Deloitte has announced Sustainability Fusion™, a new framework, digital tool, and AI-powered web-based evaluator that enables C-suite leaders, in particular, chief sustainability officers (CSOs) and chief financial officers (CFOs), to measure and communicate the impact of sustainability investments on business outcomes and enterprise value.

Sustainability Fusion builds on the work of a group of more than 25 corporate, NGO, and independent sustainability leaders to fill an important gap in the field of corporate sustainability: the lack of a financial framework to put environmental and social efforts into practice for capital allocation decisions.

The concept of sustainability investments evaluates environmental and social initiatives using the same value-creation principles as other business investments. It is based on tax-adjusted cash flow (TACF), which combines cost, revenue, and risk assessments to communicate the financial value of sustainability investments. This enables organisations to compare sustainability initiatives with other capital investments on an apples-to-apples basis.

“Sustainability and finance are able to speak the same language and partner seamlessly to create new commercial pipelines, mitigate risk and realize cost savings,” said Bill Marquard, Sustainability Fusion co-lead at Deloitte Consulting LLP.

The tool aims to help organisations in making trade-offs, prioritising investments, improve coordination between sustainability and finance teams, and creating a repeatable enterprise-wide approach to making sustainability investment decisions. It is designed to work alongside existing reporting and compliance frameworks, rather than replacing them, and will provide an additional layer of financial rigour that is not provided by existing frameworks.

Laura Bryce, Sustainability Fusion co-lead at Deloitte Consulting LLP, said, "Sustainability leaders don't need a new set of metrics; they need a better way to connect their work to what drives business performance."

With sustainability now firmly integrated into business strategy, the financial benefits of making sustainability investments in environmental and social issues are becoming a competitive priority. Sustainability Fusion is designed to strengthen the business case for sustainability by making it more effective, more efficient, and more convincing for decision-makers at the top.