ESG - Environmental, Social and Governance

Whatever sector you are in and whatever the type or size of your businesses, you will have to address and relate to ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and sustainability matters. Investors, employees, customers, business partners and, not least, legislators — all are placing increasingly higher and ever-more specific demands on businesses in terms of sustainability and your ability to stay compliant with the growing number of ESG standards and principles.

ESG has proved to be an extremely rapidly evolving area: What was by general consensus considered good practice a year ago will often have been overtaken by new standards from legislature or peers only the next year. News travels at breakneck speed and often elicit strong reactions among consumers and investors. At the same time, it is an area that can be hard to get the full picture of in terms of what the requirements are and what measures are required and appropriate for a particular enterprise.

Our advice

Kromann Reumert’s ESG team advises on all legal aspects of ESG. We have specialists in all relevant areas, including financial regulation, business ethics and regulatory compliance, energy and environmental law, corporate governance, employee and human rights, project management, corporate due diligence, etc. We offer hands-on, useable advice and have substantial experience helping businesses get started with and/or accelerate ESG projects.

Across all three ESG components, we advise on:

• ESG due diligence, risk identification, and gap analyses
• drafting and updating relevant ESG company policies, work procedures, screening mechanisms, whistleblowing schemes, incentive structures
• drafting of i.a. business terms and contracts, loan and financing agreements, all on the basis of relevant ESG standards and statutory requirements.

Within the respective ESG components, our advice further extends to i.a.:

Environmental 

• corporate power purchase agreements, certificates trading and other forms of trading in renewable energy
• setting up sustainable financing and fund structures, KPIs and green bonds — in compliance with the requirements of the EU taxonomy on sustainable activities and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR)
• marketing and greenwashing risks, including management and mitigation
• environmental requirements and standards
• sustainable procurement
• sustainable IT.

Social

• drafting of employee policies, handbook and codes of conduct, all on the basis of ESG and social inclusion principles
• diversity and equal treatment policies combined with relevant incentive structures and targets
• human rights/supply chain due diligence and monitoring
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.  

Governance

• implementation of ESG and sustainability principles in values, management strategies/structures, incentive structures and KPIs
• identification of business ethics risks (anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, fair competition, sanctions and export control), and development/implementation of relevant mitigation measures
• ESG-relevant ratings and certifications
• board work and ESG
• supervision and control, including whistleblowing schemes.

Our cooperation 

To ensure that our clients receive specialist advice in all legal areas of ESG, we work closely together with Kromann Reumert’s specialists within Employment and Labour Law, Corporate crime, investigations and compliance, Energy, International Trade, Capital Markets, M&A, Financial Services, Environment and Personal Data and Whistleblower Schemes.