There is no green transition without numerical targets

While the attitude of Hungarian business leaders towards sustainability has improved dramatically, there is worrying stagnation in the area of actual measurability and future planning, according to the latest results of the K&H Sustainability Index.

There is no sustainability without numbers

The measurement and auditing sub-index still stands at 13 points, which means we can see a slight decrease compared to the last half of the year. It is true that the index traditionally and consistently shows worse values in the first half of the year, while in the second half the situation regarding measurement improves slightly. The index fell sharply, especially in the case of larger companies with sales of over 4 billion: from 44 points, which reached the peak of the measurement history in the previous half-year, to 25 – a worse result was only achieved by large companies in the first half of the index. Geographically, companies in Western Hungary fell to the lowest point: the measurement and auditing subindex value among them was only 12 points.

Of the issues that make up the sub-index, the proportion of companies that measure or plan to measure their carbon emissions fell to half (from 14 to 7 percent), so 93 percent of them neither currently measure nor plan to measure their carbon emissions, which fundamentally questions the weight of corporate commitments related to sustainability.

“There is no ESG without numbers – without measurability, not only strategic direction, but also financing, investor and regulatory compliance are impossible. And according to the index, even those companies that are open to sustainability currently make decisions based on perception, rather than objective indicators,”

said Levente Suba, Head of Sustainability at K&H.