National Grid chief sustainability officer Rhian Kelly has admitted that the energy company’s does not have “all the solutions” and that its sustainability data needs to be improved and more highly valued.
“We need to get to a place where our sustainability data is financial grade and sits alongside our financial data,” she said at yesterday’s Sustainability Live conference.
Highlighting the work National Grid has undertaken to set targets aligned with keeping the climate’s temperature rises to less than 1.5 degrees below pre-industrial levels, Kelly described its efforts in that direction as a “big undertaking in terms of getting the right data and making sure you’ve assured it in the right way”.
“It might not always be a linear trajectory. We’ll need to work with policy people, regulators, officials. Especially since we’re a regulated utility.”
She continued: “Working for an organisation like National Grid in the energy sector, we don’t have all the solutions to get to net zero. You can’t have a sustainability team at an organisation like National Grid and think it’s just your problem. Externally we’ll need to work with other partners.”
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Emphasising the importance of storytelling and communications, she cautioned businesses to also consider the ‘social’ aspect of environment, social and governance (ESG) strategies, saying: “do not forget the S in ESG”.
She went on to highlight the organisation’s social impact work with charities such as fuel banks and National Energy Action and a £50 million energy support fund.
Her words come amid increasing concern from investors about the validity of ESG ratings, which recently led to S&P Global dropping ESG criteria from its rankings.
Earlier this year the utilities firm responded to criticism about the speed at which it connects low carbon projects despite it declaring a £4.6 bn profit, and called for an overhaul of the UK’s regulation system to help speed up the process.
