Study: Implementation Deficit for Sustainability in IT
Although the topic of sustainability is already a high priority in nine out of ten companies, more than half of them are postponing the goal of achieving CO2 neutrality and establishing climate-neutral IT until the next decade.
This is the result of the current “IT & Sustainability – Maturity Index 2023”. For the study, the market research company PAC surveyed 150 IT and business decision-makers from the automotive industry, the manufacturing sector and the logistics sector on behalf of Lufthansa Industry Solutions. According to the study, industry and logistics currently achieve a value of 6.3 on the maturity index scale, which is based on a scale of “0” (immature) to “10” (mature).
At first glance, this doesn’t look too bad, but a closer look at the sub-indices makes us think twice. For example, the survey shows that although the topic of sustainability already enjoys a high level of importance in the companies with a value of 7.4 in the “importance” sub-index, implementation – measured in the “strategy” sub-index – lags behind with a value of 4.6. Half of the respondents (54 percent) aim to achieve CO2 neutrality for their own company by 2040, while 35 percent do not aim to achieve this goal until after 2040. To make their company climate-neutral, many companies need more time than they would like.
Sustainability often remains a vague topic
The implementation deficit is surprising, as nine out of ten respondents already perceive the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which came into force at the beginning of the year, as one of the most important drivers for the topic. According to the study, most companies have also recognized that sustainability pays off. According to the study, 90 percent expect to gain competitive advantages, for example through more efficient use of resources and optimized capacity utilization. To leverage this potential, there is no way around a clean database. Three out of four study participants therefore consider a professional IT tool to be indispensable for creating sustainability reporting. However, more than a third (37 percent) believe that their own IT department still knows too little about sustainability issues.
According to the study, companies are also still struggling to establish an overall sustainable corporate IT. By 2040, this goal should also be achieved in most companies. Before then, however, the knowledge gaps must be closed through training, membership in industry associations or new hires. More than three quarters of the companies (77 percent) want to work with external consultants to do this.
