Today is Earth Day, and Bentley is excited to release our 2023 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) report. This second annual report tells the story of how we are working to address our own operational footprint while expanding our handprint to empower users to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With climate change and other social and environmental challenges straining the world’s aging infrastructure, it is more important than ever for companies like Bentley to provide the technological tools that help engineers design, build, and operate infrastructure that is more sustainable and resilient.
At Bentley, we organize our environmental efforts into two focus areas: our footprint and handprint. As a global business, it is our corporate responsibility to continue to improve our environmental footprint, social, and governance programs and performance. Our greatest opportunity for impact, however, is by empowering our software users to create better and more resilient outcomes. We refer to this as our handprint strategy. We have combined the ESG and SDG acronyms to form the concept of ES(D)G — Empowering Sustainable Development Goals. We are proud of our handprint commitments and are happy to have Chris as our inaugural Chief Sustainability Officer to oversee our handprint impacts.
Our 2023 ESG report respects leading frameworks and methodologies to ensure transparency and accountability. This includes reporting to CDP, aligning with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), following the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, and supporting the United Nations Global Compact and SDGs. We communicate Bentley’s progress in advancing the four pillars of our Impact Strategy: handprint, environmental, social, and governance.
Expanding our handprint to improve infrastructure resilience
The report’s handprint section covers the positive social and environmental impacts our users achieve through our software. This brings together our sustainability and education initiatives to empower Bentley’s users in achieving the UN SDGs while inspiring students to engage in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs by granting complimentary access to Bentley’s software. The global movement to achieve net zero by 2050 is driving great potential around technology and innovation that has exposed the growing engineering talent gap. Bentley is working to address this by growing the pipeline of talented engineers through several educational initiatives detailed in the Social section of the report.
Handprint highlights from 2023 include the creation of the inaugural Chief Sustainability Officer, having 88 percent of our annual Going Digital Awards in Infrastructure program users’ projects provide evidence of net-positive social and environmental impact indicators, and formally joining the UN Global Compact.
WindFloat Atlantic, Courtesy of Ocean WindsMinimizing our environmental footprint
The report’s Environmental section includes the actions we are taking to minimize environmental impacts across the business by closely managing, monitoring, and improving our operations.
Environmental highlights from 2023 include having our near-term decarbonization targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), committing to 100% renewable energy in our Exton office headquarters, and expanding our environmental management team and implementing new emissions tracking technology.
Bentley colleagues planting trees in China.Fostering a diverse and inclusive culture
The Social section of the report covers the programs and processes that foster a diverse and inclusive culture where our colleagues and communities can thrive, as well as the ways we are helping to grow and diversify the pipeline of infrastructure engineers through education, recruitment, and community engagement initiatives.
Student presented with award after winning inaugural iTwin4Good challenge.Social highlights from 2023 include entering a first-of-its-kind partnership with Engineers Without Borders International that includes five years of core funding and executive insights, launching the iTwin4Good and Your Voice, Your Action competitions, and donating $500,000 to STEM education in our headquarters community.
Maintaining the highest standards for governance
The Governance section discusses our approach to ensure the highest level of ESG accountability and rigor. Bentley maintains board-level accountability and oversight of ESG through our Sustainability Committee, which meets regularly to review and approve the company’s ESG strategy and reporting plans. Our Executive Management Team leads our ESG strategy and implementation, and the ESG Steering Committee drives progress on ESG strategy, reporting, and initiatives.
Governance highlights from 2023 include maintaining an “A” rating from MSCI, and a low-risk rating from Sustainalytics, ensuring that more than 99 percent of our colleagues completed annual compliance training, and conducting a formal enterprise risk assessment across the company.
Joining us on our ESG journey
Moving further into 2024, Bentley continues to build on our 40+ year history of positive impact with our 5,000+ colleagues across 194 countries. As we celebrate the release of the 2023 ESG report, we are proud to reaffirm our unwavering commitment to advancing global infrastructure for a better quality of life for all.
Making our infrastructure continue to serve us in the face of 21st century challenges like climate change means strong collaboration and innovation to decarbonize operations, improve transportation and mobility, and adopt circular approaches to water and sanitation that are efficient and decrease energy usage. From the earliest human settlements to modern metropolises, people have stepped up to solve all manner of infrastructure challenges — from population density to clean water and pollution. And I know we will do the same with climate change.
While Earth Day is every day at Bentley, we still see the value in celebrating this important moment to reflect on all the positive impact we have generated — and all the good work we still have before us. We are inspired by the purposeful innovation we see in Bentley’s existing users and emerging engineers globally. We encourage you to read more about the positive impacts of our handprint and other social and environmental work by downloading the report today.
