ESG Initiatives Are Essential for Utility Industry Transformation

Investors and consumers around the world are increasingly concerned with companies’ work on combating climate change and improving the diversity within workforces and leadership, among other environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities. Due to the critical role ESG plays in the industry, Public Utilities Fortnightly (PUF) has published a special issue dedicated to ESG that features interviews of utility company executives on their organizations' ESG initiatives. Guidehouse experts Dan Hahn and Michelle Fay sat in on some of these interviews.

The interviews offer insights into public utilities’ goals and initiatives on ESG and provide perspectives on the integration of ESG initiatives into company strategies and operations. Guidehouse's commitment to the pillars of ESG is also evidenced by its Environmental, Social, and Governance report.

“When we formed Guidehouse, we committed to a bold mission and a distinct role where we wanted to be a trailblazer for change–to solve big problems, build trust in society, and empower our clients to shape the future,” Guidehouse’s CEO Scott McIntyre said in a previous interview with PUF. “We simply decided that if we were going to talk transparency as an organization, and we do, and a lot of companies do, then we were going to take measures to be more transparent.”

Providing a greater level of transparency is important in aligning internal and external stakeholders, according to executives interviewed by PUF. McIntrye shares this view, stating that the more transparent Guidehouse is, the better it can become as a business and as a member of the communities that it operates in around the world.

“Everything ties back to culture,” he said. “That’s even for things that don't appear, at first, to be culturally instigated. Some people think of culture as the soft stuff in between the gaps in an organization.  It's the motivations, behaviors, or collaboration of the people.”