35% of Italian companies hold back on sustainability
35% of Italian companies ha scaled down the sustainability plans because of the war in Ukraine. The data emerges from the new study Ernst& Young “Seize the change” which analyzes the most significant sustainable development trends for Italian companies. In general, there has also been a slowdown in carrying out actions towards the territory, where medium-small companies in the industrial sector are still more active than the others. Among those interviewed, there is a 21 percentage point decrease in companies that have developed community support initiatives compared to the 2021 figure, in turn 13 percentage points lower than the 2019 figure.
And another weak link towards the transition to green, the dossier says, is that of finance, which plays a fundamental role in the transition of the current economic model towards a more sustainable model: in their investment choices, financial institutions can keep consideration also environmental, social and governance criteria of sustainability. According to Ey data, there was also a slowdown by companies in the use of sustainable finance instruments. Most of the companies interviewed have never used financial instruments such as credit lines: 71%, in fact, affirm that they have not been taken into consideration. 26% report that the initiative is in their strategic plan, but only 3% have used tools of this type in the last two years.
The transition also continues for SMEs
Assuming therefore that over a third of Italian companies, in the face of the crisis, sacrifice the “environment” item, Ernst & Young’s research nonetheless paints an overall satisfactory picture of the sustainable transition in Italy. The 65% of the companies interviewed continues in fact with the activation of more sustainable business models. But this is done especially by listed companies of which the80% developed a sustainability plan (about +32 percentage points compared to 2020) and the 30% has defined quantitative targets.
War, and soaring gas costs, he favored then i green projects related to renewable energy (39 to 47% of companies)
In this scenario it emerges how the issue of sustainability is taken into consideration even by small and medium-sized enterprises and not only from medium-large ones. Even if this occurs at a variable speed on individual issues and with unevenness between sectors as some (energy and textiles) proceed faster than others (media, telecommunications and construction) in integrating sustainability.
Massimo Antonelli, CEO of Ernst & Young in Italy and general manager of Europe west, looks to the positive data anyway. “Sustainability today represents the priority at an investment level for 40% of the world‘s CEOs – he comments -. While in Italy more than half of the companies interviewed consider sustainability a fundamental driver for increasing their competitiveness”.
The listed companies are the most launched on sustainability
In this scenario, as mentioned, the EY research shows that listed companies take the lion’s share in terms of sustainability. 74% have set up a dedicated committee or governance body that reports to the board of directors. An increase of 15 percentage points compared to 59%. And looking at the medium-long term, around 82% of listed companies have defined a sustainability plan (a trend up by around 32 percentage points compared to the previous year of analysis). Of these, 46% of the sample included the full version of the sustainability plan in the non-financial statement, 50% included only some aspects in the NFS and only 4% prepared the plan in other documents.
Also due to the problem of the weakness in the global supply system with the covid crisis, we can finally observe, overall, an increase in attention towards the development of a sustainable supply chain and, in particular, towards the implementation of measures to improve its efficiency and sustainable logistics. Indeed, 92% of listed companies insert the theme of sustainable procurement in reporting its non-financial performance. According to the survey, almost 1 in 3 companies have decided to make changes to their supply chain in the last two years with a view to greater responsibility in the choice of suppliers and to meet customer needs.
In general terms, concludes Ey, from the analysis of the performance of the most sustainable companies it emerges that the green acts favorably on the growth and turnover of companies. But in the meantime the great environmental revolution seems a bit tarnished and the fact remains that 35% of Italian companies, when difficulties arise, prefer to sacrifice a little sustainability rather than more painful cuts.