Challenges to Sustainability
External pressures and lack of available technologies threaten progress on sustainability ambitions.
Although organizations are aligned internally on their long-term sustainability goals, the changing economic landscape has created short-term hurdles to achieving those ambitions.
Globally, organizations cited economic constraints and competitive market pressures as the top challenges that are slowing innovation needed to achieve sustainability goals.
In addition, organizations identified key internal challenges that are limiting advancement in sustainability: 84% of engineers and 86% of executives said that a lack of sustainable technologies currently available is preventing innovation needed to achieve sustainability goals. Similarly, 87% of engineers and 89% of executives cited the difficulty of ensuring sustainability across the entire supply chain.
TE Takeaway
Faced with a multitude of economic pressures outside of their control, organizations should take a pragmatic approach to environmental sustainability to continue to pursue their short-term goals. Savings derived from something like an energy efficiency project can free up capital to be invested in further projects. At one TE site, we have implemented an air management system to reduce the compressed air consumption of factory equipment by 18 percent per machine. This has resulted in energy savings of approximately 450,000 kWh and cost savings of around $50,000 per year. Scaling a simple project like this has not only brought us closer to our 2030 sustainability goals, it has enabled us to further invest in other sustainable initiatives.
Holly Webdale
Vice President, ESG & Facilities