Implement Climate Transition Plans

The importance of implementation

Sustainability teams write transition plans, but every department has a role in delivery, from procurement to R&D to marketing. Their buy-in is essential in forming and implementing the transition.

Sustainability teams – traditionally small and technical – are now tasked with leading a business-wide transformation program. Like any change program, this will face resistance, compounded by navigating new and poorly-understood territory. Regulators and NGOs have set sustainability standards but focused less on explaining these to non-experts, leaving sustainability teams to bridge the gap.

The sustainability team's ability to effectively implement change is critical to successful transition planning. We break this into two parts:

Foundations – the underlying processes and structure that allow sustainability teams to implement transition programs

Momentum – how the sustainability team collaborates with other teams to enact change

Foundations: Processes and structure

Four elements need to support each other for effective climate transition implementation:

Governance sets the direction and clears roadblocks. Without clear decision-making authority, your transition stalls at every crossroad. Who decides when sustainability conflicts with cost? Who breaks deadlocks between departments? Effective governance ensures these questions have answers.

Performance metrics provide detailed direction and accountability. They translate climate targets into actions that teams can own and leadership can review.

Incentives build motivation. Even the best plans fail without perseverance. Tying compensation and recognition to climate outcomes ensures your transition plan aligns effectively with other priorities.

Team structure shapes how quickly knowledge spreads and decisions get made

These elements must align with each other. Metrics without incentives create accountability without motivation. Governance without the right team structure makes decisions that can't be executed. Incentives tied to metrics that teams can't influence breed cynicism rather than action.

The foundation you build should match your organization's culture and your transition's ambition. A business pursuing incremental efficiency gains needs different structures than one overhauling its entire business model.

Governance

Governance determines who makes decisions about your transition. Good governance is critical to transition implementation. If you are finding your transition plan is frequently stuck at stalemates with no decisions being made, you probably have a governance issue.

Your governance structure must match your transition's complexity and your organization's decision-making culture. Most companies need governance at two levels: the board and executive leadership.

The board

The board’s role in climate governance is to:

• Approve overall ambition

• Approve major strategic shifts (e.g., spend envelopes, business model changes)

• Hold executive leadership accountable

This can be achieved either through all-board reporting or a sustainability board subcommittee

Building board capabilities

Board members often lack deep climate expertise, which can slow decision-making and lead to excessive caution. Training helps board members ask better questions and make faster decisions.

External training (focused on climate strategy for boards) brings outside perspectives and challenges. In-house training is faster and cheaper but risks becoming an echo chamber. For board members new to climate governance, external training delivers better results.

Executive governance

At the executive level, establish a body that makes binding decisions on transition priorities and ensures accountability of business teams. Its two key roles are:

Connecting functions: Linking the sustainability team to business functions (operations, finance, procurement, commercial teams)

Making decisions: Resolving issues that the sustainability team can’t address alone – budget conflicts, cross-functional disputes, and strategic trade-offs

While ownership often sits with the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO), a cross-functional team is usually more effective, as it can balance competing priorities and make difficult decisions. Good formation of this team is critical – keep it focused on the most complex, high-impact, and contentious aspects of the transition plan.

Critical success factors:

• Include the CFO or a direct report. Financial approval will be central, so integration with these processes is essential.

• Keep it small – usually no more than six people

• Include the CSO – to bring expertise and passion – but no other sustainability experts. Too much sustainability representation is unnecessary and can slow decisions.

Signs of effective governance

• Cross-functional conflicts get resolved in committee, not left to stall

• Board asks substantive questions about strategy and trade-offs, not just metrics

Signs governance needs strengthening

• Decisions from the sustainability leadership team are unilaterally blocked by other executives

• Transition progress is delayed by unresolved friction between teams

• Meetings do not lead to concrete actions

Performance metrics and tracking

A robust metrics and tracking system provides:

• Clear responsibility

• Progress expectations

• Visibility of results

External targets often trigger the creation of internal metrics and tracking and should cascade into functional targets to drive change. However, sustainability and climate metrics, particularly Scope 3 emissions, are difficult to translate to actions. Take a combined approach:

• Sustainability targets are about outcomes E.g., Scope 1 and 2 emissions intensity at group or BU level

• Functional targets are about actions teams must take to deliver the transition plan. E.g., sourcing 30% recycled aluminum

From a long-term target to a pathway

Building effective targets requires working backwards from your long-term carbon target. Your internal sustainability targets are derived from external target and interim targets: set carbon targets by BU or region for one year ahead, three years ahead, and your target year. Consider relative footprint and reduction potential to segment target by BUs.

Functional targets link closely to the prioritized actions from your MACC analysis and decarbonization strategy (see Section 2.3). Identify actions within the next three years and assign them to BUs. Work with those BUs to understand realistic implementation timelines.

Figure 1: Example 2030 sustainability targets translated to one- and three-year functional targets

Cascading targets

Metrics and KPIs should cascade to business units (BUs) and potentially to business teams. Assigning targets at the right level is critical: too high-level leads to unclear accountability, and too detailed creates extra work and micromanagement.

For almost all businesses, cascading targets to the BU or regional level is a constructive push for accountability rather than a move into micromanaging. Proactively work to co-create targets that support delivery towards your organizational science-based target.

Expand targets along the organization over time. As you move into more granular target setting, move towards guiding, enabling and coordinating targets rather than proactively setting them.

Figure 2: Example KPI cascade, flowing from an overall target to BU, business teams and sub-teams.

Metric and target implementation tips:

• Document the chain of accountability. Create a clear log showing how internal targets relate to external commitments. When boards and leadership see this connection, it strengthens buy-in during pushback.

• Balance outcome and process metrics. Top-level metrics should focus on results (emissions reduced, renewable energy deployed). However, early-stage transition plans require work that doesn't immediately impact emissions, such as making plans or running pilots. Include simple yes/no metrics tracking whether key steps are complete. This galvanizes and rewards progress through early stages.

• Link this process closely to executive leadership and finance. This process will likely flush out unforeseen problems as business teams grasp the scale of change required. Sustainability teams must discern genuine operational challenges from distractions and whataboutery – close links to executive leadership and finance are crucial.

Creating an incentive system

A climate transition plan succeeds when the people in the organization are motivated to deliver it.

Executive incentives are critical. Leading companies tie 10–25% of executive compensation to climate targets through bonuses or long-term share options, typically linked to externally stated targets for transparency. For example, PepsiCo, Unilever, and Danone connect executive pay to emissions reductions. As executives control the organization’s sustainability performance, their incentives should be linked to high-level sustainability metrics rather than functional metrics. These incentives drive accountability and improve alignment.

All-employee incentives can accelerate implementation but require careful design. Group-wide bonuses tied to emissions often fail because key drivers may lie outside individual teams’ control. Where possible, link bonuses to targets tailored to each team. This integrates with existing bonus structures and provides clear, achievable goals.

Non-financial recognition can complement financial incentives, particularly where performance metrics are still emerging. Employee awards or spotlight features help motivate and maintain engagement.

Sustainability expertise structure and roles

When designing the structure for sustainability expertise, focus on two key decisions:

• How integrated should sustainability experts be in operational teams?

• Where should the main sustainability team report?

Sustainability expertise integration

• Hybrid roles embed sustainability experts within operational teams, e.g., an R&D specialist providing day-to-day sustainability input while performing core R&D duties. These roles generate momentum within the host team, understanding operational realities and driving practical changes for the transition plan.

• Central sustainability teams are less embedded in BUs but better positioned to coordinate teams and work with leadership to set a strategy for the board

Most organizations find that a mixture between central sustainability teams and hybrid teams gets the best results, balancing the strategy and focus given by a central team with the implementation ability of hybrid roles.

If you are clear on strategic direction, but haven't achieved the necessary buy-in, increase the number of hybrid roles. These will bridge the gap between your team and the business teams and navigate operational challenges

If your sustainability efforts feel directionless, reduce the number of hybrid roles and bring them into the central team.

Sustainability team reporting line

Many sustainability teams report to corporate affairs, which streamlines reporting but can create barriers with operational teams. Ensure this is actively considered. Choices could be as varied as:

• Procurement or supply chain – for businesses where purchased goods dominate emissions and supply chain influence is critical

• Finance – for companies where the plan focuses on risk management or capital allocation

• Strategy – for hard-to-abate sectors (e.g., metals, mining, power) where transition requires fundamental business changes

• Technology – for businesses where decarbonization relies on significant R&D (e.g., fine chemicals)

Case Study: Unilever’s cross-functional governance structure

Implementing a climate transition typically requires collaboration across multiple executive functions. Unilever delegates day-to-day oversight of its transition plan to the Unilever Leadership Executive, which includes the CEO, CFO, and other senior executives.

This group reports quarterly to the board, reviews progress with each Business Group, and holds Business Group Sustainability Leads accountable for delivery. The central sustainability team provides support to these Leads.

This structure balances:

• Shared responsibility across executive functions

• Ownership tensions between business groups and the sustainability team

• Trade-offs between sustainability and other business priorities

Figure 3: Unilever’s sustainability governance structure

Source: Unilever Annual Report and Accounts 2024

Case Study: How an intern embedded sustainability principles in Synapse’s mechanical engineering

Synapse, an engineering company within Capgemini Invent, embedded a graduate sustainable design intern in their mechanical engineering team. Her goal was to integrate sustainable design principles into their workflow.

She used several techniques:

• Ethnographic observation – watching engineers at work.

• Interviews and group discussions – probing attitudes, barriers, tools, and process constraints

• Process mapping – identifying decision points where sustainability could be applied

From this, she developed a framework combining:

• Light-touch life cycle analysis – quick, early-stage environmental assessment

• Modular sustainability strategies – pick-and-choose interventions such as recyclable materials, reducing part count, design for circularity, and energy efficiency

• Alignment with existing stage-gate processes – enabling integration throughout the design lifecycle, particularly in early stages, without disrupting review workflows

Key lessons:

• Embed within the team – secondments or internships can be effective if full-time hybrid roles aren’t possible; allow time to understand workflows

• Use actionable data – light-touch life-cycle assessments are more practical than full analysis at every stage

• Leverage existing processes – integrating sustainability into current workflows ensures adoption and continuity

Source: Chatty, T., Harrison, W., Ba-Sabaa, H. H., Faludi, J., & Murnane, E. L. (2022). Co-Creating a Framework to Integrate Sustainable Design into Product Development Practice: Case Study at an Engineering Consultancy Firm. Sustainability (Switzerland), 14(15), Article 9740. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14159740

Case study: How Schneider Electric supported marketing claims with its Environmental Data Program

To communicate our environmental impact in a trustworthy way, better and more transparent data is essential. When product environmental information is robust and rigorously shared, consumers and businesses alike can consider environmental performance to make the most informed decision making possible.

Since 2008, Schneider Electric has provided environmental information on our products through a proprietary “Green Premium” label. Over time, however, it recognized the need for a more dynamic approach and data-driven approach – one that reflects its deeper understanding of environmental impact, meets rising customer expectations, and anticipates evolving regulations.

That’s why, in 2024, it transitioned its Green Premium label to launch the Environmental Data Program. This initiative goes beyond traditional labeling, offering a comprehensive framework for environmental transparency. Through this program, it now provides:

• Up to 30 environmental data points per product

• Covering key areas such as carbon footprint, materials, substances, energy efficiency, lifetime extension, repackaging, and remanufacturing

• Currently, 110,000 Schneider Electric products feature at least 14 environmental attributes, representing 70% of our 2024 product turnover

The program will continue to expand to include more products and environmental attributes across its portfolio.

The goal is to empower businesses and consumers alike to make better informed choices, with consistent, transparent, and easily accessible environmental data. By doing so, it aims to set new benchmarks for environmental disclosure and product sustainability – helping stakeholders better understand, measure, report, and ultimately reduce their environmental and carbon footprint.

Case Study: How a product carbon emissions audit allowed Amazon to make product-level sustainability claims and build sustainability into design

Amazon has made big strides in sustainability:

• Founding ‘Climate Pledge Friendly’

• Incorporating recycled materials into its devices

• Rolling out low power modes

It wanted to prove that these changes were making a difference to its sustainability outcomes.

Amazon Devices worked with the Carbon Trust in a robust audit of carbon emissions of current and previous device generations.

The work enabled a variety of product-level sustainability claims based in fact:

• Device footprint calculations — from manufacturing to use phase to end-of-life emissions — across each product range.

• Verify over 50 devices as reducing their carbon footprints, communicated using the Carbon Trust label. These include Amazon’s Echo, Fire TV and Kindle devices.

Since the verification, Amazon has integrated carbon emission reductions into its device product strategy. These metrics support product engineers to cut emissions through design decisions, spurring inspiration and moving to a sustainable product roadmap.

Sustainability impact

Climate

This action primarily targets Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions through improved accountability and decision-making across all business functions.

These measures do not directly abate emissions but enable measurable GHG reductions by accelerating the pace and effectiveness of transition plan delivery across departments.

Business impact

Benefits

• Enhanced strategic alignment: Cross-functional decision-making structures prevent decarbonization bottlenecks and integrate sustainability into business strategy.

• Operational efficiency: Clear accountability and cascading KPIs improve resource allocation and speed of delivery.

• Investor confidence: Tying remuneration and metrics to climate outcomes strengthens ESG credibility and reduces reputational risk.

• Talent retention and engagement: Employees view measurable sustainability progress as evidence of purpose-driven leadership.

Costs

• Initial setup and training: Developing board and executive climate capability requires short-term investment in governance restructuring, training sessions, and data systems.

• Integration costs: Adapting tracking systems and incentive frameworks may temporarily increase administrative workload.

• Mitigation: These costs are typically offset through improved capital allocation, reduced transition risks, and lower cost of capital due to enhanced investor trust.

Foundations checklist

Each business is unique and there is no one-size fits all solution. This checklist is a fast tool for you to reflect on the strengths and challenges of the foundations for your transition. Use it to reflect on your work to date and prioritize next steps.

Momentum: Driving progress with other teams

Your transition plan is fundamentally about working across silos – the sustainability team can't deliver it alone. However, when your goals clash with other teams’ existing priorities (cost targets, efficiency metrics), those teams will struggle to engage. Overcoming barriers created by mismatched priorities, unclear expectations, low trust and scale and resource concerns is critical. Over the next pages, we provide maps for collaboration with five critical teams:

• Finance plays a pivotal role in turning sustainability ambitions into reality through capital allocation, risk management, and access to sustainable finance. Integrating climate considerations into investment decisions (e.g., through internal carbon pricing) ensures decarbonization projects receive funding, while climate risk integration protects the business from transition and physical risks. Strong finance-sustainability collaboration also unlocks access to green bonds and sustainability-linked loans, reducing the cost of capital.

• Procurement is essential for addressing Scope 3 emissions, which often represent 70-90% of a company's carbon footprint. By engaging suppliers on emissions data, target-setting, and low-carbon alternatives, procurement teams transform supply chains from a liability into a competitive advantage. This collaboration also builds supply chain resilience, positioning the business to manage climate-related disruptions and access emerging low-carbon materials before competitors.

• Product teams determine the lifecycle environmental impact of what you sell - from raw material extraction through manufacturing, use-phase, and end-of-life. Embedding sustainability into product design creates differentiation in markets where customers increasingly value environmental performance. This collaboration also positions your company to lead in circular economy business models and capture emerging market opportunities as regulations and customer preferences shift toward sustainable products.

• Operations teams control the majority of Scope 1 and 2 emissions through decisions about energy use, manufacturing processes, and logistics. Collaboration here turns decarbonization roadmaps into physical reality through technology pilots, retrofits, and operational improvements. Success in operational decarbonization also often delivers cost savings through energy efficiency, positioning sustainability as a driver of operational excellence rather than just a compliance obligation.

• Marketing translates sustainability work into stakeholder value, building trust with customers, investors, and employees while protecting the business from greenwashing accusations. Effective sustainability communications differentiate your brand, support premium pricing, and attract talent that values purpose-driven work. However, this collaboration can be challenging to establish - marketing teams are often risk-averse about sustainability claims, requiring careful governance and evidence-building to develop confidence. Done well, marketing partnerships amplify all your other sustainability work, position your company as a climate leader in your industry and reduce your downstream emissions through behavior change.

Co-ordinating data infrastructure

The sustainability team is likely to be sharing data with many teams: finance, procurement, product, operations and more. If the business has overall well-managed data, this should be frictionless; however, if the business has inconsistent data between teams, the sustainability team needs to manage conflicting models for the same processes. This can be an opportunity to act as a catalyst for improvement; highlight areas where different teams approach the same problems with different data and models and push for consistency. Involve the data or IT team to drive this effort.

Figure 5 : Different data layers and how consolidating can bring sustainability and wider business benefits

Translating climate targets into action requires both a compelling case and effective execution.

The gap between commitment and delivery has two dimensions. First, sustainability teams must convince decision-makers across the organization that the transition creates value – not just manages compliance. Second, they must build the structures and relationships that turn approved plans into operational reality.

• Build a business case that resonates. Different stakeholders care about different things. Your CFO needs quantified financial risk and return on investment. Your operations team needs proof that changes are operationally feasible. Your commercial team needs evidence of customer demand and competitive positioning. Generic sustainability arguments rarely win the day – targeted evidence matched to stakeholder priorities does. Use the tools in this guide selectively, focusing on what will move decisions in your specific context.

• Create foundations for delivery. Once you have buy-in, implementation requires infrastructure. Build governance that resolves conflicts rather than creating bottlenecks. Design metrics that cascade appropriately – clear accountability at BU level, guidance for functional teams, coordination at site level. Create incentives that make sustainability compete effectively with cost and growth targets. Position your sustainability expertise where it can drive change.

• Build momentum through relationships. Your transition plan touches every major function. Success requires understanding what each team values, speaking their language, and demonstrating how sustainability advances their priorities. The momentum maps provide frameworks, but relationships are built through consistent engagement, mutual respect, and delivering on commitments.

• Stay pragmatic. Not every organization needs every element in this guide. Match your approach to your context – your organizational culture, transition ambition, and team capacity. Better to execute fewer initiatives well than attempt everything and deliver nothing.

The transition to a sustainable business model is one of the most significant change programs your organization will undertake. It requires both the strategic case-making to secure resources and the operational discipline to deploy them effectively.

The momentum maps below will guide you through this process for five critical teams, showing you how to collaborate effectively at each stage and commonly prioritized actions

Momentum map: Finance

Momentum map: Procurement

Momentum map: Product

Momentum map: Operations

Momentum map: Marketing