ESG Veolia

What motivated me to take part in KPMG Portugal's ESG Week was the rising profile of Sustainability issues, not just within Veolia, but throughout the business world.

I could see I urgently needed to boost my expertise in these crucial areas, both for my own professional development and in order to serve our clients better. The opportunity to expand my knowledge on the basis of the useful and up-to-date contents shared by the KPMG team enabled me to align the communication of our solutions with emerging ESG issues, which have moved up the market's short-term agenda.

In addition, the possibility of networking with other professionals and specialists in the sector, during this intensive week, was another motivating factor, enabling me to share experiences, build valuable relationships and contribute more effectively to our positioning in this constantly changing field.

The training had a very real impact, because of the objective and convincing approach, especially when we looked at the CSRD. The European Taxonomy, double materiality analyses and the Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) are all fairly complex, and the way the KPMG Portugal team managed to untangle the issues was absolutely brilliant.

What we learned serves as a valuable entryway to decarbonisation projects, an area where Veolia is particularly strong, enabling us to align our sustainable solutions more closely with emerging market needs and the regulatory challenges faced by our clients.

This training has a lot to recommend it, not just for someone encountering ESG topics for the first time, but also for people who are already on top of the issues – or who think they are. Sharing knowledge and experiences is of incalculable value for people constantly challenged by new regulations, new challenges and with dimensions that sometimes go unnoticed in our analyses that we already took for granted. Sustainability is such a recent issue in the business world that we quickly realise that collaboration and sharing ideas are fundamental for keeping us on the right track.

In all these fields, KPMG Portugal showed that it has the content and interesting frameworks to make this ESG Week an extremely enriching and informative experience.

An ESG journey requires a serious commitment from the entire organisation and all the stakeholders involved. It's fundamental to look at the whole value chain for a good assessment of the different dimensions to take into consideration in the plans you want to implement. Knowledge of all the requirements making up the CSRD is undoubtedly the key to doing a thorough job that results in reduced risk exposure and added business value, as well as safeguarding your market reputation and making you more attractive to clients and investors.

When addressing the Environment pillar in greater depth, calculation of our carbon footprint, with the required soundness and with a real decarbonisation roadmap, is one of the main points of reference that always needs to be highlighted, not just as an abstract exercise but also with the determination needed to achieve the planned decarbonisation measures.

The opportunity cost of inaction may seriously undermine business sustainability, and not just the Planet and People.