A clearer picture of sustainability
What does sustainability mean for a company developing technology to make roads safer?
For Jesper Frykestig and his team, the answer starts with the company’s purpose, but extends to everything from the energy used in data centers to social responsibility and governance. In this interview, he explains why the company brought its sustainability work together in a first report, what the process revealed, and where it can go next.
6 min read
Bringing the work together
Why did you decide to produce a sustainability report?
We had been working on many strong sustainability initiatives for several years. We had also been helping our owner, Volvo Cars, with reporting data as part of the group. We felt it was time to bring all that work together and show what we stand for ourselves.
We wanted to sharpen our own goals and develop a clearer identity in this area. Bringing the different topics together helps us understand where we are today and makes it easier to discuss our direction internally. It also gives us a structure we can build on, including if we decide to pursue certifications later.
How did you choose the reporting approach?
We considered different options. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) approach is more extensive, with more data points and more prescriptive requirements.
For our first report, we chose an approach aimed at small and medium-sized companies, a so called Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for SMEs (VSME). This gave us greater flexibility. The report covers environmental, social, and governance issues. The key was to create something useful to us, rather than simply produce a document for its own sake.
Finding the issues that matter most
How did you identify the most important sustainability topics?
Before putting the report together, we carried out a double materiality assessment. That means looking in two directions: how we affect the world around us, and how the world affects us.
Through a series of workshops, we then identified the issues that were most significant for us. That helped us decide where to focus our efforts, where we needed policies or gap analyses, and where we should set goals and follow up properly.
Did the assessment reveal anything unexpected?
It mainly confirmed that we were already focusing on the right things. In fact, it helped us remove some topics from our priorities rather than add new ones. We still need to provide certain data to our owner, but that does not mean we need to set goals for everything. We should concentrate on the areas where we can make the greatest difference.
Our contribution to road safety was an obvious priority. Reducing crashes and injuries benefits people, but it also saves society resources by reducing damage to vehicles and other property. It is valuable to work for a company whose core purpose connects so directly to sustainability.
Looking beyond the electricity source
Developing AI requires substantial computing power. How do you approach the energy side of sustainability?
For a long time, we have worked to secure clean electricity for our data centers and operations. The reporting work gave us a clearer picture of the energy mix: approximately 90 percent renewable energy and around 10 percent nuclear power.
But we can’t stop at the source of the electricity. Even if certain emissions measures show a very low footprint, that does not make energy consumption irrelevant. Renewable electricity is not unlimited. If we use more of it, it is not available for someone else.
That is why we also need to keep working on reducing consumption and using resources efficiently. Electricity and new data centers are expensive, but the case for that work is not just financial. It takes ongoing effort, but the benefits go beyond cost savings to sustainability as well.
A shared effort across the company
What did it take to produce the report?
We began planning in December of the previous year, asking what would make a sustainability report valuable enough to justify the effort. Involving management and bringing in specialist knowledge were important first steps.
We had support from an external expert for roughly half a day a month, and a student intern for six months. Management took part in the materiality assessment, and we held workshops at different stages as the report developed. In parallel, we mapped our greenhouse gas emissions to strengthen the basis for the conclusions in the materiality assessment.
The report drew on expertise from across the organization. Road safety specialists contributed to the safety topics, while colleagues working with data and data centers contributed in their areas. The communications team played a central role throughout the process, helping develop and refine the text and visual material through many rounds of revision. In hindsight, I am really glad we involved all the key contributors from the start. Having our communications team fully on board made a real difference, given how many iterations were needed along the way.
What have you learned from this first attempt?
Overall, it was a good first effort. There is room to make collaboration across different parts of the organization more efficient, but no major mistakes stood out. We also left some material out of the final report, including figures that did not add much. The aim was to create something meaningful and clear, not simply include everything we had collected.
A baseline for what comes next
How might the next report be different?
This first report gives us a baseline. We know where we stand, and we can now work on improvements. Some areas are already more mature and may not need the same level of attention, so those parts of the report might not change very much. In other areas, we should be able to show progress.
As more of our products reach customers and are used on the roads, we also hope to gather more data about their impact. That would let us talk more precisely about our own technology, rather than rely on general figures for automated driving and driver assistance systems.
Why should colleagues read the report?
I hope many will come away thinking: we have a better understanding of this than I realised. Colleagues already know a lot about some areas, such as how we work with our people and social issues. The environmental work may be less familiar because we have not talked about it as much at our shared gatherings.
The report brings those different parts together. It offers a more complete picture of the company: not only what we develop, but how we work and how we understand our responsibilities.
