RELX Group: Sustainability Strategies to Maximise Impact
Márcia Balisciano, Chief Sustainability Officer and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility at RELX, occupies a role that did not exist before her appointment. As the creator of the sustainability division at the information services company, she has built a function that reaches across a global organisation of more than 36,000 employees.
"I am the founding head of this area – no one has had this job before me," says Márcia. Her journey at RELX began when the CEO sought someone to develop a global community programme following the merger between Dutch and British entities. However, the role evolved rapidly as questions emerged about environmental footprint, supply chain practices and anti-corruption measures that no one within the organisation seemed equipped to answer.
"It seemed to me to be all of a kind – a set of issues about how we do what we do, how we maximise the positive impact of that and how we minimise the negative impact," Márcia explains.
This realisation led to a fundamental shift in approach, with colleagues grateful that someone was willing to take on the expanding remit. Rather than writing a traditional sustainability strategy, RELX has embedded sustainability within its core business strategy. This integration reflects the company's belief that sustainability considerations must be woven throughout operations rather than treated as a separate initiative.
Boosting employee engagement to embed sustainability
Operating through what Márcia describes as a lean corporate centre, RELX required innovative approaches to reach across its global organisation. The solution came through establishing corporate responsibility networks that now encompass more than 3,000 employees across various specialisms and geographic locations.
"We have over 3,000 employees who are part of one of our corporate responsibility networks," she says. “They cover areas such as accessibility, green teams, community champions and the sustainable development goals. The networks serve a dual purpose of gathering insights from colleagues at all levels of the organisation while sharing perspectives and priorities from leadership.”
For RELX, accessibility represents both a social responsibility and business necessity, particularly given the company's focus on academic and professional customers. "If you don't have an accessible solution for, say, our academic customers, then you can't sell to them. So this is about the business, but it takes everybody in the business to be pulling in the same direction," she explains.
Márcia describes her role as being a conscience of the company, while emphasising that all 36,000 employees share that responsibility. This distributed model has proven effective in addressing sustainability challenges that require both technical expertise and business understanding.
The alternative to traditional corporate social responsibility
RELX structures its sustainability approach around a framework that differentiates the company from traditional corporate social responsibility programmes by focusing on sector-specific impacts.
"We call that our unique contributions to society: things like protection of society and financial inclusion in our risk business; advancing science and health in our science, technology and medical business; looking at advancing the rule of law and access to justice in our legal business; fostering communities in our exhibitions business," Márcia explains.
The company sets public objectives in each area and reports progress annually, creating accountability through transparency. This approach recognises that RELX's sustainability impact extends beyond traditional environmental and governance metrics to encompass the societal benefits of its products and services.
Leveraging data analytics to advance customer sustainability
RELX leverages its information services and analytics capabilities to help customers address sustainability challenges, demonstrating how the company's core business activities contribute to broader environmental and social objectives. As technology evolves, it introduced generative AI-powered solutions for professionals such as clinicians and lawyers. These are professionals who make high value decisions with a low threshold for mistakes or inaccuracies. Lexis+ AI, generative AI solution transforms legal work with conversational search, summarisation and drafting, grounded in LexisNexis’ trusted content.
"The volume of information legal professionals or clinicians need to review can be overwhelming so being able to improve efficiencies by synthesising and summarising, while maintaining accuracy and confidentiality from a trusted source is important," Márcia says.
In the risk business, RELX helps insurance companies make decisions amid climate change and extreme weather events. The company provides geospatial data and modelling to help insurers understand flood risk and set insurance pricing appropriately.
Cirium, the aviation analytics firm and part of RELX's risk business, tracks the global aviation industry and offers detailed emissions analysis through its Emerald Sky programme. "Emerald Sky uses advanced analytics on flight data to determine the aircraft type, age, fuel mix, whether it left on time, and the load – lots of different factors to give a much more accurate picture of emissions," Márcia explains.
RELX uses Cirium data for its own Scope 3 business travel reporting, with datasets assured by EY. The company publishes five years of data in its corporate responsibility report within its annual report, to demonstrate transparency.
Responding to the customer focus on human rights and sustainability compliance
Customer sustainability enquiries at RELX increasingly centre on human rights compliance and standards alignment, reflecting broader corporate focus on supply chain responsibility and ethical business practices. A recent example involved a risk business customer seeking certification of alignment with the UN Declaration on Human Rights for a contract worth more than £75m (US$101m) over five years.
The company addresses such requests by demonstrating its code of conduct, training programmes and supplier standards.
To streamline responses, RELX created the Sustainability Hub, where staff can access common questions and data without requiring direct support from the central team. The team tracks the business value of sustainability-related requests to demonstrate commercial relevance.
RELX has also integrated ESG criteria into its £3bn (US$4bn) revolving credit facility, demonstrating how sustainability performance directly impacts financial terms. A consortium of banks agreed to sustainability-linked KPIs that affect the facility's cost based on performance against climate targets and its RELX SDG Resource Centre metrics.
The environmental impact of AI
RELX participates in industry initiatives to address the environmental impact of AI, recognising that collaboration is essential for developing appropriate methodologies and standards. The company is a founding member of the Responsible Media Forum and participates in the Digital Impact of Media (DIMPACT) initiative.
Through DIMPACT, RELX collaborates with industry peers to develop methodologies for calculating cloud emissions. The majority of RELX's product and service delivery occurs through cloud platforms rather than proprietary data centres.
"The majority of the electronic delivery of our products and services is happening in the cloud. So we got together with peers and academics to look at the methodology that our part of media should be using to calculate these emissions. We’re stronger when we group together to discuss critical issues," Márcia explains.
The challenge of calculating AI-related emissions requires industry collaboration, particularly as large language models handle training while companies like RELX apply overlay technologies. "How do we come up with a methodology when large language models – the Anthropics and the OpenAIs – are doing the lion's share of the training of those models, and when we do an overlay like using Retrieval Augmented Generation for our content? We are interested in finding the right methodology for calculating, and in due course reporting, the emissions associated with AI." Márcia says.
"In terms of the environmental impact within our business, we capture that through Scope 1 and 2. We haven't seen a significant rise because of AI, and in fact we have reduced our energy consumption 53% since 2018, but it doesn't absolve responsibility for working together as an industry to get to grips with this, because it will only continue to rise.”
Despite recent shifts in ESG and diversity, equity, and inclusion discussions, RELX maintains its commitment to what Márcia describes as "open to all" principles.
"The first thing to say is the ethos of 'open to all' is at the heart of our business,” she says. “What language you use doesn't really matter, but the essence needs to remain - making sure that everybody has a fair opportunity to come into our organisation and to advance and develop their careers while they're with us.”
The free RELX SDG Resource Centre, established in 2017, provides free access to curated content related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The platform attracted over 300,000 unique users in the previous year.
"We established the Resource Centre in 2017 and had over 300,000 unique users of the site last year. We collaborate to ensure content informs pressing global challenges; for example, for World Water Day earlier this year, we worked with colleagues at our Elsevier business, the world's largest scientific information provider, to curate and make available leading-edge research on water. It builds on the RELX Environmental Challenge, now in its 14th year which recognises projects that advance access to water and sanitation where it is most needed around the world – and we’re launching an ocean strand this year. It’s all part of making a meaningful commitment to advance our unique contributions to society,” Márcia says.
