Introducing the Environmental Sustainability Index: What to Know

Many companies worldwide are accelerating their sustainability commitments to achieve carbon neutrality and enable the energy transition.

To provide deeper insight into how business leaders feel about the progress that’s being made toward their organizations’ sustainability commitments, Honeywell has released the first edition of the Environmental Sustainability Index in partnership with Futurum Research.

The index is a global sampling of more than 600 business leaders directly involved in their organization’s environmental sustainability initiatives, measuring their perception of how well their organization has performed in achieving its goals over the past year and optimism for the year ahead.

Here’s what you should know about the study:

The first edition of the global study tracked sentiment from 600 business leaders across eight industries.

Respondents were involved in the planning, strategic development, implementation, or oversight of their organization's environmental sustainability goals and initiatives.

The index surveyed professionals from companies in Asia-Pacific; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; Latin America and North America, and in the following industries:

• Banking and professional services
• Consumer goods
• Energy and utilities
• Government and public sector
• Healthcare and pharma
• High technology
• Manufacturing, construction and industrial
• Transportation and logistics

Professionals who were surveyed were asked to share their sentiments on their organizations’ sustainability goals in these four categories:

• Energy evolution and efficiency
• Emissions reduction
• Pollution prevention
• Circularity/recycling

The first edition of the index indicates that the energy evolution and efficiency category was the main sustainability priority of the four categories for respondents globally.

The majority of business leaders surveyed feel their organizations have made strong progress in the past 12 months but feel less optimistic about meeting 2030 goals.

According to the survey, 90% of respondents were optimistic about the overall success of prior 12-month goals across the four sustainability categories.

However, 67% of respondents were optimistic about achieving goals for the coming 12 months, and 63% expressed optimism about reaching their environmental sustainability goals by 2030.

Most organizations plan to increase their investments in at least one of four sustainability categories.

According to the inaugural index, around 97% of organizations represented in the survey plan to increase current-year budgets in at least one sustainability category: including energy evolution and efficiency, emissions reduction, pollution prevention, and circularity/recycling.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents plan to increase current-year budgets in all four categories. Just more than a third of respondents plan to increase budgets by over 50% in at least one category.

New insights from the Environmental Sustainability Index will be released quarterly.

The first multi-industry and multi-regional index serves as a quarterly indicator of key trends in global efforts in climate change mitigation and other sustainability initiatives.

Read the full Environmental Sustainability Index for more insights into how companies are prioritizing their sustainability goals.

Learn more about Honeywell’s commitment to environmental, social and governance outcomes in our ESG Report, including progress made so far toward our corporate sustainability goals.