Ovidiu Popescu, Deloitte Romania: “A major challenge for the automotive industry is decarbonization, especially for companies with large fleets of trucks”

“We have a series of regulations that come from the European Union regarding sustainability. The most important are the CSRD directive – already implemented in the national legislation and whose first reporting year is 2024 – and the Corporate sustainability due diligence directive, which must be implemented in the national legislation by 2026, with progressive adoption in 2027-2029 by the companies which will be in Scope.

The two directives have as their starting point a process of identifying material topics of interest from the ESG sphere of sustainability by companies, on the three pillars: environment, social and governance. This will generate a change in the way companies think about their business, because the sustainability strategy will be integrated into the business strategy,” Ovidiu Popescu, Partner, Leader of the Energy and Sustainability Practices, Deloitte Romania said during Automotive Forum 2024 organized by Automotive Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“Three other important pressure points that we see for this transition are 1) the climate dimension – the main engine that generated the mentioned regulations, 2) society’s pressure, 3) ESG focus on investments decisions.

External pressures like regulation, requirements of investors, society and the environment lead to a high relevance of sustainability in the automotive sector, creating 5 major ESG challenges: 1) climate, 2) circular economy, 3) responsible supply chain, 4) integrated steering & reporting, 5) sustainability meets digitalization.

A major challenge for the automotive industry is decarbonization, especially for companies with large fleets of trucks. Everything starts with the calculation of the carbon footprint and the inventory of this carbon footprint.

Managing and reducing the carbon footprint in the entire value chain is vital to stay under the 1.5 degrees Celsius decarbonization curve and secure a license to operate in the decades to come.

Closing the material loop illustrates significant potential in minimizing resource usage and is thus an essential step in reaching the net zero goals.

National and international regulations move due diligence into the spotlight and require companies to set specific risk management measures along the value chain.

Sustainability impacts all business areas and therefore does not only need to be managed but also integrated into governance structure and strategy.

By facilitating a more efficient collection and management of increasingly granular ESG data, digital solutions can accelerate the corporate transformation towards sustainability.”