reporting standards.
How well a company is performing on ESG aspects is becoming more important for investors, consumers, employees and business partners and, therefore, management. In a recent poll, we found that a majority of people found the multiple ESG frameworks and evolving ESG regulations among the biggest challenges when it comes to producing ESG reports.
According to a recent survey by Morningstar Sustainalytics, 90% of companies either have or are developing a formal strategy to manage corporate environmental, social, and governance practices. This follows on the heels of a ‘Sustainability Action Report’ commissioned by Deloitte in December 2022, which revealed that 99% of public companies expect to invest in ESG reporting tech and tools in the next 12 months.
The past year has been a busy one with three UK Prime Ministers, two different COPs and TCFD mandate for businesses. It has also been a a challenging one for companies with regards to ESG. From an energy and cost-of-living crisis that emerged at the start of the year to key climate and biodiversity summits in recent weeks, 2022 has reinforced the need to tackle the climate crisis head-on.
More than 120 world leaders have arrived at the COP27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.