Expert Insights: Navigating ESG Regulations with Strategies and Insights for Climate Risk Reporting

When it comes to ESG, organizations need consistent, reliable benchmarks to achieve compliance with new regulations and develop new initiatives. Claire Feeney (Senior Product Marketing Manager, AuditBoard) hosts a lively discussion between Kristina Wyatt (Deputy General Counsel, Chief Sustainability Officer, Persefoni), Mike Wallace (Chief Decarbonization Officer, Persefoni), and Happy Wang (Chief Technology Officer, AuditBoard) on navigating ESG regulations, strategies, and insights for climate risk reporting, including:

• A brief overview of prominent ESG regulations, including the SEC’s new climate risk disclosure rules
• Metrics that help companies evaluate the ROI of investing in a sustainability program
• How AI can help develop your ESG initiatives

Kristina, can you give us a brief overview of the various regulations our customers are focused on?

Kristina Wyatt (Persefoni): “As the SEC developed new climate risk disclosure rules, the purpose was to drive more consistency. Investors want consistent, reliable information when it comes to a company’s climate-related risks. Companies want the same thing. The requirements were too fragmented and the standards weren’t uniform. Now, we’ve reached a point where there is substantially more consistency in the various reporting requirements around the world. It still feels a little bit fragmented to a lot of people because there are different reporting standards that apply, but they all actually do look to the same basic frameworks.”

Mike, are there any kind of best practices for metrics or data that can help you evaluate via return on investments, formalizing or investing in an ESG or sustainability program to help make that case for growth opportunities?

Mike Wallace (Persefoni): “With cross-functional teams, everything you buy and purchase can easily be given a CO2 number. Working cross-functionally helps distribute work through siloes that might have previously kept different departments from interacting much. It’s important to think about it from a customer satisfaction point of view, too. What does the customer need to transition to a low-carbon economy? What are your products going to do to help reduce their footprint? That’s always a good way to be thinking about the future and the ROI that would come from stuff like that.”

Happy, how can AI be helpful when it comes to an ESG program?

Happy Wang (AuditBoard): “In my mind, AI definitely enhances ESG performance. One of AI’s abilities is the capacity to process complex data, assess trends, and offer valuable insights. To drive ESG performance, companies across all industries are using AI to address the most pressing ESG challenges. AI helps companies translate commitments into plans, establish unified data visibility for reporting and decision-making, and proactively engage key stakeholders to manage risks and capture valuable opportunities. At AuditBoard, we’re doing this work every day as we leverage our ESG product solution. Our top priority when pairing AI and ESG goals is integration and reporting. Real-time ESG data collection is very important to us. AI gathers vast amounts of data from internal and external sources, offering a comprehensive view of ESG performance. This allows us to report on ESG with greater reliability and accuracy. 

We also use a cross-functional ESG integration. AI identifies and bridges gaps between different departments to facilitate ESG objectives across various business functions. This really helps optimize prospects for a unified approach to ESG goals. This has to be a collaboration among different key stakeholders. We’re also using AI to conduct climate risk assessment management. With AI, we model complex climate data to predict future environmental conditions and their potential effect on business operations. That’s how we use AI technology to really improve ESG performance.”

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