4 reasons why your business needs a sustainability plan

Keep your current investors

Because of the increased public awareness surrounding the climate crisis, there’s now a greater expectation from investment funds to disclose the carbon emissions of their portfolios. Essentially, investors want to make sure that that any money they put into a fund will be going toward sustainable, environmentally friendly companies.

Don’t just take our word for it. Those were the words of Mark Carney, former governor of The Bank of England. “In the future, climate and ESG considerations will likely be at the heart of mainstream investing. Investors will tailor their investments and fulfil their fiduciary duties through better quality and more widely available data on sustainability and performance, and more informed judgements of strategic resilience.”

It won’t just be your shareholders who’ll want to ensure that your business is implementing an effective sustainability plan, which brings us to our next point.

Attract new customers

As the climate crisis has grabbed headlines increasingly often in recent years, consumers in general have become more conscious of the environmental impact of their own shopping habits, as well as those of the businesses they’re shopping with. This trend is gathering pace especially quickly among millennial and generation Z consumers, who account for a growing share of spending. They want to see that businesses have a positive impact on important social and economic issues like the climate crisis, and that they actively address these issues through their sustainability plans.

So how are investors and customers assessing the efficacy of your business’s sustainability plan? Well, it could have a great deal to do with ESG.

Increasing emphasis on ESG based investment strategies

ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance, and is essentially a list of key criteria used by investors to evaluate companies that they might want to invest in. In other words, it assesses how your business performs from an environmental perspective, how it approaches social issues, and how your business is governed from the top down. (If you need a few more details, we’ve covered the subject of ESG in greater detail in our post about What is ESG.)

It’s becoming a common trend for companies with strong ESG performance rates to give out higher returns to their investors, as well as earn themselves reputations as generally lower risk assets, and display remarkable resilience during a crisis (the most obvious of these being the COVID-19 pandemic). For these reasons alone, ESG is definitely something worth thinking about when it comes to implementing an effective sustainability plan.

Ensure growth of your business

By embracing sustainability, you massively increase the odds of maintaining a healthy relationship with investors and customers alike, ultimately keeping your sales high and your business thriving. Falling behind means risking losing out on potential clients to their more sustainable rivals.

An effective sustainability plan is a vital part of making sure your business remains viable for as long as possible, and there’re a number of ways you can improve the sustainability and ESG rating of your business (some of which we can supply you with here at Low Carbon Energy!).

Our experts have over 30 years of combined experience, having helped SMEs and large corporations across a wide variety of sectors transform their business’ energy supply.
Each of our installations is bespoke, and we tailor your solution on your specific energy profile, helping us to maximise carbon reductions and save you up to thousands of pounds in energy bills.

Feel free to give us a call today on 01282 421 489, and we’ll get started on helping you to reduce your carbon footprint even further, cutting energy bills and maximising profits for your business.