Skip to Content Skip to Menu Skip to Footer

Overview

As climate risk and other sustainability issues increasingly influence business outcomes, the global market demand for reliable and comparable sustainability data and insights continues to grow.

S&P Global’s sustainability solutions help companies, banks and investors identify prospects for growth, manage risks, address regulations and maximize their sustainability performance against their objectives. We leverage our data, analytics and workflow tools to provide sustainability intelligence that powers global markets, supports transparency and enables customers to make informed decisions with conviction.

S&P Global’s data insights provide both the big picture and deep, detailed views on critical topics such as climate change, energy transition, nature and biodiversity, and sustainable finance. The following highlights key and new offerings from our five divisions and Sustainable1 across these and other important themes.

S&P Global’s divisions are supported by S&P Global Sustainable1, a centralized group with a core focus on cross-company sustainability offerings. Our comprehensive coverage across global markets, combined with in-depth sustainability intelligence, provides clients with expansive insight on business risk, opportunity and impact as we work toward a sustainable future. 

Sustainability data and analytics
for public and private markets

Credit ratings and sustainable
finance services

Benchmarks, data and insights to
support the energy transition

Indices to support climate
and sustainability investing

Products to help navigate
the transportation decarbonization transition

Sustainable 1

Sustainable1 matches customers with sustainability products, insights and solutions from across S&P Global’s divisions, to help meet each customer’s unique needs. Sustainable1’s datasets also support new product development in divisions.

S&P Global’s sustainability data and solutions serve a broad range of customers:

  • Academia
  • Commercial Banking
  • Corporations
  • Government & Regulatory Agencies
  • Insurance
  • Investment Banking
  • Investment Management
  • Private Equity

To learn more, visit our website.

*Revenue generated from evaluations, scores, physical risk analysis, and global climate and energy transition data and analytics.
** Revenue excludes Engineering Solutions and refers to pro forma revenue in 2022.

Leveraging a Foundational Sustainability Dataset

 
Sustainable1’s data and analytics engine forms the backbone of many of our sustainability solutions across the divisions. Our environmental data measures impact across key dimensions and covers more than 3.2 million companies, including private companies. This data can be used to assess performance, quantify environmental impacts and costs and manage risk, as well as to conduct peer and portfolio analysis from a climate and environmental perspective.

Select Product Examples

sustainability-products-and-data-product-examples

Climate Risk and Resilience

Our comprehensive data coverage, in-depth analytics and support services help customers navigate multiple aspects of climate change and the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Journey to Net-Zero

Our data and insight is tried-and-tested throughout the global value chain, helping companies, banks, investment managers and asset owners to support their net-zero journeys, from quantifying net-zero baselines and setting science-based targets to reporting progress and financing ambition. Examples include:

  • Clean Energy Procurement Service: Providing qualitative and quantitative analysis and insights on renewable energy sourcing strategies, enabling more streamlined decision-making for commercial and industrial customers evaluating power procurement options and assessing market and regulatory risks around the world.
  • Climate Indices: Providing a suite of indices across asset classes for different climate objectives – from divestment indices such as Fossil Fuel Free to net-zero-aligned benchmarks such as Paris-Aligned and Climate Transition indices, to thematic solutions such as Clean Energy and Global Water indices. In 2023, we expanded our suite of net-zero indices to include a range of additional regions – for example, S&P China A 300 Net Zero 2050.
  • Corporate Emissions Solution: Supporting global energy and industrial sector customers’ net-zero journeys with standardized data and analytics on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the regional, sector, corporate and portfolio level.
  • Science Based Target Setting: Providing technical expertise, data modeling and other tools and services to help customers set science-based targets and align their strategies with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
  • Sustainability Portfolio Analytics Services: Combining datasets and support to provide relevant climate- and sustainability-related analytics covering Listed Equity, Corporate & Sovereign Fixed Income, Private Equity & Business Loans, and Mortgages & Commercial Real Estate, in line with frameworks such as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

A Japanese Bank Digs Deep on Emissions from Its Vehicle Portfolio

Banks and other financial institutions are under increasing pressure from stakeholders to evaluate GHG emissions from the businesses, assets and projects they finance, invest in or underwrite (Scope 3 emissions). However, methodologies for estimating financed emissions vary significantly, and the necessary data is not easily accessed.

The sustainability team at a large Japanese bank wanted to evaluate its financed emissions specifically from its vehicle portfolio, broken into well-to-tank (emissions associated with extracting, processing, and transporting the fuel) and tank-to-wheel (combustion emissions). The goal was to work with automotive portfolio companies to set and progress toward reasonable emissions goals for 2030 and 2050.

S&P Global Mobility helped to identify key data and break the calculation of vehicle emissions into three key steps:

  1. Vehicle lifetime emissions, including tank-to-wheel (combustion) and well-to-tank (supply chain) emissions.
  2. Manufacturer-level emissions projections.
  3. Portfolio-level analysis with net-zero goal setting.

S&P Global Mobility’s deep vehicle-level data and bottom-up approach enabled portfolio-level aggregation for multiple GHG concentration scenarios and time horizons, helping the client establish net-zero goals and plan engagement with its portfolio companies.

Read more

Climate Risk

Our suite of offerings meets the needs of different customers through climate scenarios, physical and transition risk assessments, assessment of climate impacts on creditworthiness and more. Examples include:

  • Climate Credit Analytics: Enabling financial institutions and corporations to assess how a changing climate and the transition to a low-carbon economy will impact the creditworthiness of their counterparties and investments. In 2023, the product was expanded to include both climate-related physical and energy transition risk.
  • Climate RiskGauge: Estimating the financial impact of climate transition and physical risks by modeling potential changes in credit scores over a given time horizon for public and private companies.
  • Energy and Climate Scenarios: Offering global energy scenarios, net-zero cases, climate-related data and expert analysis to support corporate strategy, investments and decision-making in the energy transition.
  • Physical Risk and Climanomics: Helping customers identify and measure climate risk in their assets, businesses and investment portfolios. In 2023, coverage was nearly doubled, to 1.6 million physical risk assets worldwide, providing customers with access to more detailed asset-level scores, scenarios and related data. The updated Climanomics solution now offers an application programming interface (API) that provides access to risk outputs for single assets, a new Pluvial Flooding hazard to assess risks related to extreme precipitation within a radius of 25 kilometers from the assetʼs location point, and breakdowns of the Modeled Average Annual Loss (MAAL) values, to facilitate mapping of business impacts to financial statements.
  • TCFD Reporting: Enabling companies to identify, assess and report on climate-related risks in alignment with the TCFD. We combine in-depth climate analytics and other services to inform every step of the TCFD reporting journey, from climate scenario analysis covering physical and transition risks to quantifying climate-related financial risks, and to engaging with company stakeholders on the data insights that inform strategic decisions.

Energy Transition

Our solutions cut across several areas to support the energy transition, including environmental markets, emissions management, and clean energy technology and investments. Examples include:

  • Carbon Registry: Allowing convenient management of global carbon, water and biodiversity credits in a centralized, financial markets-based registry system. In 2023, we won a strategic competitive bid with the Singapore government to build its new international carbon credit registry.
  • Electric Vehicle Trends: Providing detailed data insights covering the electrification of road transport, including forecasting and monitoring of electric vehicle adoption trends, supply chain analysis including batteries down to chemical composition and raw material sourcing level, and full-lifecycle vehicle emissions measurement.
  • Global Clean Energy Technology: Providing comprehensive data, analytics and insights on the most important technologies shaping the transformation of the energy industry, to help businesses define activities and investments with emerging energy technologies.
  • Price Assessments: Providing transparency through benchmark prices for the energy transition, including battery metals, biofuels, carbon, hydrogen, recycled plastics, waste and more. In 2023, Platts Fertecon spot physical price assessment of ammonia delivered to Northwest Europe on a cost and freight basis (CFR NWE Ammonia) was selected by Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., as the basis for a new ammonia futures contract. Ammonia is essential to the energy transition, being one of the key transport vectors for moving large amounts of low-carbon hydrogen.
  • Power Evaluator: Enabling deeper insight into the value of asset investments in the power sector. This first-of-its-kind tool allows users to conduct custom valuations of existing and planned power plant assets, simulate the impact of plant acquisitions and divestments, track portfolio progress to net-zero goals, and quantify physical and market risks to the U.S. power plant fleet.
  • Upstream Transformation Service: Leverages industry leading upstream expertise to help companies define a path to a lower GHG emissions future. Provides peer benchmarking and best practice identification to evaluate decisions transforming upstream strategies, portfolios, technologies, costs, regulations, and emissions. Analyzes energy transition challenges for upstream stakeholders through three lenses — company, government, and technology — and provides a deep dive on Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS).

Bringing Transparency to the Carbon Intensity and Pricing of Individual RECs

In September 2023, S&P Global Commodity Insights launched first-of-kind price assessments for Emissions-Adjusted (EA) Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) through a collaborative data licensing agreement with the clean energy data-driven solutions provider REsurety. While renewable energy certificate markets are well established, not all RECs have the same emissions impact, and to date, the emissions impacts have not been reflected in pricing. The new Platts EA RECs are aimed at shedding light on this additional energy-transition-critical information and providing benchmark values for renewables based on their emissions impact.

Nature and Biodiversity

The speed and scale of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation are the highest in history. According to S&P Global research, 85% of the world’s largest companies have a significant dependency on nature, indicating the critical importance of greater transparency for market participants on nature-related risks and opportunities. Businesses and financial institutions need help gaining the knowledge, capacity, data and deep analytics to understand, manage and disclose the nature-related risks they face. Examples of our solutions include:

  • Biologicals Market Analysis: Providing clients complete coverage of the nature-based crop protection market, which is key to agricultural sustainability and the preservation of global biodiversity and environmental health. Includes full coverage of the complex regulatory landscape, industry structure and market share, and the commercial and technical details of the thousands of technologies available today and under development.
  • CNC Price Assessment: Providing additional pricing transparency for nature-based carbon credits (CNC) which are in high demand in the market and often price differently than other types of carbon credits. Both avoidance/reduction nature-based carbon credits (i.e. avoided de-forestation, or REDD+) and removal carbon credits (i.e. soil sequestration, reforestation/ afforestation) can be used in the assessment of the Platts CNC.
  • Nature & Biodiversity Risk Dataset: Leveraging the Nature Risk Profile to provide a quantitative approach to measure nature-related impacts and dependencies at the asset, company and portfolio level. The dataset can be used by market participants to enable more transparent alignment with the LEAP (Locate, Evaluate, Assess and Repair) risk and opportunity assessment approach, as recommended by the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).
  • Nature Risk Profile: Enabling the financial sector to measure and address nature-related risk by providing scientifically robust and actionable analytics on nature impacts and dependencies. The Nature Risk Profile methodology was developed in partnership with the UN Environment Programme and in alignment withTNFD.

S&P Global Sustainable1

“Data can highlight the interconnectedness between climate change and nature loss. Our research and insights demonstrate how understanding nature-related risks and opportunities can support decarbonization, climate adaptation and ecosystem protection.”
authors image

Steven Bullock

Managing Director, Global Head of Research and Methodology

Nature & Biodiversity Risk Portfolio Assessment

In 2023, S&P Global supported Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) in conducting a trial analysis concerning the nature-related risks of GPIF’s portfolio using the Nature Risk Profile methodology.

Results of the analysis described the nature-related impact and dependency performance of GPIF’s domestic and foreign equity portfolios across three core themes:

  • Reputational and Regulatory Risks – i.e., risks arising from assets located in biodiverse areas.
  • Impact Risks – i.e., risks arising from the level of impacts on nature observed at the sites occupied.
  • Dependency Risks – i.e., risks arising from the degree of dependency investee companies have on the services provided by nature.

GPIF subsequently disclosed and discussed the analysis in its FY2022 ESG Report, providing its investors and other stakeholders with a preliminary understanding of nature-related risks, while also supporting ongoing exploration of approaches, guidelines and associated analysis methods recommended by the TNFD.

Read more

Sustainable Finance

In a world where investments that use sustainable criteria are measured in the trillions of dollars, insight into sustainable finance is a requirement for all market participants. S&P Global’s purpose-built data, benchmarks, analytics and workflow solutions enable customers to gain greater insight into how their investments will impact and align with global climate and sustainability goals. Examples include:

  •  Second Party Opinions (SPOs): Delivering independent, point-in-time analyses of sustainable finance instruments, programs or frameworks. S&P Global Ratings SPOs, backed by the award-winning Shades of Green approach, provide additional transparency to investors that seek to understand and act upon potential contribution to a sustainable future.
  • Sustainability and Climate Indices: Providing a spectrum of solutions for a range of sustainability convictions. Flagship equity indices include the S&P 500 ESG, Leaders and Elite methodologies. In 2023, we expanded our suite of net-zero indices to include new regional exposures (for example, China A 300 Net Zero 2050) and launched both new thematic suites (e.g., Transition Metals, Green Infrastructure) and a flagship commodities index, S&P GSCI Climate Aware.

* As of March 2024.

Understand the Transition Spectrum with Shades of Green

Our SPOs provide a view on alignment to relevant market principles, including those of the International Capital Markets Association, the Loan Market Association, and the EU Taxonomy. For green projects, S&P Global Ratings assesses the financing’s contribution in the transition to a low-carbon future through our shading scale, which includes assigning Dark, Medium or Light shading, as appropriate.

Totals may not sum due to rounding.
* AUM = passive ETF assets under management licensing SPDJI indices.
Data for 2022 and 2023 reflects the entire Group and not S&P Global on a stand-alone basis prior to the merger, as stated in the prior year Impact Report.
Sources: SPDJI client-reported data, eVestment and Morningstar Inc. Asset values as of December 31, 2023. Table is provided for illustrative purposes.

sustainability-products-and-data-Transition-Spectrum

Note: LCCR: Low-carbon climate resilient. LCCR is aligned with the Paris Agreement, where the global average temperature increase is held below 2 degrees Celsius (2°C), with efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels.

S&P Dow Jones Indices

“Our sustainability indices help customers monitor and evaluate a wide range of investment strategies and make informed decisions for allocating capital to support a more sustainable economy.”
authors image

Jaspreet Duhra

Managing Director, Global Head of ESG Indices

Supply Chain
Sustainability

Companies face ever-increasing scrutiny and pressure to extend their sustainability efforts to their supply chains. S&P Global’s supply chain solutions provide integrated data, insights and processes to help customers manage risk and deliver on their supply chain goals. Examples include:

  • KY3P® for Procurement: Enabling organizations to uncover supply chain vulnerabilities, identify risk exposure and build best-in-class third-party risk management capabilities, including for sustainability issues. KY3P standardizes and simplifies third-party due diligence, provides end-to-end visibility and vigilance needed to protect the supply chain. 
  • Supplier Risk Indicator: Simple yet insightful metrics to drive supply chain decisions. Each indicator is based on comprehensive multidimensional risk data, such as credit risk, cyber risk, country risk and sustainability, and can be benchmarked, monitored, customized and contextualized with access to drill-down sub-indicators and deep-dive reports.
  • Sustainable Mobility: Helping suppliers and original equipment manufacturers understand supply chain physical risk, evaluate full supply chain emissions and carbon pricing, and look at the trajectory to net-zero plans across the industry. The vehicle-level energy consumption and GHG emissions products and subsequent fleet-level regulatory compliance forecasts support a range of decisions.
  • Increasing Supply Chain Emissions Visibility
    In 2023, S&P Global entered into a joint venture to serve as the lead data and methodology partner for Trafigura/Palantir’s Agora for Energy, a secure, independent platform that integrates commodity supply chain emissions data from primary and secondary sources. The platform is global in reach and leverages S&P Global’s best-in-class asset emissions datasets. Agora offers clients emissions data for over 30,000 assets globally.

ESG Disclosure and Performance

Market participants are now taking into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations in the decision-making process not only in the context of mitigating risk, but also in the context of value creation, as a strategic consideration to remain competitive and foster innovation. S&P Global’s diverse range of analytics and opinions provides a well-rounded picture of ESG performance, to address the different needs of market participants throughout the value chain. Examples include:

  • Business Involvement Screens: Identifying companies’ direct and indirect revenue exposures to specific products and services, designed to help investors construct or assess portfolios based on exposures to specific business activities aligned or misaligned with their investing goals. In 2023, we expanded coverage in both the Consumer Products and Defense & Weapons categories. Clients can now screen for companies with involvement in retail and medical Cannabis, Genetically Modified Organisms, Palm Oil growth and production, Pesticides, and Riot Control equipment and weapons.
  • S&P Global ESG Scores: Measuring companies’ performance on and management of material ESG risks, opportunities and impacts, informed by a combination of company disclosures, media and stakeholder analysis, modeling approaches (as of 2023) and in-depth company engagement via the Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA). In 2023, we launched company reports, which are constructed automatically using underlying scores and data. Visualizations help users understand a company's ESG performance across factors in the CSA, including peer comparisons. Analyst-written commentaries provide insights into key factors and developments underlying performance for approximately 200 of the most globally significant companies.
  • Sustainability Reporting: Helping companies keep pace with the evolving landscape of sustainability standards, with in-depth sustainability data, specialist analyst support and streamlined workflow tools. In 2023, we introduced the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulations (EU SFDR) Data Package, including mandatory and opt-in indicators to support reporting aligned with the SFDR’s Principal Adverse Indicators.

Corporate Sustainability Assessment

The S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) provides annual evaluation of companies’ sustainability practices relative to industry peers, focusing on criteria that are both industry-specific and financially material.

2023 CSA Participation

Industry Engagement and Thought Leadership

We actively work to advance better understanding and management of sustainability issues, including through our own events and publications, as well as engagement in key global forums. The following highlights key examples from 2023.

Convenings

  •  CERAWeek 2023 – Navigating a Turbulent World: Energy, Climate and Security: S&P Global CERAWeek is the world’s preeminent energy conference, bringing together industry leaders, experts, government officials and policymakers, as well as leaders from the technology, financial and industrial communities. The 2023 conference focused on how a new era of global uncertainty and change is reshaping challenges and opportunities for the energy transition.
  •  Framing the Future for Nature: A global knowledge community convened by S&P Global Sustainable1 and comprising over 270 cross-sector stakeholders to inform the development of decision-grade nature risk data intelligence through the universal lens of the TNFD.
  • Towards a Sustainable World: Evolving the Future Economy Based on the Value of Nature, People and Society: Hosted by S&P Global Sustainable1 and the Capitals Coalition, this event explored bigger-picture thinking around the integration of human, natural, social and economic capitals.
  • Global Carbon Markets Conference: S&P Global Commodity Insights’ Global Carbon Markets Conference focuses on scaling credible and transparent carbon markets in pursuit of net-zero goals. In particular, the 2023 event was used to spotlight emissions mitigation technology and contributions to net-zero goals, and the role of carbon pricing in a net-zero future.
  • Climate Week NYC and COP28: Representatives from across S&P Global actively participated in Climate Week NYC in September 2023 and the UN climate talks in Dubai in November-December 2023. In the lead-up to both events, S&P Global experts contributed timely research and insights including The Global Effort to Address Climate Change, Countdown to COP28 and Unraveling Uncertainty: 2023 Scenarios and Net-Zero Cases.

Research

  • S&P Global Sustainability Quarterly: Published each quarter, this cross-divisional journal brings together the best sustainability-focused research from across the business. 2023 culminated with a COP28 Special Edition, featuring research on key themes in focus at the UN's climate change conference in Dubai, from physical and transition risks to the impacts of new sustainability regulation to financing challenges and opportunities.
  • 2024 Energy Outlook: Published in November 2023, S&P Global Market Intelligence’s annual energy outlook highlights challenges and opportunities for energy and mining companies in light of recent policy developments related to the transition to renewable energy sources and associated critical minerals.
  • Atlas of Energy Transition™: First published in 2021, the S&P Global Commodity Insights’ Atlas of Energy Transition is continuously revised to incorporate the latest research and insights, providing an up-to-date map to the sustainable commodity markets of the future.
  • Commodity Insights – Financing the Energy Transition: The December 2023 edition of S&P Global’s Commodity Insights magazine highlighted challenges and opportunities in financing the energy transition, including updates on global investment, M&A and trading activities and trends; insights on the aviation sector; and commentary on the energy trilemma of security, affordability and sustainability.
  • Shaping a Living Roadmap for Energy Transition: Published August 2023 by the International Energy Forum and S&P Global Commodity Insights, this report highlights the outcomes of dialogues with 350 participants from industry, government and civil society on the lessons from the recent energy crisis, which has had a profound impact on energy policies around the world.
  • Incorporating Environmental Considerations into Commodity Indices: This February 2023 report by S&P Dow Jones Indices and JPMorgan Chase focuses on the environmental footprint of commodities and the incorporation of environmental metrics into transparent, rules-based commodity indices.
  • Lost Water: Challenges And Opportunities: In this research, S&P Global Ratings looks at water infrastructure challenges through the lens of non-revenue water – i.e., water that a utility sources and treats but for which it receives no financial compensation – which can deter investment in water infrastructure assets.

In 2023, we launched a revamped Sustainability Insights portal housing all S&P Global Ratings thought leadership as we continue to advance our research and analysis on key sustainability topics.

ESG Insider Podcast

S&P Global Sustainable1’s ESG Insider podcast takes listeners inside the ESG issues shaping the business world through in-depth analysis and interviews with sustainability leaders. The podcast surpassed one million downloads in 2023, again making it the most downloaded across S&P Global and signaling market demand for clear, reliable information about the fast evolving sustainability space. In 2023, the podcast took listeners to key sustainability events like Climate Week NYC and COP28 and covered topics including climate, nature, standards and regulations, worker wellbeing and diversity in leadership.

Lost GDP: Potential Impacts of Physical Climate Risks

Published in November 2023, this S&P Global Ratings research report highlights the potential exposure and readiness of rated countries to different types of climate hazards. Using four climate scenarios to examine the potential exposure of 137 countries to economic losses caused by the physical impacts of climate change, the research mapped the potential exposure of economic output and population to seven climate hazards, using average historical loss rates associated with these hazards. We also used sovereign economic and institutional assessments as a proxy to assess countries’ readiness to adapt and recover from such events.

Read more

Supporting the Launch and Application of the TNFD Framework

In 2023, S&P Global Sustainable1 was pleased to remain an active contributor to the TNFD, including participating in working groups that developed the final framework and supporting the launch of the final recommendations at a New York Stock Exchange event during Climate Week NYC. We complemented this work with the launch of the Nature and Biodiversity Risk dataset and analytic reports to help customers begin to adopt and apply the TNFD framework. We also hosted roundtables, webinars, panel discussions and workshops throughout the year to help clients and others build their capacity to understand why nature and biodiversity is a topic for the private sector, how they can begin to address their exposure to related risks and opportunities, and how the market context is evolving. This included contributing our expertise at global forums including COP28 in Dubai, Climate Week NYC and the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as well as co-hosting a summit with the Capitals Coalition, titled Towards a Sustainable World: Evolving the Future Economy Based on the Value of Nature, People and Society. We also continued to leverage the insight of the Framing the Future for Nature knowledge community highlighted above.

Return to Impact Report