Sustainability 2024: That’s What Top Management Is Looking At

In con­trast to what some com­pa­nies until recent­ly viewed as “envi­ron­men­tal report­ing” exer­cis­es, sus­tain­abil­i­ty is now an inte­gral part of cor­po­rate man­age­ment, vision, and strat­e­gy. It is reflect­ed in the active work of every­day busi­ness. And its reach extends far beyond pure­ly envi­ron­men­tal mat­ters. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty describes an over­all atti­tude that takes respon­si­bil­i­ty for ensur­ing a viable future in every way: in busi­ness con­texts, pro­fes­sion­al life in gen­er­al, and glob­al soci­ety as a whole.

Trans­paren­cy is need­ed — towards employ­ees, cus­tomers, busi­ness part­ners, and soci­ety. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty report­ing require­ments have been sharp­ened as of Jan­u­ary 1, 2024, and not only in the con­text of EU leg­is­la­tion. Banks, investors, and other stake­hold­ers desire infor­ma­tion and want to see clear signs of progress. Not only large cor­po­ra­tions, but also medi­um-sized, cap­i­tal mar­ket-based Euro­pean com­pa­nies have to com­ply with the Euro­pean Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Report­ing Stan­dards and devote con­sid­er­able effort to gath­er­ing data along their entire value chains.

No case resem­bles any other here. The pur­pos­es, spe­cial­iza­tions, sizes, and for­mats of the indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies are too dif­fer­ent. The sched­ules for reach­ing their strate­gic tar­gets also vary. What can done prompt­ly and in vis­i­ble ways? What cre­ative and attrac­tive forms can sus­tain­able action in busi­ness and indus­try take? Porsche Con­sult­ing Magazine’s edi­to­r­i­al team sur­veyed 17 man­agers from a wide range of indus­tries about their most impor­tant plans and goals for the year 2024. You can read their answers here. The results reveal high lev­els of com­mit­ment, as well as short-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals designed to accom­plish much more than what is required by the report­ing oblig­a­tions alone.

“The lat­est mid-term review from the UN Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary on achiev­ing the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals is more than sober­ing, for instance with respect to cli­mate pro­tec­tion and food secu­ri­ty. As I see it, devel­op­ment banks will be play­ing an even greater role in help­ing to achieve the progress we need. Fund­ing is tight, which makes it all the more impor­tant to base progress on mea­sur­able results. At KfW, we’ll there­fore be using our tranS­Form sus­tain­abil­i­ty pro­gram to fur­ther improve how we mea­sure the results of our new fund­ing pro­grams in 2024. A very spe­cial chal­lenge lies in com­pil­ing data of suf­fi­cient qual­i­ty for per­for­mance-based con­trol. We’ve taken this chal­lenge on. The tranS­Form team is work­ing with IT to devel­op a future-ori­ent­ed results-man­age­ment and report­ing sys­tem with the use of cut­ting-edge cloud technologies.”

“Gen­uine and uncom­pro­mis­ing enjoy­ment — that is what Erdinger Weißbräu stands for. With our tra­di­tion­al brew­ing skills, we are com­mit­ted to an uncom­pro­mis­ing phi­los­o­phy of qual­i­ty. That also means tak­ing spe­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty for the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety. After all, intact nat­ur­al sur­round­ings, respon­si­ble agri­cul­ture, and pure water are cru­cial if we want the best ingre­di­ents to brew our beer. We have there­fore firm­ly anchored sus­tain­abil­i­ty in a man­age­ment char­ter. Despite the use of cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy and con­tin­u­ous improve­ment of the plants, brew­ing will sure­ly con­tin­ue to be a very ener­gy-inten­sive process. That means the biggest chal­lenges as well as goals for the com­ing years will con­sist of switch­ing from fos­sil fuels to renew­able ener­gy on the one hand, while also trans­form­ing the entire sec­tor to reduce CO₂ equivalents.”

“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­tin­ues to top our agen­da. For many projects we’re also pro­mot­ing the inte­gra­tion of non-finan­cial aspects affect­ing the envi­ron­ment, social wel­fare, and gov­er­nance into our exist­ing process­es and there­fore also into our busi­ness model and cor­po­rate strategy.

As for our sus­tain­abil­i­ty tar­gets, we are proud to have already reached some of them in 2022, which was ear­li­er than planned. We’re cur­rent­ly draft­ing a new set of tar­gets, includ­ing some to reduce emis­sions fur­ther. For the first time we’re also mea­sur­ing Scope 3 emis­sions from our sup­ply chain, both upstream and downstream.

New legal require­ments have raised sus­tain­abil­i­ty report­ing to a level sim­i­lar to that for finan­cial report­ing. We’re work­ing full steam ahead on putting the EU tax­on­o­my as well as the Cor­po­rate Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Report­ing Direc­tive (CSRD) with the Euro­pean Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Report­ing Stan­dards (ESRS) into prac­tice. A mate­ri­al­i­ty analy­sis is one of the ele­ments we’ve already imple­ment­ed in 2023. It enabled us to deter­mine that we’ll con­tin­ue to focus on envi­ron­men­tal aspects, and espe­cial­ly emis­sions reduc­tions, even though Jenop­tik is not in one of the high-emit­ting sec­tors. Social aspects have also become con­sid­er­ably more rel­e­vant, and we’ll be plac­ing high­er pri­or­i­ties on mat­ters like recruit­ing, employ­ee loy­al­ty, and diver­si­ty as well as uphold­ing human rights and envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards in the sup­ply chain.”

“We’re going through an upheaval of his­tor­i­cal pro­por­tions, which is pre­sent­ing com­pa­nies with enor­mous trans­for­ma­tion­al tasks. We at Com­merzbank are accom­pa­ny­ing our Ger­man and inter­na­tion­al clients along the road to greater sus­tain­abil­i­ty. That extends from strate­gic ESG con­sult­ing and sus­tain­able invest­ments to sus­tain­able finance. The most impor­tant dri­ver here is sure­ly the expan­sion of renew­able ener­gies. Our clients can rely on our more than three decades of exper­tise as one of the biggest fun­ders of renew­able ener­gies in Europe. We stand behind what we do with our own Com­merzbank ‘Net Zero’ com­mit­ment. By 2050 we want our entire loan and invest­ment port­fo­lio to be at net zero, and our own emis­sions already by 2040. Now is the time to act — for indus­try and busi­ness, and there­fore also for Com­merzbank along­side its clients.”

“We’ve been work­ing inten­sive­ly on our sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy. Our ESG road map defines clear aims and mea­sures on cor­po­rate, prod­uct, and project lev­els. One of our main tar­gets for 2024 and beyond is to fur­ther decar­bonize our busi­ness process­es and our Gold­beck prod­ucts. One exam­ple here is our new ‘Blue Build­ing’ con­cept, which makes it con­sid­er­ably eas­i­er to do eco­nom­i­cal and sus­tain­able con­struc­tion. We want to achieve car­bon neu­tral­i­ty for our projects early on, and to inten­si­fy and dig­i­tal­ize our sus­tain­abil­i­ty sup­port ser­vices through­out the entire build­ing life cycle. Our sus­tain­abil­i­ty reports ensure the great­est pos­si­ble trans­paren­cy, which means we’re also fur­ther pro­fes­sion­al­iz­ing our ESG data man­age­ment. We’re research­ing, devel­op­ing, and pur­su­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive projects in sus­tain­able con­struc­tion mate­ri­als. Our strat­e­gy also includes advanc­ing the trans­for­ma­tion with­in our own com­pa­ny as well.”

“Cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty was one of the main bases for devel­op­ing our company’s strat­e­gy and vision, which revolve around peo­ple. Riverty’s ser­vices had more than 25 mil­lion users from Octo­ber 2022 to Sep­tem­ber 2023 alone — which shows the enor­mous respon­si­bil­i­ty we have to our cus­tomers. Our goal, there­fore, is to express a peo­ple-cen­tered focus in all of our prod­ucts and inter­ac­tions. We also take a com­pre­hen­sive approach to our cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty — which includes fair prod­ucts, respon­si­bil­i­ty for our employ­ees and soci­ety in gen­er­al, and eco­log­i­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. For exam­ple, we’re work­ing on mak­ing our dig­i­tal prod­ucts more inclu­sive; we’re offer­ing free finan­cial train­ing pro­grams; and we’re incen­tiviz­ing green­er busi­ness trips in order to lower emis­sions. Inspired by the UN’s Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, we’re try­ing to inte­grate cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty into every aspect of what we do.”

“Resource scarci­ty and cli­mate change are forc­ing us to rethink our approach­es and to focus on sus­tain­able busi­ness. Alstom is a glob­al leader in inno­v­a­tive alter­na­tive rail mobil­i­ty solu­tions, and there­fore a dri­ver of sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty overall.

We place a pre­mi­um on renew­able ener­gies in the pro­duc­tion of Alstom rolling stock. Our pro­duc­tion will con­tin­ue to be car­bon neu­tral in 2024. The lat­est Alstom trains are engi­neered to use even less ener­gy, based on devel­op­ments in areas like light­weight mate­ri­als, ener­gy-sav­ing drive sys­tems, and aero­dy­nam­ics. That min­i­mizes the use of resources and the lev­els of car­bon emissions.

Addi­tion­al impor­tant fac­tors include dig­i­tal­iz­ing and automat­ing both trains and infra­struc­ture. A dig­i­tal­ized rail net­work and high lev­els of automa­tion enable up to 35 per­cent more trains to run on the same rails while also reduc­ing ener­gy require­ments by around 30 per­cent. We’re mak­ing an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to dig­i­tal­iz­ing rail sys­tems at our two think tanks in Braun­schweig and Berlin.

We also think sta­tion­ary ener­gy stor­age sys­tems for urban trans­port are a cru­cial part of sus­tain­abil­i­ty over­all. Our ‘GUW+’ sys­tem adds con­sid­er­able value here. It sus­tain­ably sta­bi­lizes urban power grids by stor­ing excess brake ener­gy from urban trains and feed­ing it back into oper­a­tions when need­ed. That helps cities reduce their depen­dence on exter­nal sources of energy.”

“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty has to become a part of life for us all. At Weber­Haus, it has been a cor­ner­stone of our activ­i­ties for years. We are work­ing inten­sive­ly on fur­ther reduc­ing our envi­ron­men­tal foot­print by using sus­tain­able con­struc­tion mate­ri­als and improv­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy at our build­ings and sites. But sus­tain­abil­i­ty means a lot more to us. We also want to improve our social foot­print. The focus here is on employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion as well as devel­op­ment and fur­ther train­ing. In addi­tion, we pro­vide tar­get­ed sup­port for projects at our sites in the areas of inte­gra­tion, edu­ca­tion, and sports. And final­ly, we place a spe­cial empha­sis on ensur­ing that our fam­i­ly com­pa­ny remains in good shape for the future. Our ‘Strat­e­gy 30/70’ — Weber­Haus will cel­e­brate its 70th anniver­sary in 2030 — is an impor­tant step in this direction.”

“Make indi­vid­ual mobil­i­ty more enjoy­able and sus­tain­able by advanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy and peo­ple” — our Pur­pose reflects how Webas­to intends to meet grow­ing demands for eco­nom­ic, eco­log­i­cal, and social respon­si­bil­i­ty. Joint efforts and bold deci­sions are need­ed to devel­op sig­nif­i­cant­ly more sus­tain­able solu­tions for cli­mate-neu­tral mobil­i­ty in the future. Back in 2016, we iden­ti­fied elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty as one of our future mar­kets. Now we see the cre­ative search for solu­tions to achieve our ambi­tious cli­mate tar­gets as an opportunity.

Our year in 2024 will con­tin­ue to be marked by decar­boniza­tion: Around the globe, more than 10 sites with sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion poten­tial are imple­ment­ing their most effec­tive mea­sures, such as switch­ing to green ener­gy sup­plies, increas­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, and rais­ing employ­ee aware­ness of ener­gy sav­ings. With its bat­tery pro­duc­tion that runs on 100 per­cent green elec­tric­i­ty and its ener­gy stor­age sys­tem made of hun­dreds of sec­ond-life bat­tery mod­ules, our glob­al com­pe­tence cen­ter for bat­tery devel­op­ment in Schier­ling is one of the blue­prints for our jour­ney to cre­ate sus­tain­able prod­ucts and future-proof jobs – and to drive the Group’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty transformation.”

“The ceram­ic indus­try uses a lot of power. Dur­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es our prod­ucts are sub­ject­ed to high tem­per­a­tures over long peri­ods of time. That requires ener­gy, but it’s also one of the rea­sons for the enor­mous strength of our high-per­for­mance ceram­ics. These prod­ucts ben­e­fit many peo­ple, includ­ing patients who receive arti­fi­cial hip joints with ceram­ic components. 

High-per­for­mance ceram­ics also play a role in solu­tions for the ener­gy tran­si­tion itself. They are used in wind tur­bines, hydro­elec­tric sta­tions, and pho­to­volta­ic plants. We are work­ing on low­er­ing our ener­gy needs and on alter­na­tives to fos­sil fuels. Clear sus­tain­abil­i­ty tar­gets serve to help us along this path.

We’re see­ing ongo­ing high demand for high-per­for­mance ceram­ics in med­ical appli­ca­tions, espe­cial­ly for joint replace­ments. One way we’re respond­ing is by adding a pro­duc­tion hall to our med­ical equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing site in the Upper Fran­con­ian town of Mark­tred­witz. Send­ing a strong sig­nal, med­ical equip­ment from Cer­amTec will con­tin­ue to be “Made in Germany.” 

In the course of this con­struc­tion project we’re look­ing very close­ly at how to use renew­able ener­gies or pro­duce them our­selves. We’re also exam­in­ing how to uti­lize waste heat and to intel­li­gent­ly con­sol­i­date our pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties. Every step counts! 

Find­ing good solu­tions to pro­mote sus­tain­abil­i­ty requires clear com­mit­ment and strong teams as well as sup­port­ive pub­lic poli­cies that enable medi­um-sized enter­pris­es, too, to han­dle the ener­gy transition.”

“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is an inte­gral part of our val­ues and a key com­po­nent of our busi­ness. At Lan­des­bank Hes­sen-Thürin­gen, we are not just respon­si­ble for the gen­er­al good. We also com­plete­ly sup­port and are com­mit­ted to a sus­tain­able approach that lays the basis for every client relationship.

Our 2023 sus­tain­abil­i­ty report­ing once again shows that Hela­ba cov­ers all dimen­sions of sus­tain­abil­i­ty. We pro­mote it in a wide range of areas, from sus­tain­able lend­ing frame­works to social vol­un­teer­ing pro­grams. We’ll pur­sue this com­pre­hen­sive approach in 2024 as well, because it’s the only authen­tic way to achieve gen­uine trans­for­ma­tion and pro­vide expert guid­ance for our clients. Top­ics like attain­ing cir­cu­lar economies, pre­serv­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty, and pro­mot­ing decar­boniza­tion will remain cru­cial in 2024 — espe­cial­ly in dia­logue with our customers.

Five over­ar­ch­ing goals for the envi­ron­ment, social respon­si­bil­i­ty, and gov­er­nance are guid­ing our sus­tain­abil­i­ty-based actions. We use the asso­ci­at­ed KPIs to define tar­gets and mea­sure our progress, for exam­ple in sus­tain­able funding.”

“Ceram­ic pro­duc­tion is one of the most ener­gy-inten­sive indus­tries. At Durav­it we’ve set the ambi­tious tar­get of car­bon-neu­tral pro­duc­tion by 2045, and have been tak­ing numer­ous steps for years now to reach this goal.

How­ev­er, what we need is a dis­rup­tive change in ceram­ic pro­duc­tion that tack­les the prob­lem of car­bon emis­sions from gas at its roots. We’re embark­ing on this trans­for­ma­tion with our new pro­duc­tion site in Cana­da, where we’re build­ing the world’s first cli­mate-neu­tral ceram­ic plant and replac­ing gas with hydro­elec­tric power.

With that we’re show­ing our sec­tor what’s pos­si­ble and how trans­for­ma­tion toward sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion can work even in a sec­tor with very high ener­gy needs. We’re well aware that the car­bon foot­print in pro­duc­tion is becom­ing an ever more rel­e­vant fac­tor for larg­er num­bers of our customers.

Top place­ment for the 2023 Ger­man Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Award con­firms our approach and encour­ages us to pur­sue this course even more res­olute­ly in the future.”

“We want our ‘prof­it for’ strat­e­gy to show that we, as a long-stand­ing fam­i­ly com­pa­ny, can make a sus­tain­able con­tri­bu­tion to achiev­ing a bet­ter world. This strat­e­gy is based on envi­ron­men­tal, social, eco­nom­ic, and inter­nal sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals. Over the next three years we want to save at least 3,000 tons of car­bon emis­sions by means of con­crete projects in areas like pro­duc­tion and pack­ag­ing. For 2024, we’ve there­fore decid­ed to change the mate­r­i­al in the cas­ings of our most famous prod­uct — the edding 3000 mark­er — from con­ven­tion­al alu­minum to post-con­sumer recy­cling alu­minum (PCR). Start­ing in 2024, we’ll also be assum­ing com­mer­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty for the entire ‘Share’ col­lec­tion of social impact sta­tionery. What real­ly pleas­es me is that every sta­tionery prod­uct sold enables an hour of school for chil­dren in Ugan­da. We’re expect­ing to be able to fund five mil­lion hours of school for chil­dren there over the next three years.”

Dr. Anne Lamp: “2024 will be an impor­tant and excit­ing year for us at Trace­less. We’re going to start build­ing our first indus­tri­al plant where we can final­ly pro­duce large vol­umes of our bio­ma­te­r­i­al. We’ll be using envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly tech­nol­o­gy to con­vert resid­ual plant mat­ter from grain pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties into plas­tic-free alter­na­tive bio­ma­te­ri­als. With an annu­al pro­duc­tion of sev­er­al thou­sand tons of Trace­less mate­r­i­al, we’ll not only pre­vent the same vol­ume of plas­tic waste but also save 89 per­cent of ener­gy and 91 per­cent of green­house gas emis­sions com­pared to con­ven­tion­al plas­tic production.”

Johan­na Baare: “Anoth­er sus­tain­abil­i­ty goal is to build our rapid­ly expand­ing team in respon­si­ble and value-based ways. In 2024 we’ll be putting an inno­v­a­tive lead­er­ship con­cept into prac­tice, which is based on appre­ci­a­tion, mutu­al empow­er­ment, and col­lab­o­ra­tion. We’re well aware that we can only carry out our mis­sion with a strong team culture.”

“Our aims for 2024 are to dili­gent­ly fol­low the road map in our ESG strat­e­gy, to gain new part­ners for our sus­tain­abil­i­ty efforts, and espe­cial­ly to put more ground­break­ing projects into prac­tice with and for our clients. As a project devel­op­er we’re respon­si­ble not only for run­ning our own com­pa­ny in a sus­tain­able man­ner but also for actu­al­ly devel­op­ing and build­ing cli­mate-friend­ly struc­tures. We’ve already passed major mile­stones. We’ve been able to recruit Nicole Wall­ner for the newly cre­at­ed posi­tion of Sus­tain­able Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Direc­tor. She’ll be lead­ing our new ESG core team and coor­di­nat­ing future activ­i­ties in this field. That will include devel­op­ing KPIs and mak­ing our progress both trans­par­ent and mea­sur­able. We want Ten Brinke’s car­bon foot­print to be our own bench­mark for real­is­tic tar­gets in decar­boniz­ing our work. Green has to be the new gold!”

“As the head of a fam­i­ly com­pa­ny and as a nature-lov­ing high-sea sailor, I have a spe­cial inter­est in sus­tain­abil­i­ty and cli­mate pro­tec­tion. Our 38 car-wash facil­i­ties in Ger­many clean the exte­ri­ors and inte­ri­ors of up to 60,000 cars a day. We place a pre­mi­um on qual­i­ty. And we apply the same strict stan­dards when it comes to sus­tain­abil­i­ty. We use water, heat, clean­ing mate­ri­als, and ener­gy extreme­ly effi­cient­ly. And we get bet­ter at it every year. Many of our sites are already pro­duc­ing their own ener­gy — with pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems on their roofs.

In the cap­i­tal city of Berlin alone, our pho­to­volta­ic sys­tem with a sur­face area the size of 42 ten­nis courts saves 730 tons of CO₂ a year. And if the sun doesn’t shine, we use only cer­ti­fied green power. In 2024, we’ll be tak­ing more big steps toward using solar power. The car wash we opened in sum­mer 2023 in Mül­heim an der Ruhr serves as the model. It is prob­a­bly the world’s first large-scale car wash whose inte­grat­ed solar sys­tems pro­vide enough elec­tri­cal power to run its operations.”