Materiality assessment

Understanding the views and expectations of our stakeholders plays a crucial role in the success of our company and the acceptability of our operations. In order to identify what topics we should particularly focus on in our sustainability efforts, we conduct a materiality assessment once every two years by engaging our key stakeholders. Currently, we are conducting our newest materiality assessment. We look forward to sharing the materiality assessment results on our website when the assessment is complete.

The previous assessment was conducted in 2022. The most material topics for Neste identified are based on their relevance to our business, stakeholders, and estimated magnitude of their impacts. Our materiality assessment process is built on four stages: identification, evaluation, prioritization and eventually integration of the most material sustainability topics. 

The process started by identifying ESG topics that are relevant to our business as well as to our stakeholders and continued by evaluating the topics with potential sustainability impacts, and business related key risks and opportunities. The final list of potentially relevant sustainability topics were then laid open to our external key stakeholders for validation via a web-based sustainability survey and interviews.

A large number of our key stakeholder representatives, such as consumers, corporate customers, Neste personnel, analysts, suppliers as well as anyone visiting our website, responded to the sustainability survey. In addition to the sustainability survey, our external partner conducted interviews with our key stakeholder representatives with more in-depth discussions about Neste’s sustainability work and the interviewees’ stakeholder expectations. 

Based on the results from the assessment process, we identified the most important sustainability topics, underlined by three cornerstones in everything we do:

Our materiality matrix

The identified material topics reflect Neste’s business operations, as well as strategic ambitions in combating climate change and creating a healthier planet for our children. The material topics represent different sustainability aspects, and they are relevant throughout our value chain. The supply chain sustainability is no longer seen as a single material topic but an underlying theme that needs to be taken into account when considering each of the nine topic’s impacts. Similar underlying themes are economic responsibility and corporate governance. These three themes are the cornerstones of our sustainability agenda over the time.