The Delivery Gap

Acre's Insight into how Europe’s Sustainability Leaders are Adapting Under Pressure

As sustainability matures into a core business discipline, our latest research explores what’s next. This Europe-focused report draws on insights from senior leaders and Acre’s own consultants to examine how the profession is evolving under rising expectations and constrained resources. It charts the shift from broad ambition to sharper, science-based action, and unpacks the growing ‘delivery gap’ shaping the future of corporate sustainability. 

 

 

 

 

The Delivery Gap

Sustainability at a Crossroads: Leaner Teams, Sharper Targets

Through candid perspectives from leaders across industries, the findings highlight both the resilience and the pressure within the profession. Whether you are integrating sustainability across business functions, building lean but high-impact teams, or navigating complex reporting rules like CSRD and TNFD, this is essential reading.

Why download?

  • See how organisations are maintaining or raising targets despite economic and political headwinds.

  • Understand how leaner in-house teams are using external expertise to close technical gaps.

  • Learn how integration across finance, procurement, operations, and risk is redefining accountability.

  • Explore the move from high-level ambition to grounded, measurable commitments aligned to regulation.

Our consultants see this pattern across sectors from mining to finance: regulatory, investor and community pressures are intensifying, but so is innovation. The leaders shaping the next phase of sustainability are acting as systems thinkers, bridge-builders and commercial strategists – not just technical specialists.

This report is a strategic tool for anyone serious about closing the delivery gap and embedding sustainability into core business strategy.

 

 

Request your free copy of the full report:

This is a pragmatic reset. We’re seeing a focus on risk, value and productivity. Those who were doing sustainability for the right reasons are fine and get this. Those who were doing it for marketing and box-ticking are being found out.

Survey Respondent

For this model to work, the core team needs deep knowledge of sustainability frameworks, the energy transition, and the evolving priorities that different business operations need to consider.

Survey Respondent

Meet the collaborators

Tanith Allen

Managing Director, EMEA

 

Emily Goetsch

Director, Research

Dan Bond

Director, Natural Resources & Manufacturing

Liam Goldsworthy

Director, Consumer Goods and Industries

Ben Flint

Director, Consultancy & Real Estates

Kate O'Rourke

Director, Banking & Professional Services

More Thought Leadership from Acre

The Future of the Sustainability Profession 

Acre convened 150+ CSOs and senior sustainability executives for a digital event in April that explored the future of our profession and what it will take to thrive in it. Now we’ve distilled those insights into a free resource designed to equip sustainability professionals and leaders with practical foresight and perspective.
Our panel of leading experts - John Elkington, Angela Jhanji, Michael Kobori (he/him), and Catherine Harris - tackled some of the most urgent and complex topics facing the sector today. From the shifting role of sustainability functions and the impact of AI, to leadership in the face of global uncertainty, the conversation was both candid and catalytic.

We've got the world's best talent pool of sustainability professionals to unlock and explore.

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Future of the Sustainability Professional

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