Climate action should be on every organisation’s agenda. Linda McWeeney and Mary Jane Webberley outline four key areas that should be considered in 2022. Apart from the pandemic, there has been one topic on everyone’s agenda: sustainability. Climate action needs to be at the top of all business agendas, particularly for boards that have a fiduciary responsibility. It is a massive risk (financial and reputational) and must be given the attention it requires from all sectors. Here are four key areas organisations should look at in the New Year. Cost of sustainability Individuals and companies need to take every step necessary to remove carbon from their operations. There are a few ways companies can go about this, such as sourcing renewable energy and ensuring that it is certified to a fully traceable source and retrofitting commercial buildings. The long-term costs of climate change are substantial. Transition and physical costs may be high, but there are plenty of opportunities that can outweigh these costs. Be proactive and seek out the opportunities. Retrofitting loans are available, as well as green lending to help companies reach their goals. Start reporting Accountants have a responsibility to ensure that climate change is at the heart of business activity. Sustainability Accounting Standards, produced by the ISSB, will be industry-focused, market-led, and will respond to stakeholder concerns, producing highly comparable information. The standards will not be mandatory for companies straight away. This, however, does not mean that companies or boards should wait for them. Regulation will take time, and pressure will come from investors, employees, and governments sooner rather than later. Companies cannot wait for regulations and policy change to take place. Start reporting and make changes now to ensure the continued attraction of talent and investors. Minimise greenwashing Ensure that climate risk is part of the risk management strategy, boards put forward relevant information, and sustainability is at the core of all decisions. Accountants can help embed it into the business plan. Also, lead with data analysis, reliable data, and seek out opportunities for value creation. Companies must provide all stakeholders with information showing their commitments and action in this area. Think about the organisation’s reputation There are many risks associated with doing nothing, including reputational risk. While there may be a difference between what is mandatory right now and what we would like to see happening, it is important to remember the ethical considerations. Robust discussions must be had to ensure that company reporting is reliable and relevant, even though accounting standards may not yet require it. It will by no means be easy to quantify risk and convert it into numbers. Nevertheless, reliable information is an expectation of all stakeholders and accountants have an important role in this regard. The connection between financial and non-financial data is more important than ever. Therefore, accountants and boards need to work with experts in these fields and educate themselves. Linda McWeeney and Mary Jane Webberley are Lecturers in Accounting and Finance at TU Dublin.

2021 has seen organisations undergo digital transformations and a continued push for sustainable practices. Paul Browne examines the triggers driving major transformation programmes in Irish organisations and outlines some trends we can expect in 2022. Fuelled by digital transformation and a heightened focus on cybersecurity and data protection, 2021 has seen a significant increase in activity across the Irish business landscape. Disruptive trends are driving structural changes in the way organisations operate. Over the course of the year, we have seen a range of triggers driving major transformation programmes in the Irish market, such as a major focus on sustainability, millennials accelerating the adoption of tech-enabled products and services, and the reskilling of employees to make organisations more agile. As we close out 2021, we see several key trends emerging for 2022. Sustainability as a transformation driver Sustainability has evolved into a key priority for the technology profession. In recent months, we have seen sustainability emerge as the new driver of transformation, similar to digital, driven by the need to meet emerging challenges along with rising importance and visibility across society. The sustainability landscape is complex with multitudes of standards and metrics, and the ecosystem is ever-evolving. Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions in particular will evolve to include sustainability reporting and ratings. For example, power consumption or percentage of renewables used. Investors and capital markets now weigh environmental sustainability more heavily as part of ESG (environmental, social and governance) analysis of investment opportunities. Organisations must show how they are contributing positively to society and not just meeting financial performance metrics. KPIs will explicitly reference energy consumption, carbon output and climate ethical work practices. We expect that the phrase “verifiable claims” will be critical for executives in 2022 as they seek to deliver the transparency demanded by stakeholders. Initial conversations post-COP26 have highlighted the role for blockchain and its ability to provide immutable evidence across an end-to-end supply chain. A renewed focus on business resilience Organisations continue to struggle to protect themselves fully against the multitude of emerging cyber threats. Many of the world’s biggest and most technologically advanced organisations have suffered cyber events. The reliance on third parties in the supply chain has been a particular challenge. Proactive and predictive supply chain management with technology at its core has emerged. Organisations can no longer assume that users, systems, or services within the security perimeter can be trusted. Technology companies must embrace digital trust to develop consumer confidence and competitive advantage. They need to embed privacy and risk management into their products and offerings and ensure that integrity, transparency, and accountability are designed into their systems. Organisations are taking a proactive approach and continuously monitoring all system levels to react to threats effectively. They are planning and preparing for a breach, with many organisations now using cloud-hosted services to assist in reacting to a breach. It forms a vital part of their security defence within a comprehensive structure involving people, processes, and technology. Cloud-supplied security offerings provide a cost-effective solution with a lower cost of entry. The ‘pay per user’ and ‘pay as you go’ cloud model offers full enterprise-level security to organisations that were previously priced out of the market. These offerings will continue to evolve, with artificial intelligence built into technology platforms rather than being provided as an add-on. For example, AIOps (artificial intelligence for IT operations) will be embedded into IT Operations to help reduce, simplify, optimise and automate a wide range of tasks and processes needed to deliver effective IT incident identification, management, and resolution. Paul Browne is Director of Azure Cloud Engineering at EY.

  In this week’s bulletin read about a new online toolkit for businesses to encourage gender-balanced leadership teams; concerns about the roll-out of Ireland’s National Broadband Plan; a proposed €1bn investment in climate action projects by Ireland’s Strategic Investment Funds and the critical position of electricity infrastructure to Northern Ireland’s economy,  as reflected by the success of NIE Networks. New online toolkit to encourage gender-balanced leadership teams An online Action Planning Toolkit has been launched this week to help businesses develop gender-balanced leadership teams. As an initiative of Enterprise Ireland’s “Women in Business” action plan – itself an initiative to increase the number of women in leadership and senior management positions in Irish SMEs – the Level Project Action Planning Toolkit shows companies how to assess their own position across six key themes and put measures in place to help improve gender balance within their own senior teams. The toolkit is one of a number of a number of initiatives delivered by Enterprise Ireland over the past decade to encourage diversity, promote female entrepreneurship and increase the number of women led HPSUs (high-performance start-ups). Speaking at the launch of the toolkit, Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation, Robert Troy TD, said that “[b]usinesses that reflect the make-up of our society and are more balanced are proven to perform better” and praised the toolkit for providing “practical steps for companies to put in place measures to address their specific gender balance needs.” Further commenting, the Minister stated that gender balance at senior level is critical to organisational success and encouraged Irish companies to examine how the toolkit can help them to achieve greater diversity and greater business success. Scale-back of National Broadband Plan roll-out National Broadband Ireland (NBI), the company established to deliver Ireland’s multi-billion-euro National Broadband Plan, has revised its target of connecting 115,000 homes and businesses in 2021. The National Broadband Plan, considered to be one of the most ambitious projects of its kind globally, aims to bring high-speed broadband to 544,000 homes and businesses by 2027. The new target for 2021 is 60,000 premises. NBI has reportedly met only one-fifth of this target to date, with fewer than 20,000 homes and businesses passed by the network, with many more “under construction”. Also, a report published recently by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council – Ireland’s next ramp-up in public Investment – has also found that the National Broadband Plan has seen costs rise from an initial €500 million to almost six times that in unofficial estimates — at a reported cost of €3 billion. The report also pointed to shortfalls in construction workers risking compounding the problem of substantial public investment cost overruns. Ireland’s Strategic Investment Funds to invest €1bn in climate action projects The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) has published its first-ever annual climate report in which gives a broad overview of the actions and analysis that ISIF has taken to address climate change. Speaking about the publication, Emma Jane Joyce, Head of Responsible Investment at ISIF, said: “ISIF takes climate action seriously. This report brings together the different strands and actions of our approach to climate into one document and, for the first time, presents an overarching whole of fund Climate Goal. As Ireland’s sovereign development fund, we are doing this because we want to lead by example and to be as transparent to the public and all our stakeholders as we expect our investees to be to us.” ISIF, which is managed by the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), previously announced that it is to invest €1bn in climate action projects over the next five years, stating that its investment programme will complement its existing investments, which are made in line with its “double bottom line” mandate to invest on a commercial basis to support economic activity and employment in Ireland. Examples of climate actions projects in which ISIF will invest include projects in energy efficiency, energy storage, renewables, and better use of resources. You can find ISIF’s Annual Climate Report here, and more about ISIF’s responsible investment approach here.   Electricity infrastructure company voted Number 1 in Northern Ireland’s Top 100 companies A company which owns the electricity infrastructure across Northern Ireland has been voted number 1 in the Belfast Telegraph Top 100 Companies 2021, in partnership with Grant Thornton. The list, which is compiled by economist John Simpson, reflects the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and some of the biggest businesses in the region. Northern Ireland Electricity Networks Limited (NIE Networks), which is part of ESB in Ireland, was awarded the top position in the Top 100 companies. Speaking at the launch,  Gavan Walsh, Finance and Regulation Director at NIE Networks, said that as an essential service provider, its teams had worked throughout the pandemic to keep customers supplied with electricity. However energy is a major concern for the region, with companies reportedly saying that they face serious challenges from rising energy costs resulting from soaring wholesale gas prices worldwide. You can find information, guidance and supports to help members understand sustainability and meet the challenges it presents in ourSustainability Centre. Read all our updates on ourPublic Policy web centre     You can find information, guidance and supports to help members understand sustainability and meet the challenges it presents in our Sustainability Centre. Read all our updates on our Public Policy web centre