Data is the new climate edge: What late-2025 benchmarks say about sustainability, risk and competitive advantage

By: Talya Bosch, Partner

The latest benchmarking data is a key tool for purpose and sustainability professionals. It provides essential context for understanding performance relative to peers, helps anticipate stakeholder expectations, and serves as an early warning system for reputational or compliance risks, gaps and opportunities. 

Data helps teams get buy-in for essential action by translating sustainability performance into business-relevant signals for leadership and improving disclosure quality. It also can be helpful in setting credible and competitive goals and designing strategies that keep pace with leading practice. 

We regularly track market data. Here are a few reports you might have missed in late 2025.

Gravity Research found that corporate leaders are re-centering on issues with direct, obvious business impact — like AI, economic stability amid tariffs and inflation, and sustainability. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, AI (67%) was the top issue across all audiences, followed by sustainability (45%), economic empowerment (31%) and health equity (19%). This is a slight pivot from 2024, which included AI (52%), sustainability (43%), climate change (36%) and racial equity (28%). AI was the only issue that grew in importance across all stakeholder groups over the past year, although economic empowerment is also on the rise. When it comes to stakeholder prioritization:

• For the second year in a row, employees (62%) remain the top stakeholder group that companies are most concerned about managing.

• Policymakers rose from last year — from 36% to 41% — while media stayed high despite a small dip — from 57% in 2024 to 51% this year.

• Peer companies saw a rise as well, with 1 in 4 reporting pressure to engage on AI-related issues due to what their peer companies are doing or saying.

• The consumer audience, which made up the top three last year, fell behind policymakers and shareholders (33%) in 2025.

This finding was underscored by Deloitte's annual C-Suite Sustainability Report, which found that CEOs are still very much committed to sustainability, with the commercial justification for climate-positive business decisions becoming ever stronger. In fact, sustainability has now held its position as a business priority for three years running, with 45% of those surveyed viewing climate change and sustainability among their organisation's top three challenges for the year ahead. This figure matches that of technology adoption and innovation, while surpassing meaty concerns like economic projections and supply chain difficulties.

Spending on sustainability also is growing consistently – with more than a fifth of the largest organisations surveyed reporting investment increases exceeding 20% compared to the previous year. Business leaders are also acknowledging the commercial rationale and associated advantages stemming from corporate sustainability programmes, with numerous respondents noting positive effects across both financial metrics (including revenue and costs) and non-financial areas (such as brand value, regulatory compliance and risk mitigation).

The HSBC Sustainability Pulse Survey 2025 demonstrated that businesses and institutional investors today view sustainability as a key strategic consideration with 95% of corporates viewing sustainability as a commercial opportunity, and 99% saying they expect it to drive differentiated competitive advantage over the next three years.

An Accenture report found that the number of the world’s largest companies setting net-zero targets has increased for the fourth year in a row.

• In a year that saw public pullbacks from net-zero targets and a second U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, 41% of the world’s 2,000 largest companies (G2000) now have net-zero targets for their entire value chain, up from 27% in 2024.  

• Companies also took more action towards those goals, with the G2000 adopting an average of 13 of 21 decarbonization levers—or actions that correlate with emissions reductions—up from an average of 11.5 in 2024.

• Among the G2000, 73% have a net-zero target covering at least scopes 1 and 2, up from 39% in 2021. 81% of G4000 companies are now partnering with others on decarbonization, and 71% have joined industry networks focused on cutting carbon emissions. 

• Business performance is decoupling from emissions. The G4000’s collective revenues have grown by 7% annually since 2016, while overall operational emissions have remained flat. Half of G4000 companies have cut both emissions intensity and absolute emissions in scopes 1 and 2 since 2016.  

• However, three sectors—energy, natural resources and utilities—account for 75% of operational emissions, and most companies in these industries saw their emissions increase, according to the report.

However, amid this progress, Harvard Business School found that 74% of S&P 500 companies revised their reported greenhouse-gas emissions at least once over the past decade, with most revisions increasing earlier figures. In total, the adjustments conservatively add up to at least 135 million tonnes of previously unreported emissions, roughly comparable to the annual emissions of a mid-sized country or the combined annual impact of millions of U.S. homes. 

This raises questions about the strength of voluntary disclosure systems and suggests that the aggregate climate impact of the S&P 500 is significantly higher than market data initially indicated. The findings underscore why systems like California’s Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act are moving from voluntary to mandatory frameworks. 

Takeways

• Despite head-winds, most companies are staying the course on sustainability commitments. 

• Business performance is being decoupled from emissions, with growth rising even as emissions fall. However, progress is uneven.

• Data integrity is critical for effective program management and disclosure. Companies should do even more to establish internal controls, disclose revision policies and consider third-party assurance for broader data sets, particularly as mandatory disclosure requirements expand.

These studies are just a few examples of the kind of data that can be helpful in advancing sustainability programs. Yet, metrics change rapidly, so it’s key to stay on top of the latest insights—and, even more so, to have partners who can help you make the most of them.