Most CEOs say climate investments either saved money or didn’t add to costs
Most CEOs say investing in climate has either reduced their business costs or had no significant impact on them, according to a major survey by PwC.
The consulting giant’s annual global CEO stock take, released this week, polled more than 4,000 executives across 109 jurisdictions.
CEOs were asked about the financial impact of “climate-friendly investments” their companies had undertaken over the last five years. PwC cited energy efficiency improvements and the development of greener products as examples.
Two-thirds of respondents said that such investments had “either reduced costs or had no significant impact”.
Based on their responses, PwC estimated that investing in climate was “six times as likely to have increased revenue as to have decreased it”.
There were dissenting voices, however, including a substantial proportion of CEOs at French and German firms, around half of whom claimed that climate investments had increased business costs.
Only a fifth of their US counterparts said the same.
In PwC’s previous survey, published this time last year, 40% of CEOs said they had tolerated lower rates of return on climate investments, with 18% of those accepting a loss of more than 6 percentage points compared with non-climate investments.
In its latest report, PwC said the cost of green investments varied across jurisdictions partly because of differing incentives and regulations.
CEOs of Chinese firms were the most likely to report additional revenues and green incentives from government, for example.
Climate change came seventh when CEOs were asked to rank global threats over the next 12 months – behind macroeconomic volatility, inflation and geopolitical conflict. It came third for those running insurance and utility companies.