Jens-Peter’s story about balancing sustainability and ease of doing business

Jens-Peter has always gravitated towards tackling complex interdisciplinary problems. A Master’s in Economics from the University of Copenhagen gave him a solid foundation for doing this, but the opportunities to work on them have come by being able to team up with people from diverse backgrounds.

As the world shifts towards a more sustainable future, the EU is taking proactive steps to lead the way in green innovation and technology. For EU and its member states, the challenge lies in successfully balancing the green transition while still keeping competitiveness. So, how can Deloitte contribute to ensure the balance is achieved?

Although maintaining a balance may seem challenging, Jens-Peter believes that sustainability and competitiveness are not mutually exclusive. Our society should and is striving for an approach where businesses become more sustainable while also building their competitive edge in the global economy. In fact, Jens-Peter and his team recently worked on a project contributing to finding sustainable solutions that still enables competitiveness.

Sustainability requires diverse and deep expertise

The project, funded by the European Commission, aimed to identify solutions for achieving the green transition in compliance with EU legislation without imposing excessive costs on businesses. The green transition needs to be achieved - the challenge, however, lies in how to achieve it without becoming irrelevant. Jens-Peter's team faced significant challenges during the project, due to the complex nature of EU legislation, diversity of how companies are run and possible solution levers to achieve a solution that works for all.

For example, how can companies follow the extended producer responsibility regulations for plastic packaging, which requires companies to report the amount of plastic they have put on the market? How can solutions be put in place to make it easier and less costly for companies to follow this and other upcoming directives just like it, e.g., the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)? These are complex issues that require specialized expertise to navigate: 

Our task was to identify exiting emergent solutions across five sustainability related legislation areas, that could enable both companies and the public organizations across the EU to effectively comply with all the new regulations. Without the diversity of expertise, we had in our team we would not have been able to finish the project.

Designing sustainable solutions that make sense for businesses big and small

Jens-Peter finds most satisfaction in tackling new complex problems. Preferably projects should push the boundaries of his current knowledge and require his team to consider novel approaches to the issue at hand. This was the case in his recent project, where his team had to recommend a way to implement shared digital infrastructure and standards to reduce administrative burdens and provide greater transparency when sharing sustainability data across value chains. To success with this it will require the development and enforcement of data sharing and privacy standards, as well as technology integrating new data-sharing systems with existing legacy systems.

Collaborating with all involved stakeholders to ensure solutions also fit into their organizations is also important to Jens-Peter. In his project, the team’s goal was to find ways to succeed in achieving this in a way that balanced the interests for all affected. It was not just a desk exercise; the team actually went out and interviewed hundreds of companies across different industries to understand how to create solutions that make sense for them and are not just a burden:

Projects like this lay the foundation for a sustainable future, that still can create prosperity for all, while having high ambitions for the green transition. Although it was a challenging project, it provided me with a better understanding of how businesses, member states and the European Commission manage a variety of interests to create sustainable solutions.

Working on projects like this one is not only fulfilling in terms of contributing to society, but also personally enriching. It is an opportunity to engage with companies and industry associations and build something that works for everyone.

Finding a greener digital path for others to follow

According to Jens-Peter, Denmark is extremely ambitious in the digital space. There are only a handful of countries that can keep up with Denmark in terms of the maturity and level of digitalization:

For me it is a rewarding to work with clients that have high ambitions and investment in creating novel solutions, like the Danish public sector often does. It's not always easy or pretty, and things don't always go as planned, but you have to give credit to how far the Danish public sector has come.

The high-level of maturity in Denmark was probably also the reason why Jens-Peters project was chosen to focus on how focus on how sustainability and ease of business doing could be balanced in Denmark specifically.

Deloitte Denmark has worked extensively with the businesses and the public sector in key areas of digitalization, collaborating with it to develop effective digital solutions. In doing this, Deloitte has built deep knowledge, which it shares across its global network of colleagues, helping them to improve their own local clients. Jens-Peter has personally both reached out to some of his global colleagues and had a couple reach out to him to provide inspiration and guidance on various projects.

Jens-Peter's recent project exemplifies how Deloitte's local expertise in sustainability and digitalization can aid businesses and countries across the EU in solving complex issues such as the green transition.