Insights

March 15, 2024

2024 SBER Q1 Symposium

SR Inc held our Sustainable Business & Enterprise Roundtable (SBER) Q1 Executive Symposium on March 14th, 2024, in-person and virtually at the Cambridge Innovation Center in Cambridge, MA and at the ART Hotel in Denver, CO.

Sustainability Roundtable, Inc’s Charter organizes our 2024 research around two overarching themes: Moving Toward Mandatory Reporting and Scope 1-3 Decarbonization Strategy. SR Inc is appreciative of the in-depth discussions that took place around those themes, with a particular focus on Sustainability Strategy Leadership and Global Corporate Decarbonization. We look forward to continued collaboration on these topics with Member-Clients towards even more impressive progress over the next year.

The first portion of this symposium focused on Sustainability Strategy Leadership, wherein Jim Boyle, SR Inc’s CEO & Founder, began by highlighting pathways for “Sustainability Leadership Beyond Company Boundaries” through the LEAD initiative and the ERB Principles for Corporate Political Responsibility. He was joined by Senior Program Associate Anna Whitney in sharing the efforts of the Commonwealth Climate Coalition, a group of Massachusetts sustainability executives, policymakers, and labor leaders who are driving towards “Real Zero” emissions in MA through state-level clean energy policy. Key takeaways from this section include:

1. Increasing polarization requires a more deliberate promotion of science as the primary frame of more sustainable business.
2. Within that overarching frame, leadership – at all levels – can often best center their strategies around universal and inalienable human dignity.
3. That focus makes the climate challenge revealed by Earth System Science sympathetic, urgent, and arising from a demand to align with science.
4. Sustainability leaders will help multiple stakeholders align through their shared commitment to science-based decision making.
5. SBTi-aligned goals require long-term commitment to systemized engagement for systems level decarbonization.
6. “Real Zero” emissions requires long-term collaborations beyond a company’s boundaries like LEAD, Commonwealth Climate Coalition, and The Declaration for PC EACs.

The next portion of the event, “Evolving the Sustainability Reporting Landscape: SEC Climate Rule, TNFD, & Transition Planning,” examined SR Inc’s latest best-practice member guidance on nature-related disclosures and the new age of climate-related reporting. SR Inc’s case-based research and the insightful contributions of our symposium participants help advance our mission of accelerating the development and adoption of best practices in more sustainable business.

During this session, SR Inc Senior Analyst Casey Maslan shared details and resources on getting started with Nature-Related Disclosures, particularly through the lens of the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) framework. This presentation included considerations around the current and emerging landscape for corporate identification of nature-related issues, as well as how nature-related metrics factor into both voluntary and mandatory sustainability reporting. Following this discussion, SR Inc Senior Analyst Alison Millman led a discussion on the changes to mandatory reporting in 2024, including the newly passed SEC Climate-Related Disclosure Rule and a preview of SR Inc’s UK Climate-Related Financial Disclosure Regulations Primer. She then highlighted emerging SR Inc research and guidance on climate transition planning, which has entailed the development of an annotated template for Member-Clients to leverage as they work to create their own reports.

In-person and virtual participants heard from Splunk’s Senior Director of ESG and Sustainability, Carrie Christopher, on her work developing the Splunk Net Zero Transition Plan. Carrie shared her experience beta-testing SR Inc’s annotated template, with considerations and approaches for first-time preparers, as well as her perspective on transition planning as a component of Splunk’s broader regulatory readiness and reporting work. Key findings highlighted during this portion and discussion include:

1. While nature may not rank as a highly material issue for many Member-Clients in 2024, executives may begin to receive greater pressure to comment on and disclose nature-related issues in the coming years.
2. Though the final rule omits the Scope 3 disclosure requirement and qualifies most requirements with a materiality threshold, the SEC’s adoption of the final climate disclosure rule marks the beginning of a new age of climate-related reporting in the US.
3. Climate transition planning is becoming a common component of many reporting frameworks and requirements, and poses a challenging but potentially valuable exercise.
4. Climate transition plans, when considered alongside other reporting obligations, can help provide framing for the various aspects of climate governance, action plans, financing, targets, and more for the benefit of internal and external stakeholders.

In addition to the Sustainability Strategy Leadership topics covered above, the symposium included an in-depth discussion of Corporate Global Decarbonization with a specific focus on impact. This portion of the symposium was split into two parts, focusing first on carbon markets and secondly on renewable energy procurement, with the goal of creating  global decarbonization strategies that work towards SBT-aligned Scopes 1-3 emission mitigation, Beyond Value Chain Mitigation, and neutralization of remaining emissions.

SR Inc’s Manager of Research & Advisory Services, Julia Rothfield, shared insights from SR Inc’s Guidance on Navigating the Carbon Market with Integrity and Impact, including a conceptual framing for corporates interested in investing in the carbon market.  A special thank you goes to Andy Smith, Senior Manager of Global Energy Management & Sustainability at Cisco Systems, who afterwards discussed Cisco’s renewable energy and Net Zero goals and their use of Purchaser-Caused renewable electricity procurement, including innovative buyer-aggregated VPPAs, to achieve those goals.

Key takeaways from these portions of the symposium include:

Carbon Markets

1. Carbon credit markets to-date have included a full range of very impactful projects as well as projects surfaced as having little or no impact.
2. As such, companies face risk when buying carbon credits without extensive due diligence.
3. However, carbon projects are crucial to fully addressing climate change and corporations achieving their Net Zero SBTs, so a limited supply of impactful carbon credits in the current market will lead to constraints at both sector and individual corporate levels.
4. Investing in carbon projects can still be a powerful story, even amid the backlash.

Cisco’s Renewable Energy & Net Zero Strategy

1. Seek to maximize impact when evaluating renewable energy options in each of your relevant markets.
2. Educate and involve key stakeholders from the beginning when embarking on new or complex renewable energy transaction structures.
3. Leverage other high credit buyers and an organizing entity to convey a single voice for aggregated procurements of renewables.

The Q1 Symposium presentation and best practice Member Advisories from all portions of the event can be found in the SR Inc Digital Library, accessible exclusively to Member-Client executives. Please contact info@sustainround.com to learn more about gaining access to the full extent of the SR Inc Digital Library. 

SR Inc looks forward to reconvening next at our Q2 Executive Symposium on June 13th, 2024, in Boston and San Francisco. More information on this event is forthcoming. Please do not hesitate to reach out to the SR Inc team with any questions or feedback.