Honeywell’s Environmental Sustainability Index, released every quarter since the last quarter of 2022, is based on a “double-blind survey of 751 business, technology and sustainability professionals involved with planning, strategic development, implementation or oversight of environmental sustainability initiatives,” explains Honeywell, a leading industrial products, solutions, and technologies company.
The index delves into professionals’ sentiments regarding their organizations’ sustainability objectives across four key categories: energy evolution and efficiency, emissions reduction, pollution prevention, and circularity and recycling.
Extreme weather and corporate sustainability commitments
“The extreme weather events this year have increased the sense of urgency for immediate action at organizations,” said Gavin Towler, Chief Scientist for Sustainability and Chief Sustainability Officer at Honeywell. “As a result, we should expect to see more organizations looking to accelerate their sustainability efforts and, in particular, adopting a technology-driven approach to their energy transition plans.”
Indeed, the majority of companies surveyed by Honeywell say that weather events are impacting their sustainability programs.
According to the survey, over six in 10 organizations believe that the 2023 wildfires, floods and storms “will have a material impact on their environmental initiatives” while 45% say extreme heat will or already has had a material impact on their short-term plans.
The majority of companies also take sustainability seriously and are planning to boost investments in environmental sustainability initiatives for the upcoming year, the survey found.
Specifically, 75% of surveyed companies ranked sustainability as their most important initiative, with 92% saying they have formal plans for reporting on their environmental sustainability goals.
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Further, almost 88% of companies say they are planning to increase budgets for energy evolution and efficiency initiatives while every fifth company is now taking a “technology-driven approach to their sustainability initiatives,” which Honewell notes is the highest percentage since they launched the index.
When it comes to how confident organizations are in meeting sustainability goals, almost 73% say they are “at least somewhat optimistic about achieving near-term goals” — 9% more than a year ago.
Importantly, 92% of companies also said that they have an ESG reporting process in place.
“The data is showing that organizations in the public and private sectors are actively forming frameworks to partake in either policy-driven or investment and technological-oriented action in effort to address the global objectives in environmental sustainability,” CEO of The Futurum Group Daniel Newman said.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Featured Photo: Flooding in Cedar Rapids, IA. Featured Photo Credit: U.S. Geological Survey.
