Awareness is growing about the need to care for our environment and the people who live in it and do more to make sure our past mistakes aren’t a part of our future. On issues from climate change to diversity, expectations are growing for businesses to be part of the solution. This is why organisations’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices are more important than ever. In fact, a majority of the public expects CEOs to inform and shape conversations and policy debates, and our global research found that most people believe business leaders should be accountable for ESG performance.
Helping businesses and society do the right thing
We’re helping companies implement their ESG strategy
Now more than ever companies need to think beyond purely the financials to fully embed ESG into all aspects of business. Setting a net zero strategy and the transformation needed to reach net zero carbon emissions is a paramount ESG challenge for companies. We advise our clients that climate and ESG more broadly can’t be simply tacked on as an extra project. ESG needs to sit at the heart of the business strategy and be built into enterprise architecture. Linking executive pay to ESG goals and appointing an empowered Chief Sustainability Officer can also help fuel the sustainability transformation to meet set targets.
Over the past years, PwC has been providing assurance on a large number of key performance indicators included in the annual sustainability report published by a large listed entity. As part of this engagement, we delivered assurance that ESG objectives were met by providing independent assurance on various KPIs related to environmental, social and economic information, including energy consumption, water consumption, equal pay, training, and work-related injuries, amongst others.
We’re helping clients manage the impact of climate change
ESG is equally about risk as it is about opportunity. Beyond helping clients reduce their negative impact on the environment and society around them, we’re also helping clients understand the climate’s impact on them.
Climate change is already here and is disrupting supply chains, business operations and communities, even here in Malta. Few entities will have offices, manufacturing plants or people in areas not affected by it; no upstream suppliers or downstream customers exposed to climate risk; no reliance on natural resources or ecosystems and no vulnerability to climate-driven political instability, resource shortages or economic downturns. We’re helping clients to clearly see their climate risks and map them, to then be in a better position to respond to and mitigate them.
PwC is assisting a number of banks in developing implementation plans to address their supervisory expectations for climate risk. Throughout such engagements, we support these banks to assess their business environment in detail, enhance their strategy and risk management framework, and manage disclosure requirements, all in the ambit of ESG. In this respect, whilst supervisory expectations are currently limited to environmental risk, we are also taking social and governance aspects into consideration. At the same time, we are also assisting other large banks in navigating climate stress testing considerations and SFDR requirements.
We’re helping companies achieve sustainability
Stakeholders are increasingly factoring environment, social and governance (ESG) matters into their assessments of business performance, even as standards and regulatory guidance continue to evolve. In response, we believe that companies need to articulate their corporate purpose clearly and use this to demonstrate the impact on the environment and the value brought to the wider society. Organisations also need to identify the material topics to then report on them consistently.
From benchmarking and baselining to strategy, roadmaps, implementation and reporting, our teams provide our clients with access to the latest thinking and approaches to support their ESG journey. We help clients accelerate their path to net zero, measure their carbon footprints (Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3) and create practical strategies to decarbonise including clear roadmaps and metrics. We help clients carry out materiality assessments and stakeholder engagement to understand what information is pertinent to their business environment. In addition, we help companies access sustainable capital - be it private equity or other green financing options – and navigate a fast-evolving environment of taxation and regulation.
PwC is assisting a large institution headquartered in Malta with developing and implementing an environmental management system (EMS) that complies with the requirements of the EU’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and ISO 14001. This involved conducting an initial environmental review and a preliminary plan for the EMS design and implementation process.
We’re helping government drive change across society
While a lot is being done to safeguard the environment, achieving economic growth that is environmentally sustainable remains one of Malta's key challenges. In fact, the 2022 Country Report for Malta, published by the European Commission, notes that issues related to sustainable mobility, traffic congestion, the uptake of renewable energy, the high level of construction waste and low rates of recycling remain major challenges. Malta is also the furthest off track of any Member State to meeting its 2030 Effort Sharing Regulation (ESR) emission reduction target.
Achieving these ambitious targets will require deep, systemic change in the way public and private sectors operate and fuel progress. So how can we start this cycle of change? We think action is needed in at least four interconnected areas:
PwC was awarded the contract to assist the Maltese Public Service to carry out a study to facilitate the change in mobility management through the procurement of a cleaner fleet of government vehicles. The objective was to improve the efficiency of the current operations, through the concept of ride-sharing between the various ministries and government departments. We also supported the contracting authority in establishing the infrastructural needs to deploy an EV-based green transport project, to integrate with the electricity grid with minimal impact on the electricity demand profile.
We’re honing ESG skills across our teams
We believe that ESG skills are becoming increasingly like digital skills: everybody needs to have a certain baseline level of competency. To this end, we’ve made ESG training available to all our staff and are expanding our internal pool of ESG experts. In light of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and other regulations, we’re also accelerating our efforts to upskill our auditors to consider a company’s climate-related risks and assess whether these risks could give rise to material misstatement in financial disclosures. This is part of our wider effort to upskill people across the firm to build consideration of climate risk into their work.
We’re striving to improve our own ESG performance
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