Earth Day: Climate change is becoming ever more important to business

Good morning, and Happy Earth Day.

With each passing week, I become more convinced that 2021 will be seen as the year that business got serious about climate change. And the reason is because climate change is becoming ever more important to business.

A new survey out this morning from IBM underscores the point. The survey covered 14,000 people in nine countries. Among its findings:

—More than 70% of people now say they are more likely to work for, or stay with, a company with a good record or reputation on the environment.
—55% say they are “willing to pay more for brands that are sustainable and environmentally responsible.”
—48% of investors say their portfolio “already takes environmental sustainability into account,” and another 21% say they will likely add sustainability as a factor for investment decisions in the future.

Those numbers all have moved up in the last year. That’s why 84% of CEOs said in a separate IBM survey that sustainability will be important to their strategy in 2022—up from just 32% who said the same in 2018. “COVID has substantively raised people’s awareness of general global connectedness,” says Mark Foster, SVP of IBM Global Business Services. “The line has been crossed.  It has gone from an intellectual conversation about sustainability to more of a gut sense.” And “people are looking at it as a business opportunity.”

Heineken CEO Dolf van den Brink, whom I also spoke with yesterday, is a good example. He recently announced ambitious plans to make the company’s beer production carbon neutral by 2030, and to make its entire supply chain, distribution and packaging carbon neutral by 2040. Achieving those goals “is going to be painful.” But he says the commitment is not only good marketing, it also motivates employees. “You do all this external messaging, but the real energy is inside the company.” Van den Brink believes the pandemic has led to “a kind of expanded consciousness of vulnerability. People realize how dependent they are on the environment.”

By the way, the IBM study shows the U.S. Continues to be an outlier when it comes to public attitudes on climate, with only 51% saying climate change is very or extremely important to them, compared to 73% in the other eight countries surveyed.

More news below.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
[email protected]

TOP NEWS

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AROUND THE WATER COOLER

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This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.