During the past two years, the three-letter acronym ESG has been steadily disappearing from annual reports, earnings calls and press releases. Yet the underlying exposure that the term once captured – climate-related losses, supply-chain interruptions, higher insurance premiums – has only grown more visible. Recent heatwaves in southern Europe forced insurers to rewrite premium calculations, while companies found themselves footing the bill for downtime that used to be covered by policies. This disconnect between language and reality is the backdrop for a broader transformation in how businesses treat sustainability risk.
From buzzword to business language: the measurable decline of ESG mentions
Data from leading research firms illustrate the shift. The Conference Board reported that the proportion of S&P 100 firms that placed “ESG” in the titles of their sustainability reports fell from 40 % in 2023 to just 25 % in 2024, a trend that persisted into 2025. On earnings calls, FactSet identified a more than 50 % drop in the frequency of the word “ESG” among S&P 500 companies since its peak in late 2021. Political scrutiny, accusations of greenwashing and a general wariness of the acronym all contributed to the retreat. However, the risk variables themselves – extreme-weather exposure, energy price volatility, workforce safety – have not vanished; they have merely been reframed in the vocabulary of ordinary risk management.
Risk-aware functions absorb sustainability data
Finance teams are now comparing the cost of resilience projects against the projected cost of disruption, treating climate risk as a line-item in capital-allocation models. Procurement departments ask suppliers for emissions and labor metrics as part of routine vendor-risk assessments, while operations and EHS units monitor water, energy and waste not to fill a disclosure template but to protect margins and ensure continuity. This diffusion means that a spreadsheet once updated once a year for a single ESG report must now survive continuous, cross-functional scrutiny. The data infrastructure therefore demands clear ownership, documented methodology, and version-controlled records so that the same figures can inform a March procurement decision and a Q3 capital-budget debate without inconsistency.
Euronext Sustainability Week 2026 spotlights the new reality
Against this backdrop, the fourth edition of Euronext Sustainability Week opened on 14 September 2026 under the banner “Building resilience in a changing world.” The pan-European programme featured 37 events across 11 countries, drawing more than 3,200 participants from policy circles, capital markets and listed firms. A notable milestone was Greece’s inaugural participation, with Athens hosting a dedicated session and unveiling two new benchmarks – the Euronext Athens ESG Index and the ESG Tilted Index – both built on Sustainalytics data to improve visibility of Greek equities for sustainable investors.
One of the week’s headline moments was the expansion of the Infrastructure, Energy and Defense Investor Conference into a truly European platform. Previously an Italy-centric meeting, the 2026 edition brought together roughly 120 institutional investors and 40 listed companies from Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal, generating around 1,000 one-to-one meetings. The event underscored the tightening link between strategic resilience energy security and long-term investment, echoing the broader industry shift from ESG-label reporting to concrete risk-mitigation actions.
Euronext also used the week to announce its own climate commitments. As part of the “Innovate for Growth 2027” plan, the group set its first science-based long-term climate targets, now under review by the Science Based Targets initiative. The exchange’s sustainability performance was recently placed in the top-10 % of the 2025 S&P Global Corporate Sustainability Assessment, reinforcing the message that measurable climate goals are becoming a competitive differentiator for market operators.
As the data and governance structures required for this integration become more robust, firms will be better positioned to weather the next heatwave, flood or supply-chain shock – regardless of whether the term environmental, social and governance appears on their next earnings slide.
