More companies are developing products and services with sustainability benefits. The commercial question is simple: do customers value those benefits enough to change what they buy?
The 2026 Sustainability Census found that 49% of organisations are developing new commercial ventures linked to sustainability. This suggests that companies increasingly see sustainability as a source of growth, not just a matter of compliance or risk management.
But activity is not the same as commercial success. A new lower-carbon product may attract interest without generating significant sales, higher margins or a price premium. To understand the opportunity, companies need better evidence.
Sustainability benefits are only part of the proposition
A product can deliver a clear environmental benefit without sustainability being the main reason a customer buys it. Price, quality, performance and availability may still carry more weight.
This is particularly visible in harder-to-abate sectors. Buyers may want lower-carbon steel, cement or freight services, but remain unwilling or unable to absorb a substantial green premium. Sustainability often becomes more commercially powerful when it is combined with lower operating costs, greater efficiency, improved resilience or regulatory compliance.
The useful question is therefore not whether sustainability always creates value. It is where sustainability matters to customers today, where its influence is growing and where the business case still depends on market conditions changing.
Regulation can change the purchasing equation
Steel provides a current example. Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), the European Commission is developing A-to-E carbon-footprint classes and a Digital Product Passport containing product-level carbon-footprint and recycled-content data. The methodology and thresholds are not yet final.
The draft has prompted concern. Some have argued that it would place most European blast-furnace steel in Class B and electric-arc-furnace steel in Class A, thereby offering too little differentiation. For car makers, the purchasing impact is likely to extend beyond the letter grade. A class may affect eligibility under future procurement or product rules, while the proposed passport would also detail the steel's actual product carbon footprint and scrap content. Those underlying figures can feed directly into vehicle footprints, Scope 3 targets and supplier assessments. A loosely defined Class B might therefore offer limited differentiation, but two steels within that class could still have very different commercial value to a car maker trying to reduce embedded emissions.
Start by measuring the opportunity
A practical starting point is to measure revenue from products and services that provide clearly defined sustainability benefits to customers. This creates a baseline for understanding the scale of the portfolio and how it changes over time.
Challenge Sustainability recently supported Spirax Group to develop such a measure as part of its refreshed ‘One Planet’ sustainability strategy. The aim was to connect the sustainability benefits provided by its products and services more clearly with the Group's wider Together for Growth strategy.
That required clear inclusion criteria, a defensible description of the customer benefit and consistent links to business-level revenue systems. Even apparently simple questions - such as whether to use sales orders or recognised revenue - needed to be resolved.
“As part of our strategy refresh, we wanted to understand how the sustainability benefits our products and services provide to customers connect with the growth of the Group. A robust measure of the associated revenues gives us a consistent basis for tracking this part of our portfolio and how it develops.”
Sarah Makumbe, Head of Sustainability, Spirax Group
The resulting analysis does not claim that sustainability drove every pound of qualifying revenue. It shows where customer sustainability benefits exist within the portfolio and provides a consistent basis for tracking them. For more information see https://www.spiraxgroup.com/en/sustainability/advancing-customer-sustainability
Use the measure to improve commercial decisions
The real value comes from examining what happens next. Which product categories and markets are growing? What are customers asking for? Are they willing to pay more, or is sustainability helping to retain business, qualify for tenders or meet new procurement requirements?
Growth may be driven by sustainability requirements, but it may also reflect product performance, regulation, energy-cost savings or wider market trends. Understanding the difference helps companies decide where to invest and where the commercial case remains uncertain.
This analysis works best when Sustainability, Commercial, Product and Finance teams contribute together. Sustainability can test whether the customer benefit is meaningful and defensible. Commercial and Product teams can provide evidence of demand and buying behaviour. Finance can assess whether the opportunity is translating into revenue, margin and returns.
Revenue is not the only form of value
A sustainability benefit does not need to command a price premium to matter. It may protect market share, open access to a tender, strengthen customer retention or prepare the business for regulation and carbon pricing. Companies may also choose to invest ahead of current demand where they have a well-founded view of how the market will develop.
Equally, some customers are not yet prepared to pay for the sustainability benefit. A credible strategy should say so. It should distinguish established commercial value from a longer-term strategic bet.
Measuring sustainability-linked revenue is therefore a useful beginning, not the conclusion. The objective is not to prove that sustainability always drives growth. It is to give the business better evidence of where it does, where it could, and what needs to change for the opportunity to become stronger.