How we’re walking the talk for Real Progress

As the global manager for Sustainability Affairs for ABB Process Industries, our ESG and CSR efforts are central to my job. They’re also at the heart of my life as the father of two young daughters, aged 13 and 7. To me, this goes beyond my job - I’m doing everything I can to advance Real Progress for sustainability at ABB, for our customers, and for my kids. ?

We know that the new generation entering the workforce has much higher expectations of the companies they choose to join. I believe we can help fulfill those expectations by being purpose-driven: bringing in smarter productivity solutions, a cross-company discipline for less consumption of resources, and an overarching target to reduce emissions.

It’s essential for talent attraction and retention. I remember a decade ago a HR manager at ABB said to us, ‘When you have the new generation sitting in front of you and you hold two reports in your hand, one financial and one sustainability, no one will ask to see the financial report.’ His point was that prospective employees want to know the values rather than the value of the company they’re considering. What’s the culture like, how are they contributing to society, and what is their sustainability commitment? They want transparency so they can assess that the organization is truly walking the talk on all of that.?

ABB Process Industries took another important step forward for our employees at the end of last year when we rolled out Climate Fresk, a three-hour workshop developed by a French NGO. Climate Fresk helps to enhance individual understanding of the science around climate change and how to advance sustainability. Not surprisingly, the employee feedback has been very positive and we’ll be doing more Climate Fresk workshops in 2024.?

What Real Progress means for us and our customers?

There’s a lot of talk about sustainability right now. But more than talk, I believe we need action because it is only through action that we can achieve real progress in combatting climate change. At the heart of ABB’s Real Progress campaign is exactly this – showing the actions companies have undertaken across hard-to-abate industries, and the tangible results it is driving in reducing emissions and environmental footprint.?

Real Progress makes sure that sustainability is closely linked with all decision-making at ABB, firstly by setting up our strategy for sustainability to embed it in our purpose, mission, and culture. ?

Sustainability is a global challenge for everyone. Whether it’s a country, an industry or an entity, we are all on the journey to get to net zero. We want ABB to be a trusted partner for our customers, based on our expertise in hard-to-abate industries, the technology we can offer to improve the sustainability of their operations, and our ability to quantify the resulting avoided emissions.?

Investors are looking more closely than ever at sustainability reporting with an expectation of YOY reduction of emissions. ABB’s sustainability agenda has a target to reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80%, compared with the 2019 baseline. Success on this metric is directly and publicly linked to the incentive remuneration for ABB’s senior management. In effect, it puts their money where our sustainability initiatives are.?

We are working hard across all of our facilities around the world, with the initiatives grouped under three programs: EV100, EP100 and RE100. ?

EV100 is the energy transition of our fleets, as well as putting EV usage requirements into service contracts and supporting our staff to adopt ECs by installing charging infrastructure where that’s feasible. EP100 is implementing an energy-management system (EnMS) across 160 sites by 2030, which represents 90% of ABB’s total energy consumption. Finally, RE100 is accelerating the scale-up of utilizing renewable power.?

Robust reporting for Real Progress?

Along with greater customer awareness and investor expectations, regulatory pressure is also increasing on sustainability reporting requirements. As a company, we are committed to bringing integrity and transparency to our myriad efforts around sustainability, including bringing in third-party validation.?

Aligning with our status as a signatory of the 1.5℃ business ambition, ABB follows the global SBTi Net Zero Standard standard for our targets and reporting and expects to have it fully validated this year. The EU Taxonomy is used for European reporting and there is also customer-specific reporting. Transparency is obviously key and we are investing a lot of effort in standardizing ABB’s reporting mechanism.?

On top of the EV100, EP100 and RE100 programs, we are completing life-cycle assessments of our products to ensure we are applying a circularity approach to preserve resources. We regard social progress as an essential part of sustainability, and we are tracking our impact there, too, and continuing with diversity & inclusion initiatives such as Unstoppable.?

My daughters are my inspiration every day. My older daughter is leading a sustainability project at her school, looking at technology. She and her classmates have so many ideas – she comes home and discusses them with me.? Those interactions give me a lot of passion to do even more with respect to advancing Real Progress for sustainability.

It’s fascinating to me that this younger generation are coming up with ideas that have a huge amount of potential – and they have not even left school. I listen very attentively to those ideas; if we can combine that kind of fresh thinking with ABB’s deep technology expertise, perhaps it can be part of the next chapter of Real Progress.?