Despite Trump’s pickaxe blows on climate policies and some European uncertainty, eight out of 10 companies in Italy say they are determined to invest in sustainability. Not out of idealism: out of interest. To be precise, 77 percent have kept their sustainability investment plans unchanged. Three percent have even increased them.
“In a transition phase marked by political and regulatory instability, what will make the difference in the long run are the companies that choose not to be constrained,” says Riccardo Giovannini, CEO of iSustainability, a Digital360 group company. “Those that continue to invest, measure and build real competitive advantage in the meantime.”
This is the summary of the iSustainability 2026 research-conducted on 96 Italian companies from all sectors and presented at the Bodio Center in Milan-but it is also something more: it is a snapshot of a change in mindset. In 2025, only 32 percent of companies considered sustainability a competitive lever. Today that percentage is 67 percent. An important leap.
The problem? No one knows how much he really earns
So the good news is that companies are investing. The bad is that most do not measure the benefit and therefore have difficulty giving it an exact value. Only 17 percent use structured methodologies to measure the return on sustainable investments. And it’s not just a matter of corporate culture: many impacts-from reputation to risk avoided-simply do not yet have shared metrics.
Yet the returns are there, and companies are seeing them: falling energy costs, new markets opened up by circularity, international supply chains where ESG requirements are now a mandatory ticket to entry, growing revenues from the energy transition, better access to credit. Six concrete strands, already observable. The point is that without serious measurement tools, these returns remain difficult to defend in budget meetings.
The climate has already knocked. Many have not yet opened
Nearly one in two companies-49 percent-report direct economic impacts from the climate crisis in the past two years. Disruptions in the production chain, damage to infrastructure, unforeseen costs related to extreme events. Not future scenarios: costs already accounted for.
Yet only one-third have invested in concrete adaptation measures. Those who have already suffered damage react better – among these companies, the share rises to 57.4 percent – but the gap between risk exposure and operational response remains one of the most uncomfortable data in the entire research. Direct experience of risk accelerates decisions but does not yet make them systematic.
Big versus small: the real unresolved issue
If there is a divide that research lays bare without discounting, it is the one between large enterprises and SMEs. And the issue is not just who has the most resources-it’s who can access those already available. 36 percent of SMEs say they are interested in public calls for sustainability. But they have not yet applied. The reason? There is no shortage of funds (SMEs are often the main recipients themselves, with proportionally higher contributions) there is a lack of skills to deal with the bureaucracy.
On ESG credit, the gap between large and small is close to 36 percentage points. Onartificial intelligence applied to sustainability-measuring consumption, optimizing processes-the large ones use it almost twice as much as SMEs. In short, sustainability is in danger of becoming another terrain where those who are already ahead accelerate, and those who have fallen behind struggle to get going.
However, the iSustainability survey shows that Italian companies have chosen their path. Not that of denialism, not that of passive compliance. A third way, pragmatic, betting on the long run even when governments seem to be looking the other way.
