Sustainable Business & ESG Services

Sustainability and ESG are transformative drivers of business growth and resilience. Businesses that actively embed sustainability, acknowledge the opportunity and manage out risks can unlock new revenue streams, enhance operational efficiency, and increase profitability. From creating new sustainable products and services, securing investment, winning competitive tenders, attracting top talent and staying compliant with rapidly changing regulations, now is the time to accelerate your sustainability and ESG journey and seize a competitive edge.

Alasdair

Alasdair Green

ESG Partner

Contact Alasdair Meet the team

Who we can help

  • SMEs TO LARGE ORGANISATIONS
  • PRIVATE EQUITY & PRIVATELY OWNED
  • LISTED BUSINESSES
  • MULTINATIONALS
  • PUBLIC/THIRD SECTOR ORGANISATIONS

How we can help

TAILORED ESG SOLUTIONS FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

Start your ESG journey

In today’s fast-evolving business landscape, sustainability and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) are critical and transformative drivers for long-term success. At AAB, we understand that businesses are rising to the challenges of increasing regulations and responding to the growing expectations of stakeholders, whilst creating business value. Our purpose-driven sustainability and ESG advisory solutions help businesses transform environmental and social challenges into powerful growth opportunities. We support you in creating a meaningful impact on the world through your business success.

Whether you’re just starting out or already have an existing strategy and have plans in place, we tailor our approach to meet your unique needs. If you’re short on time or resources, we offer flexible support through single project assistance, seconded work or even full-time partnerships to accelerate your sustainability ambitions. And for businesses that are just beginning their sustainability journey, we can guide you through every stage — from strategy development to hands-on implementation and delivering impact.

We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, we co-create solutions with you, that fit your specific business goals and context, drawing on our practical, real-world experience of sustainability and ESG challenges. From improving ESG ratings to bolstering risk management and stakeholder trust, or bringing new sustainable products and services to market we’re here to help you achieve both financial and non-financial returns.

YOUR ROADMAP TO SUSTAINABILITY & ESG EXCELLENCE

Our Strategy & Roadmap service provides a clear, actionable process to embed sustainability into your core business model, operations, and decision-making processes. We start with a thorough analysis of your business context, gaining insights into your specific priorities—whether it’s growth, managing risk, entering new markets, or launching innovative services. By evaluating broader sustainability and ESG trends, we can shape a strategy that’s both ambitious and achievable.

We then conduct an Organisational Review and Gap Analysis to assess your current sustainability performance, comparing it with your competitors. This benchmarking allows us to pinpoint where you stand, identifying strengths, weaknesses, and untapped opportunities that could elevate your sustainability and ESG credentials.

Next, our Materiality Assessment ensures we focus on the sustainability issues that matter most to your business and stakeholders. This sets the foundation for a strategy that targets real value—whether it’s improving ESG ratings, reducing risks, or driving new revenue through sustainable innovation.

From there, we build out your long-term vision, articulating the key sustainability themes that will shape your future. We design clear objectives, KPIs and targets, such as reducing carbon emissions, improving gender diversity, or increasing compliance, ensuring everything is measurable and aligned with your business goals. Our roadmap provides specific, actionable steps to help you achieve these goals, tracking progress along the way, and these may feed into certification of standards, (eg. B Corp or ISO) or ESG ratings agencies (eg. MSCi or Sustainalytics). With this approach, your business can stay ahead of the curve, driving both sustainable growth and measurable impact.

Get in touch for impactful sustainability and ESG solutions

Create Lasting Impact: Sustainability Implementation Made Easier

At AAB, we ensure that your sustainability strategy is not just a document but a driving force for real, measurable change and impact. Once priorities are established, we help you turn them into actionable initiatives, that deliver long-term results enhancing your business objectives. Whether you need us to evaluate your impact, second staff to deliver specific projects like Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) or community initiatives, or simply to bolster hands-on support, we’ve got you covered.

With team members experienced both client-side and in-house, we bring a holistic understanding of the challenges businesses face when implementing sustainability strategies. We help you navigate common barriers, from tight budgets to organisational resistance. By setting clear goals, allocating resources efficiently, and engaging stakeholders early, we ensure your sustainability efforts are structured, transparent, and impactful. Our services are designed to help you seamlessly execute your sustainability strategy, overcoming challenges and driving meaningful results across key areas:

Specialised resource management, project costings, and budget planning
Maximise the impact of your initiatives by optimising resources and budgets, ensuring financial efficiency while driving sustainability forward.

Impact evaluation services
Gain clear insights into the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes of your initiatives, enabling you to track progress, demonstrate success, and make informed, data-driven decisions.

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) advisory
Create a more inclusive and diverse workplace by integrating EDI into your sustainability efforts, promoting innovation, collaboration, and stronger employee engagement.

Strategic community engagement and social impact services
Build strong relationships with local communities, enhancing stakeholder trust and amplifying the positive social impact of your sustainability initiatives.

With AAB, you’ll have the expertise and support you need to turn your sustainability strategy into lasting, measurable outcomes.

Talk to us about turning your sustainability goals into actions

Your Path to Net Zero: Simplified Strategies for a Sustainable Future

Achieving Net-Zero emissions is a vital but complex journey for businesses. From measuring emissions, implementing tangible carbon reductions and meeting reporting obligations, the challenge can feel overwhelming. At AAB, we can help you overcome the complexity and drive you towards a successful Net-Zero strategy.

  • Carbon Inventories & Baselining

Accurately measuring your greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is crucial, but it’s no easy task. From direct emissions (Scope 1), indirect emissions (Scope 2), to a company’s value chain emissions (Scope 3), tracking carbon across your entire operations can be daunting. We simplify this with our carbon accounting software, creating clear reports that can be tracked annually. Whether you need a data template or full carbon management, we ensure you know exactly where you stand.

  • Net Zero Strategy

Struggling to justify short-term costs for long-term returns? You’re not alone. We help you co-create a performance-enhancing Net Zero strategy, aligning carbon reduction targets with your business goals while uncovering climate finance opportunities and innovative solutions.

  • Carbon & Climate Reporting

Keeping up with increasing reporting obligations like SECR, IFRS, and SBTI is critical, but complex data challenges can increase the risk of non-compliance. We provide expert support to ensure your reports are accurate, compliant, and responsive to stakeholder expectations for low-carbon products and services.

  • Climate Risk Assessment

Climate risks like supply chain disruptions, flooding, and reputational damage can threaten your business. Our climate risk assessment identifies these threats early, helping you mitigate risks and uncover new business opportunities.

  • Climate & Carbon Literacy

Many businesses lack the in-house expertise needed to implement Net-Zero. We offer technical training to upskill your team, creating a climate-literate culture that accelerates your Net Zero transition and equips your workforce with the knowledge to act fast.

Take the next step to Net Zero

Sustainable Finance That Powers Purpose & Growth

The world of sustainable finance presents unique challenges: rising regulatory demands and standards, increased investor scrutiny, and the need for authentic sustainability and ESG practices to attract capital. Many businesses, especially SMEs, face difficulties in securing funding or meeting compliance standards due to limited expertise or high perceived risk. Add the pressure to demonstrate genuine sustainability while avoiding greenwashing, and it’s clear the journey to access sustainable finance can feel overwhelming.

We’re here to make it simpler. We can help you navigate investor relations, due diligence and transactions whilst integrating responsible investment practices that align with stakeholder expectations and build credibility.

Our team also develops sustainable finance frameworks and ESG engagement strategies to enhance portfolio performance, including private equity. With our guidance on capital raising, you’ll be ready to access green bonds, social impact investing, and climate finance opportunities to fund sustainable growth.

Additionally, we can provide strategic market positioning and business case development to accelerate your products and services in the market, increase stakeholder engagement, and enhance business growth. Through integrated growth planning, capital strategy, and R&D tax advisory, we fuel your business potential and assist you in bringing your sustainability innovations to market.

Let’s talk sustainable finance

Strengthen Your Impact: Governance & Procurement That Delivers

Effective governance & procurement is essential to protect your business from risks like financial losses, regulatory penalties, and reputational damage. Poor governance, lack of capacity, resistance to cultural change, and unsustainable procurement practices can lead to supply chain vulnerabilities, a loss of competitive advantage and missed business opportunities. AAB’s comprehensive services help you navigate these areas, strengthening your sustainability and ESG performance.

Governance & Leadership

Our governance services support senior leadership in enhancing sustainability and ESG expertise. We provide board training and executive development to coach leaders in sustainability, including support in building robust governance models and governance structures e.g. sustainability committees. We also provide policy development to embed sustainability and ESG, and improve data management processes for robust sustainability reporting and assurance.

Capability & Capacity

Building a capable team is essential to implement sustainability effectively. We provide sustainability and ESG employee development programmes and offer organisational capability reviews to assess current strengths and identify knowledge or capability gaps. When needed, our team supports capacity-building efforts by assisting with programme delivery, recruitment, and team mentoring.

Culture & Behaviour Change

Embedding sustainability into organisational culture is vital for long-term impact. Our culture change initiatives are tailored to integrate sustainability and ESG principles throughout your operations, while partnership facilitation connects your business with industry bodies, coalitions, and support organisations to amplify impact.

Procurement & Value Chains

A sustainable supply chain is key to de-risking and driving opportunities for business growth. We help integrate sustainability and ESG criteria into sustainable procurement practices and supplier screening to identify potential risks. With our supplier engagement services, you can strengthen supplier relationships and embed sustainability within your supply chain. For businesses in competitive bidding, we provide tendering and social value support to help you meet public sector and private sector criteria, increasing your chances of winning contracts.

With AAB, governance and procurement become competitive advantages, empowering you to deliver on sustainability and ESG commitments and improve your position in the market.

Get support with governance & procurement

Transparency You Can Trust: ESG Audit & Assurance

In today’s landscape, transparency and trust in ESG data aren’t just nice-to-haves—they’re essential. As expectations from investors, regulators, and stakeholders grow, businesses need robust ESG audit and assurance to maintain credibility and minimise risk. At AAB, our ESG Audit & Assurance services help protect your business from reputational, financial, and regulatory risks tied to inaccurate or unverified ESG data, ensuring you remain competitive and trusted.

ESG Audit

Our ESG audit provides a thorough review of your sustainability practices and data management, addressing the following:

  • Compliance Check: Ensuring you align with key standards like CSRD, SECR, GRI, SASB, and TCFD.
  • Gap Identification: Highlighting areas where your business may be falling short on ESG goals or facing potential risks.
  • Data Integrity Verification: Confirming the accuracy of metrics, from carbon emissions to diversity data.
  • Internal Control Review: Assessing and strengthening your systems for effective ESG data management and reporting.

ESG Assurance

Our independent ESG assurance gives stakeholders confidence in the credibility of your disclosures. We offer:

  • Limited Assurance: Focusing on the key risk areas that matter most.
  • Reasonable Assurance: A more detailed review, similar to a financial audit, for enhanced reliability.

The AAB Difference: Key Benefits

  • Complete Independence: Objective, conflict-free assessments for unbiased results.
  • Alignment with Leading Standards: Audits that adhere to recognised frameworks such as ISAE 3000.
  • Tailored Scope: Focus on specific metrics or review your entire report—whatever suits your needs.

With AAB’s ESG Audit & Assurance, you’re equipped with accurate, credible data that strengthens your reputation and builds stakeholder trust, helping you stay resilient and competitive in an ESG-driven market.

Talk to us about ESG audit & assurance

Showcase your impact with compliant sustainability & ESG Reporting

Sustainability and ESG reporting can be complex, demanding, and resource-intensive, especially as businesses navigate diverse frameworks, evolving regulations, and growing stakeholder expectations. We can simplify this process for you, ensuring your disclosures are accurate, credible, and impactful.

We start with robust data collection processes, providing consistent, reliable data across all operations. This solid foundation reduces inaccuracies and helps build trust with stakeholders. By aligning with critical reporting frameworks like CSRD, UK SRS, SECR, GRI, and TCFD, our tailored approach ensures reports are fully compliant and industry-relevant, allowing your ESG efforts to stand out meaningfully.

Our focus on narrative-driven reporting presents your sustainability achievements honestly. By highlighting verified impact and clear risk disclosures, we help you tell an authentic story that resonates, protecting your brand from overstated claims e.g. greenwashing.

With fast-moving and ever-changing ESG regulations, we stay on top of new developments, offering guidance on compliance and effective stakeholder communication. This approach enables you to engage investors, customers, and partners with transparent, genuine and results-based reporting.

Talk to us about sustainability & ESG reporting

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  1. Blog8th May 2024

    Alasdair Green, ESG Partner and author of ESG diligence

    ESG Diligence: The Key To Sustainable M&A Transactions

    In today’s dynamic investment landscape, the integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors has become more than just a trend. It is emerging to be strategically imperative alongside other more traditional performance measures such as profitability and financial performance. …

    By Alasdair Green

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