Gareth Parkin - The business case for sustainability

Gareth Parkin, CFO and Senior Vice President at Messer Americas, explains the business case for doing good.

Gareth began by examining the fundamental role of deploying capital and the need to move on and think about organisational portfolios and how to increase spend on sustainable objectives. Gareth described his own experience and how ESG is now an embedded part of his organisation’s credit rating and what his investors want to know about. He also shared examples of trends that will deliver true economic value and deliver sustainable impact, e.g. in the US decarbonisation economy, hydrogen mobility was a pipe dream a few years ago and needed government backing previously; this isn’t the case anymore. Gareth believes that we are now on the cusp and if corporations are aligning the quality of their earnings with sustainability, it is a process that will be here for decades.

Gareth’s Top Tips; building a business case for investment in sustainable growth A traditional business case and a business case for doing good are not mutually exclusive but you need to sometimes think of these larger investments in a slightly different way. 1) Think long-term, this goes beyond a traditional contract term of 15-20years into generational terms. You need to shift the mindset 2) Look at how to lower capital costs and risks eg. look to partner with people to share some of the financial risks or some of the technology risks. 3) As a CFO, don’t just look at the risk, look at the strategic opportunity.