Proving Corporate Sustainability Pays

Sustainability action offers benefits that businesses have recognized for a long time, like lower energy costs, avoided regulatory fees, brand building, and higher employee satisfaction. But for many companies, it hasn’t always been necessary to make a business case to advance sustainability; acting responsibly was its own bottom line. A new report from the World Economic Forum indicates that now the business case for sustainability is becoming a must-have rather than a “nice-to-have.”

The authors of the WEF’s inaugural Chief Sustainability Officers’ Outlook surveyed 103 chief sustainability officers across five continents with two striking results. First, 63% expect global sustainability progress to hold steady or accelerate over the next year. (Sustainability Online reports on a study from GlobeScan and UN Global Compact that seems to add weight to this finding: just 10% of sustainability practitioners in North America expect companies’ sustainability ambitions to decrease.)

Second, 64% claim that the biggest accelerator of corporate sustainability measures over the next three years will be a stronger business case. This comes in as the lead driver ahead of availability of cheaper technology, expanded value chain collaboration, regulatory action, and international agreements.teach about what comes next.

Proving that sustainability pays is not a straightforward task. For example, asked what most constrains their company from investing in adaptation to climate change, CSOs pointed to uncertain cost-benefit assessments, as a greater constraint than financing costs, regulatory hurdles, or competing priorities. Indeed, as the report explains, adaptation “often creates value through avoided losses rather than additional revenue,” which makes the benefit hard to quantify and slow to appear.

Report authors Sebastian Buckup and Akanksha Khatri underscore the need to link sustainability to business growth, writing that it “is no longer a commitment to be made; it is a capability to be embedded in growth, competitiveness and resilience.”

Other flagship research came from G&A Institute’s own team last week. The 2026 edition of Sustainability Reporting In Focus is our 15th annual study of corporate sustainability reporting, and finds that in 2025 94% of the S&P 500 and 86% of the Russell 1000 published sustainability reports – both slightly below 2024. But even as the levels ebbed slightly from recent years, our analysts noted that companies are making use of more standards and assuring more of their data. These efforts make the documentation of their sustainability work more robust, and form an important piece of the puzzle for building a reliable business case for continuing to invest.

In other news, the first GHG emissions reports mandated under California’s SB 253 are due in about six weeks – November 10 – and ESG Today covers CARB’s confirmation of reliefs for the opening cycle, including prior-year data and submissions without assurance. To delve into SB 253’s sister law on climate risk, SB 261, turn to our joint research with Ceres to examine 154 voluntary filings.

Meanwhile, new polling covered by Trellis indicates that 71% of climate-skeptical Republicans say companies should reduce their climate impacts, because doing so “encourages long-term planning.”

Finally, as we see in ESG Dive, the business and public perspectives on sustainability are not reflected in recent action in Washington, DC, where the EPA finalized the repeal of most Biden-era power plant carbon rules, and proposed to rescind the rest.