Impact 2030 – towards an enlightened economic transformation
Never before have Quebec companies been faced with such a crossroads. On the one hand, geopolitical tensions are making the regulatory and legal framework increasingly uncertain. On the other, climate change is no longer a distant abstraction: it is already disrupting our value chains, our teams, our markets and our business models.
According to our Quebec Business Transition Barometer, one out of every two Quebec businesses has been directly affected by a climate change event in the past year. And 76% of executives are concerned about the impact of climate change on their business.
Yet, despite this growing awareness, our Transition Index reveals that companies have only implemented a third of the known and desirable climate actions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen their resilience. The gap between willingness to act and actually doing so persists. The longer we wait, the greater the collective effort required – and the greater the risk of missing out on business opportunities. It is to bridge this gap and propel climate action by SMEs that we have designed our Impact 2030 plan: an action plan that will guide us in charting a plausible and inspiring course to accelerate the transformation of our economy.
A changing economy
Our era will mark the end of the linear economy, based on massive resource extraction, unbridled consumption and the discharge of an unmanageable quantity of residual materials. The excesses of this still-dominant model are reflected in the unsustainable erosion of biodiversity, growing social injustice, price instability and increased risks to the competitiveness and survival of SMEs.
But a new path is opening up. That of a sober, circular and regenerative economy, where performance is no longer measured solely by growth in gross domestic product, but by the creation of shared value. An economy that prioritizes the collective interest, transparency and the implementation of practices capable of reconciling economic prosperity, social equity and respect for the living world. Numerous signals confirm this:
- Major customers are increasingly looking to suppliers aligned with low-carbon trajectories and concerned about biodiversity.
- Local, responsible supply chains are becoming a strategic advantage.
- Customers choose local, sustainable products and services that reflect their values.
Transformation is no longer an option. It’s already underway. The question now is: how can we ensure that our SMEs successfully embrace it, not by being bystanders, but by taking advantage of the new rules of the game?
Impact 2030: creating winning conditions
The question is no longer whetherthe economy is changing, but rather how and how quickly our SMEs will be able to adapt. It is precisely to address this issue that we have designed our Impact 2030 plan: a plan that structures this major transformation around three pillars and nine priorities.
Our plan is built on data from our Barometers, enriched by all the knowledge accumulated since 2016 at the heart of the Quebec business ecosystem, and consolidated by our collaborative action-research.
Our ambition is clear: to mobilize a network of allies around nine structuring priorities, in order to create winning conditions for SMEs to multiply their climate action while paving the way for new avenues of competitiveness and sustainable prosperity.
Our conviction? The time has come to :
- Creating business conditions where climate action becomes the simplest and most profitable option for SMEs;
- Connecting coaches, decision-makers and partners to learn together, build bridges, mobilize knowledge and act as an ecosystem;
- Make Quebec a leader in enlightened economic transformation, where businesses thrive while generating positive impacts for communities and nature.
THE 3 PILLARS OF OUR IMPACT 2030 PLAN
PILLAR 1 – Operations, value chains and adaptation
The first transformations are concrete. Optimize energy and material consumption to reduce total consumption. Reduce waste. Invest in more energy-efficient equipment. Review logistics. Make products more durable. And above all, prepare for the extreme climatic events that are already on the increase.
This pillar calls on companies to act on what they directly control. A transformation now inevitable in the face of outdated planetary limits – a unique opportunity for our companies to align themselves on trajectories that are both plausible and bold.
Three priorities in this first pillar, to guide our actions towards 2030:
1. Increase energy and material productivity, not just through marginal gains, but by aiming for genuine decoupling: creating more value with less energy and resources, to reduce their total consumption;
2. Accelerate the adoption of circular, robust and regenerative business models, focusing on mutualization, the sharing economy, reuse, sobriety and regenerative agroforestry practices in value chains, while engaging in adaptation approaches to strengthen resilience ;
3. Preserve and regenerate resources and biodiversity,by halting the artificialization of the territory, optimizing the spaces already occupied and reinforcing the interconnectivity of natural environments, at the heart of our communities.
These three priorities aim to place SMEs at the forefront of an economic model that combines performance, resilience and respect for planetary limits. They mark the transition from a linear economy, which depletes resources for short-term profitability; to a circular, regenerative and prosperous economy, capable of ensuring the long-term vitality of businesses, communities and nature.
PILLAR 2 – Governance and organizational culture
No transformation is sustainable without leadership. Year after year, the data from our Quebec Business Transition Barometers confirm that aspects linked to organizational culture are the most decisive in explaining the implementation of climate action within Quebec companies.
Directors, managers and professionals have a decisive influence. When business leaders express a firm commitment to climate action, this translates directly into strategy and operations.
A corporate culture Committed to the climate thus becomes a lever for mobilization: every manager, every professional, every employee who acts in the collective interest, helps the company to go beyond the simple threshold of immediate profitability.
It is this cultural shift, supported by bold governance – among both major principals and SMEs – that will determine the ability of the Quebec economy to prosper in a context of accelerated transformation.
And this cultural transformation extends to the entire business ecosystem:
- the linear economy is giving way to the circular economy;
- from managingabundance to managing scarcity;
- establishedhierarchies to agile and dynamic value chains, capable of reorganizing in the face of a climatic crisis, a pandemic or an unforeseen price shock;
- Independence and a competitive spirit are transformed into interdependence, mutualizationand coopetition (cooperation between competitors);
- global supply chains , into new short circuits, closer to people and more resilient.
Three priorities for this second pillar, to guide our actions towards 2030:
4. Strengthen climate governance,by increasing the willingness of boards of directors, executives, entrepreneurs and professional bodies to fully assume their climate leadership, by developing the skills needed to make decisions aligned with the new climate reality;
5. Deploy expertise in the service of SMEs and the collective interest, so that companies can count on the internal or external support they need, at the right time, to make structuring choices throughout their decision-making process;
6. Cultivate key skillsto accelerate fair, sustainable and inclusive systemic change.
PILLAR 3 – Data, finance and communications
Finally, transformation must be supported by reliable, transparent data and decision-support tools. All too often, climate and financial data are still perceived as a secret to be guarded or a burden to be disclosed. Data must become a strategic and collective asset: a common language that enables companies and their investors to understand impacts, assess progress and attract the resources essential to their profitability and sustainability.
Properly used, data strengthens credibility, enables finance to act as a gas pedal of shared value creation, and responsible communication transforms transparency into a driver of trust, innovation and performance.
7.Our three priorities for this third pillar, to guide our actions towards 2030:
Simplify the disclosure of extra-financial data, by mobilizing the expertise of the accounting profession to make extra-financial data fair, reliable and accessible to SMEs, so that climate and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data become as useful as financial data in their decision-making;
8. Make the regulatory and financial framework clearer and more predictable for SMEs, so that they can communicate transparently, take full advantage of the transformation underway and access financing solutions tailored to their reality, to stimulate investment and innovation and rapidly deploy their mitigation and adaptation actions;
9. Facilitate access to reliable and comparable data, so that SMEs and their support ecosystems can collectively measure the progress made in industrial parks, value chains and business sectors – and highlight the most profitable actions, both economically and environmentally.
By strengthening the reliability of data and the clarity of the financial and regulatory framework, we are transforming transparency into a driver of trust, innovation and sustainable performance. With its world leadership in massive data and artificial intelligence, Quebec can now put this strength to work for the economy, so that climate data becomes a lever of resilience for our SMEs – and for the nearly 2.5 million jobs they support in every region of Quebec.
Charting our course together
Our Impact 2030 plan is built around these three complementary pillars, which together pave the way to a net positive economy: acting on operations and value chains, transforming organizational culture and governance, and mobilizing data, finance and communications to create a clear and predictable framework.
These pillars are not theoretical: they are translated into nine concrete priorities to accelerate transformation:
- From an economy that values excess, exploitation and the erosion of resources and biodiversity… to an economy at the service of people and nature, where sobriety, equity, health and the regeneration of living things become the norm.
- From a logic of short-term profitability… to sustainable prosperity, rooted in collective interest, resilience and long-term value creation.
Already contributing to one of these priorities? Every alliance counts. Write to us to join forces to boost climate action by SMEs and accelerate the transformation of the Quebec economy.
Yes!I’d like to talk to the QNP team to explore a potential alliance
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