Leveraging sustainability to drive value in deals

Well, because sustainability is not just about compliance, it has real financial impact: energy use, energy efficiency, carbon emissions, climate risk, supply chain resilience, and related workforce and human rights issues all shape deal outcomes. When you look at these factors early in the due diligence phase, you protect the value of your investment and you find risks and opportunities others miss, so you actually create more value and make a difference.

Tight timelines and incomplete data are the biggest hurdles, because sometimes you have a few hours to figure out which sustainability issues truly matter and only a few days to perform the analysis and provide the investment committee with the required information. The best deal teams combine the data available to them with industry benchmarks and market insight to build clear, practical financial estimates, and they stay pragmatic with analysis and estimates; instead of targeting perfect predictions, they use sound, pragmatic estimates and leverage AI-enabled solutions to make sharp, confident decisions even with limited time and incomplete data.

Sustainability will be at the heart of most deals, shifting from a sustainability office issue to a broader, business-led strategy; as climate risks intensify and expectations for corporate responsibility rise, driven by both regulatory pressure and stakeholder demand, integrating sustainability across the business will no longer be optional. Connecting more meaningful, data-driven analysis pre-close and developing a better articulated roadmap post-close will become standard practice, though it will still vary depending on the nature of the deal. Emerging tools such as agentic AI and advanced data analytics will sharpen these insights, helping dealmakers act faster and with greater confidence to capture the value at risk and realize the full potential for value creation at exit. Sustainability is a value creation driver, and capturing and estimating the value from key sustainability issues is an exciting opportunity to build a more resilient future across the value chain.