Leave it to the C-suite executives on stage at the Forbes Sustainability Leaders Summit to know how to handle a challenge confronting their peers.
New data from Forbes Research found a steep drop in the number of organizations that consistently prove returns on investments in sustainability — down to 40% from 59% in 2024. That’s according to the 1,100 executives who participated in the latest Forbes Research State of Sustainability Survey between January and March.
Salesforce has developed an easy way to look at ROI, according to Suzanne DiBianca, the company’s executive vice president and chief impact officer.
“I think, for us, it’s pretty simple. When you save carbon, you save cost,” she explained at the summit in September. “The more we can save on air travel, the more we can save on operating energy costs. It all comes down at the same time.”
Executive Warns Regulators About Removing Investment Areas
Karen Blanks Ellis, chief sustainability officer and vice president of environmental affairs at FedEx, joined DiBianca on stage and noted that while ROI reporting at FedEx hasn’t changed from last year, investment areas sometimes do.
“These conversations with regulators, when they’re thinking about designing incentives, when they’re thinking about ending solutions around the globe: We need to have real conversations with them about what happens when you take those types of tools, and they’re no longer available to us,” Ellis told the summit audience gathered online and in New York City.
Ellis mentioned sustainable aviation fuel and electric vehicles as industries that may seem mature but need continued support from regulators to remain viable investment areas for enterprises. The transportation network at FedEx includes 700 aircraft and 200,000 vehicles.
“Flexibility is how we can work together to get to the solutions that we need,” Ellis said. “Don’t be so prescriptive about how we get there, so we can use all the tools available to us.”