Environment and companies: climate transition as strategy

The final event in the series of meetings on the environmental transition of regions and their businesses, begun by Leonard in September 2019, took place online on 12 May. There to discuss how climate issues can inspire company strategy were Jérôme Stubler, Chairman of VINCI Construction, Gilles Vermot Desroches, Sustainable Development Senior Vice-President at Schneider Electric, Claire Tutenuit, General Secretary of Entreprises pour l’Environnement (EpE), and Romain Grandjean, Project Manager at The Shift Project. They were interviewed by journalist David Abiker, who handled the video meeting with great aplomb.

The climate emergency, health crisis and environmental considerations are putting companies under pressure. In a finite world where all economic activities seem to be increasingly reliant on good management of natural resources, the environment has taken centre stage over the past few years as a factor in company performance and durability.

The climate challenge is immense. Romain Grandjean sets it out at the beginning of the meeting: “To limit global warming to below 2°C by 2050, CO2 emissions have to be reduced by 5–6% a year. Most of the CO2 that is currently being released into the atmosphere comes from energy use, and that energy is 80% produced from fossil fuels.” The dominance of fossil-fired energy is even more apparent in the sectors that Leonard works in: “transport, construction and manufacturing run on fossil fuels and the scale of growth in these sectors is dependent on this factor.”

 

Companies show the way

In the face of repeated and increasingly urgent warnings from scientists and organisations working in the climate field, companies are mobilising. By way of an example, an opinion piece recently initiated by EpE and signed by 93 international business leaders – including Schneider and VINCI – launched a call to “[make] the environment central to the economic recovery”. Claire Tutenuit added: “With the members of EpE, we are trying to turn the unprecedented health and economic crisis that we are going through – which is set to last – into an opportunity for ecological transition.”

The tone is set but action remains to be taken. As one example, The Shift Project has jointly produced a study with AFEP (a non-profit which assembles the heads of major French companies including VINCI and Schneider) that underlines the need to make the climate and low-carbon transition not just an exercise in communications or reporting, but a matter of strategy for companies. This is necessary because, to deal with the inevitable deep technological, political, economic and social disruption that is going to happen, “companies have to build thorough kn

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