Are Carbon Management Strategies Worth the Cost?

Carbon pricing and border adjustment taxes are becoming standard regulatory tools.

Companies with high carbon footprints will face severe financial penalties and margin compression as the cost of carbon is factored into balance sheets.

The Carbon Management Strategies panel at Sustainability LIVE: The Net Zero Summit 2026, sponsored by Cytiva, brought four leaders on stage to discuss best practice and real-world impact. 

"The big problem we have when we talk about sustainability is a language and understanding problem," explains Thibault Renaud, Senior Manager, Sustainability Strategy and Transformation at Cytiva. 

"Money is something that we all speak, we can all relate to. For carbon, this is much more complex because it is nuanced." 

Data-driven carbon management

Expectations for carbon data are changing and audited figures are becoming more important. 

Michael Batstone, Global Climate Strategy Manager at IFS, says: "You really need to move away from estimation and be as specific as possible to actually drive change."

Achim Martinka, Vice President Global Air Product, Head of Sustainability at DSV, explains: "You have different software providers within the market, and we have had the experience that you have to be very careful and really check how they calculate the numbers.

"If you take the same shipment from here to Mexico, the aircraft type can impact up to 75% of your CO₂ data." 

Stephen Elderkin, Director of Environmental Sustainability at National Highways, says: "One word of warning about ever-better and more-precise data is it depends what question you're trying to answer.

"It's really important that you're all using the same language. From this year, all of our suppliers bidding for new contracts need PAS 2080."

Bottom-line impact

Collecting the right data and managing it well can be costly, but the panellists believe carbon management can be a benefit to the bottom line. 

Thibault says: "We've seen that sustainability is also becoming a lot about resilience and risk management. Fragility is actually costing a lot of money.

"There is a lot of value when carbon management becomes a central tool for measurement."

Achim explains that he sees two groups of businesses: one that sees reporting as a costly obligation and the other that considers it a business philosophy. 

Those that embed sustainability in their leadership "spend a lot of money on this and are super successful", he says. 

"It's not one or the other, they can work together if it's an integral part of your business model."

Reducing carbon is often associated with increasing efficiency, Michael explains, so it can have a positive impact on finances.