For many large companies, sustainability is no longer treated simply as a matter of compliance. It is increasingly being folded into decisions about cost control, supply chain resilience and long-term financial performance, according to a new report from Sweep and Capgemini.
Their study, Sustainability in action 2026 – The new rules of business resilience, suggests that climate pressure is now forcing a sharper commercial rethink. Nearly all of the 1,000 executives s...
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urveyed said their organisations had suffered financial losses from climate-related disruption to supply chains in the past two years, with close to a third saying the hit exceeded $1 million. Manufacturing appears especially exposed, with a higher share of firms in that sector reporting financial damage than the global average.
The report argues that the business case for sustainability is changing quickly. More than four-fifths of respondents said they believe their companies must transform to participate in a low-carbon economy, and a similar proportion now sees that transition as an opening for growth rather than a cost burden. That view echoes findings from Morgan Stanley’s 2025 Sustainable Signals survey, which found that 88 per cent of companies worldwide regard sustainability as a driver of long-term value, while more than 80 per cent say they can measure returns on related investments.
Yet the picture is uneven. Sweep and Capgemini found that nearly half of companies still struggle to calculate the return on sustainability spending at group level. Procurement is one of the few areas where the value is becoming easier to quantify, suggesting that sustainability delivers the clearest benefits when it is tied directly to operational processes.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating that shift. The report says the use of AI has pushed up sustainability investment in 79 per cent of organisations, with the technology increasingly used for data gathering, calculation, analysis and decision-making. Almost half of companies already apply it to collecting and processing sustainability information.
But governance is lagging behind. Fewer than two-fifths of organisations have a formal framework for AI governance, and a similar share has clear policies on how the technology should be used and who is responsible for it. That mismatch, the report suggests, shows how quickly companies are adopting AI without always putting the necessary controls in place.
Data remains the biggest obstacle. The study found that 79 per cent of respondents believe their sustainability information is too weak to support strategy properly, and only 16 per cent say more than three-quarters of their data is audit-ready. While most organisations claim some traceability, fewer than half can follow the information cleanly across all processes.
The challenge is particularly acute in Scope 3 emissions, where companies depend on data from suppliers and other partners. Poor integration between systems, inconsistent methods and manual collection processes continue to block progress. Even where systems are connected, many firms still struggle to turn raw data into usable insight.
The issue of ownership is also unresolved. Fewer than half of respondents said sustainability responsibility is clearly distributed across functions, and sustainability managers were the least confident that accountability is properly defined. A smaller group, however, has moved further ahead: around a third have integrated sustainability data with ERP, finance and procurement systems, treating it as part of day-to-day business rather than a separate reporting exercise.
The broader message is that sustainability is becoming less about reporting for its own sake and more about managing business risk. As climate disruption, resource constraints and supply chain fragility increasingly affect profit and performance, companies are being pushed towards a model in which sustainability is not an optional extra, but part of resilience itself.
Source: Noah Wire Services
