June was voice: Our ESG insights

Welcome back to ‘Sustainability in Motion’. In this edition, we cover:

Regulatory focus: SBTi’s Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 is here
Educate: Your EcoVadis questions, answered by journey step
Inspire: Pride Month conversations, what we covered in June
Share: Our learnings from recent events in Berlin and Philadelphia

SBTi Net-Zero Standard V2.0 is here. Almost half of the sections are new.

On 12 June 2026, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) published the final version of its Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0. This is the most significant update to the standard since it launched in 2021. If your company has targets already, or is planning to set them, the timeline matters now.

42% of the new standard’s sections are entirely new. The remaining 58% represent modifications to the existing approach. Over 11,000 companies and financial institutions have adopted science-based targets since SBTi was founded in 2015.

What has changed?

The new standard introduces tiered requirements based on company size and geography.

Category A companies — large companies and medium firms in high-income countries, face the heavier obligations: transition plans, third-party assurance, long-term and Scope 3 targets, and a 2035 progressive responsibility requirement for ongoing emissions.
Category B companies — SMEs and medium firms in lower-income countries — face proportionate requirements, with more flexibility around Scope 3 boundaries and assurance.

What does this mean for your timeline?

Setting targets in 2026? V1.3.1 remains available, while V2.0 submissions open in Q1 2027.
Setting targets in 2027? Companies can continue under V1.3.1 or prepare for V2.0 validation once it opens.
From 1 February 2028, all new submissions must align with V2.0.
Existing near-term targets remain valid until the end of their target timeframe or the mandatory five-year review, whichever comes first.

Need help understanding what V2.0 means for your specific situation?

Download our SBTi factsheet →

Connect with the Nexio Projects team →

100+ EcoVadis questions collected and answered to make the rest of the year easier for you.

We are at the halfway point of 2026, and EcoVadis submissions are gaining momentum. EcoVadis is one of those tools that looks straightforward until you are in it. The questions our community submitted ahead of the 16 June Help Desk session proved exactly that.

Zuzana Struharova and Nadia Scheepens answered your questions live and in writing, structured around the typical EcoVadis journey that Sustainability Managers go through. The full Q&A breakdown per step is in the article below. Here are some highlights.

Filling in the questionnaire and uploading evidence

Why do non-activated criteria appear in the questionnaire and then get rejected as irrelevant? Platform design. EcoVadis uses a universal template and activates or deactivates criteria by profile. Evidence uploaded against non-activated criteria will not contribute to your score regardless of quality. Focus only on what your scorecard shows as active.
Can documents be partially scored? For policies and reporting, where specific required elements must be present, yes. For measures, it is a binary result: either the question is answered or it is not. A document being accepted does not automatically mean the corresponding response is approved.

Scoring methodology

Do high-priority improvement areas in the corrective action plan score more heavily than medium or low ones? No. Each question is scored equally. What distinguishes high-priority items is that addressing them often unlocks improvements across more than one question simultaneously, or carries higher materiality for your sector profile.

Deep dive into indicators

How does 360° Watch affect medal eligibility? 360° Watch is an AI tool screening NGOs, news sources, and administrative authorities for findings about your company. Medal ineligibility is triggered by one severe finding in any theme, one or more major findings in two or more themes, or more than five major findings in any single theme. The ineligibility window runs for five years in most themes and up to ten years for ethics-related findings.

Maintaining or improving your score

How should I approach a reassessment strategically? Pre-filled answers from your previous cycle are a starting point, not a plan. All previously submitted documents stay in your Document Library without counting against the new 55-document quota. Before submitting: run a structured gap analysis, update expired policies and KPIs, add fresh evidence, and work through every open item in your corrective action plan.

Read the full EcoVadis Help Desk Q&A →

Prefer to watch rather than read? The recording is now on demand: EcoVadis Help Desk: Live Q&A with our experts

Pride conversations belong in every month. June is a great time to start them.

June at Nexio Projects was a month of speaking up. Across four videos published on LinkedIn, our team and leadership opened up on topics the ESG world tends to avoid: what inclusion actually costs when it is absent, what real allyship looks like from the inside, and why a company’s cultural footprint deserves the same rigour as its carbon one.

Real talk with Marc

Marc Roodhuyzen de Vries, Co-CEO of Nexio Projects, opened the series with a personal reflection. Less than 1% of CEOs in the Netherlands are openly gay. Marc is one of them. He spoke about what it took to bring his full self to leadership.

Watch here.

CO₂ footprint vs your cultural footprint

Marc and David Vázquez explored the parallel between how companies measure environmental impact and how they measure human impact inside their organisations. The anchor: LGBTQ-inclusive companies outperformed the MSCI global equity benchmark by 3% per year over six years (Credit Suisse, via Marc’s LinkedIn). Markets are pricing inclusion in, the same way they learned to price carbon risk.

Watch the full discussion on YouTube.

We asked our team

The camera turned inward. Nexio Projects team members Joy Merle Stindt, David Vázquez, Cilia Keser Ingabire and Defne Yurddaş answered questions that actually matter: what Pride Month means to them personally. Around 40% of corporations planned to scale back Pride engagement in 2025, with zero planning to increase it. Nexio Projects went the other way.

Watch the conversation.

Biodiversity and diversity

Resilience in sustainability is a concept we revisit often. Biodiversity and diversity follow the same logic. In their short conversation, Marc and David explore this parallel — what it means for how organisations think about thriving systems, whether ecological or human.

See the video for more.

June took us to Berlin and Philadelphia. Both rooms returned the same conviction.

The most valuable conversations are happening among people willing to be honest about where they actually are. June confirmed that across two very different rooms on two different continents.

Berlin, June 10–11 | Climate Transformation Summit #CTS2026

Anna A Ma, our Climate Director, hosted a panel at the Climate Choice Scope 3 Summit on moving beyond the perfect data trap, bringing together voices from Telefónica, the TfS Together for Sustainability initiative, and ClimateChoice. She also contributed to a second session on embedding carbon pricing into real procurement decisions.

A few themes that stayed with her:

• Start somewhere. Imperfect action beats waiting for perfect data every time.

Reframe from sustainability to value. When cost and risk are made explicit, the conversation with leadership shifts.

Find your lighthouse. The use case you are solving for should drive your methodology, not the other way around.

The field is maturing, moving from frameworks to practice and from compliance to genuine business integration.

Philadelphia, June 2–4 | CPHI Americas 2026

David Vázquez and Tim van Oijen were at the Pennsylvania Convention Center for CPHI Americas. David delivered a keynote on using Product Carbon Footprints to drive measurable business outcomes, and Nexio Projects joined a sustainability roundtable with senior pharma leaders.

The standout learning from the US: carbon data lands when it is tied directly to cost, supply risk, and customer expectations. That shift in framing made all the difference in the room.

Two cities, two audiences, one direction of travel. 🌍