Companies Are Spending More on Sustainability and Saying Less About It

Two studies published in the past month describe the same companies from opposite ends. One asked executives what they are spending on sustainability, and the answer is more than last year. The other read what those companies chose to publish, and the answer is less noise, more legal review and fewer promises. Taken together they describe a corporate sustainability function that has not retreated so much as gone underground: smaller portfolios, harder business cases, audited numbers and almost no fanfare.

More Money, Fewer Bets

Deloitte's 2026 C-suite Sustainability Report, conducted with KS&R and summarized by ESG Today, surveyed more than 2,150 C-level executives in 29 countries at companies with revenue from $500 million to more than $10 billion. Seventy-eight percent said they had increased sustainability investment by more than 5 percent over the past year, and 18 percent raised it by 20 percent or more. Just 2 percent reported a decrease.

The money is being concentrated. The average number of sustainability initiatives per company fell to 3.4 from 5.0 a year earlier. Asked what decides which projects survive, 51 percent named financial benefit, while 26 percent cited the impact on sustainability goals or environmental outcomes. The returns appear to justify the filter: 77 percent rated the return on sustainability spending higher than their other investments, and roughly four in five reported gains in revenue, cost reduction, risk and resilience, and brand. Eighty-three percent agreed sustainability creates a competitive advantage.

The ambition has changed shape too. Only 18 percent described sustainability as transforming their business model, down from 40 percent, while 47 percent said they were embedding it throughout the organization, up from 39 percent. Technology implementation was the most common initiative, with 49 percent monitoring internal sustainability data and 48 percent monitoring the environmental performance of their supply chains. Yet 20 percent still named difficulty measuring environmental impact as a top challenge, and while most executives apply AI to sustainability, over 70 percent say that work is still early stage. Jennifer Steinmann, Deloitte's Global Sustainability Business leader, summed up the shift: "The next phase of sustainability leadership is defined by intention and precision."

Quieter Reports, Heavier Review

The publishing side tells a matching story. Teneo reviewed 250 sustainability reports from S&P 500 companies published between January 1 and August 31, 2026, and found that 87 percent of companies that had published by this point last year did so again, according to ESG Dive. What changed is how loudly. Only 32 percent issued a press release with the report, down from a peak of 62 percent in 2022. Just 4 percent put "ESG" in the title, against 35 percent in 2022, and the term appeared about 10 times per report, half as often as in 2025.

The fuller summary of the study on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance shows who is now holding the pen. General counsels hold primary responsibility for sustainability oversight at 23 percent of companies, while CEOs fell to 19 percent from 28 percent in 2025. Many reports arrived later than last year, which Teneo attributes to "additional legal and market review." The report places that caution in context: Republican state attorneys general continued to scrutinize corporate participation in climate initiatives, while California moved ahead with mandatory climate disclosure.

Scrutiny has pushed companies toward data they can defend. Seventy-five percent obtained external assurance for data in their reports, up from 54 percent in 2022, and 63 percent included a sustainability data table, up from 57 percent. Fifty-one percent had completed or were completing a double materiality assessment, up from 41 percent, and 14 percent aligned with ISSB, nearly double last year. At the same time, companies are being more candid about misses. The share reporting at least one goal off track rose from 9 percent to 12 percent, and the share reporting a repositioned goal rose from 2 percent to 12 percent, with two-thirds of those goals purely environmental.

What the Quiet Hides

Read side by side, the studies show a function that is converging on fewer projects that can survive a CFO's review and a lawyer's. That is a healthier discipline than the pledge-heavy years, but it carries its own risks. Social disclosure is thinning fast: workforce demographic disclosure fell from 92 percent of reports to 64 percent, and EEO-1 disclosure fell from 78 percent to 21 percent. Only 30 percent of companies include a section on progress against their goals, unchanged from last year, and while 55 percent reference an AI governance policy, only 12 percent give specific details. When companies say less, the burden shifts to whether what they do say is complete, comparable and assured.

For sustainability leaders, the practical question is how to run a narrower, quieter program without letting it become an invisible one:

• Make the portfolio cut explicit. If initiatives are being trimmed toward financial return, document which programs were dropped, which were kept and the decision criteria, so the board and auditors see a strategy rather than a retreat.
• Build the business case in the CFO's language. With 51 percent of executives deciding on financial benefit, tie each surviving initiative to cost, revenue or risk metrics that finance already tracks.
• Prepare for assurance before it is required. Three in four S&P 500 reports already carry external assurance. Treat emissions and supply chain data as audit evidence, with controls, owners and documented methods.
• Give legal a defined role, not a veto. Where the general counsel now owns oversight, agree on a review calendar and claim standards early, so legal review improves accuracy without pushing reports months later.
• Explain repositioned goals. Resetting a target is now common. Disclose why it changed, what the new baseline is and how progress will be measured, rather than letting the old goal quietly disappear.
• Keep compliance disclosures on schedule. Lower publicity does not change mandatory timelines in California or the EU. Separate what you choose to promote from what you are required to file.

The headline numbers suggest a sustainability agenda in retreat, with fewer initiatives, fewer press releases and fewer mentions of ESG. The budgets say otherwise. The companies that come out of this period ahead will be the ones that can show, with assured data, that spending less noise bought them better results.