Know what a company can actually prove.
Sustainability Decision Intelligence for investors, lenders and the companies that answer to them.
See whether sustainability is actually changing how a company competes, operates and creates value — and how strong the evidence is behind that claim.
No black-box ESG rating. No score hiding the contradictions.
Built on Sustainability Compass: Evidence to Value — the assessment framework being made publicly available in 2027 under CC BY 4.0.
What companies say is not what the evidence shows.
The Compass asks a fixed set of questions about strategy, governance, operations, environmental footprint, transition and value creation. For each one it returns what the company disclosed, the page it said it on, and whether that is enough to stand behind the claim.
Same companies. Same reports. Same year. Every question comes back with the proof, or with the name of what is missing — and a score that says whether this is a gap, work in progress, or enough evidence to back the claim.
That gap — between what is announced and what is proven — is exactly what investors say they cannot yet measure.
CURRENT COMPASS ASSESSMENT CORPUS · EVERY CONCLUSION INSPECTABLE BACK TO SOURCE
Three jobs, on the same evidence, at the same time.
Sustainability questions usually get answered one report, one metric or one framework at a time. The Compass reads them together, because that is the only way the contradictions show up.
Does the evidence agree with itself?
It reads across reports, targets, metrics, financial information and periods, and checks whether the pieces line up — or whether a target moved, a baseline shifted, or a number in one section contradicts a number in another.
Does the whole business hold together?
It connects governance, capital, products, operations, supply chains, customers and nature, rather than analysing carbon or disclosure on its own. A strong climate target sitting next to unchanged capital allocation is a finding.
What does it mean for you?
The same fact becomes capital risk for an investor, a transformation priority for a CSO, an operational exposure for a CRO, and a purchasing issue for a customer. One assessment, read four ways — and everyone around the table works from the same results.
It does not tell you whether a company is good at ESG.
It shows what the business creates, what it costs nature, whether that equation is changing, and whether the evidence supports the strategy. Then it translates that evidence into the decision that matters to you — whether you are allocating capital, transforming the company, managing risk, or deciding whom to do business with.
From environmental reality to financial value — one link at a time.
Most companies disclose ambition fluently and outcomes rarely. The Compass follows the chain from what the environment is doing to the business, through what management decides, to what changes in results and value — and shows where the chain holds and where it breaks.
Exposure
Which environmental changes, dependencies and impacts matter to this business?
Strategic response
Has the board built them into strategy, targets, investment and growth?
Business integration
Have procurement, products, operations, research and capital spending changed?
Environmental outcome
Is there measured evidence that the footprint has changed?
Business consequence
What happened to cost, revenue, risk, resilience, customers and capital?
Financial value
What part can credibly be quantified and attributed to the strategy?
The Compass assesses the company’s own value claim. It does not invent a figure.Every finding carries a confidence grade. Every gap is marked as either a confirmed gap or a disclosure blind spot.
Five pillars assess the company. Two modules are drawn from them: Transition — is the company’s path credible and coherent across climate, water, nature, materials and waste? — and Value Creation — is sustainability changing how it makes money?
How far a value claim is proven · illustrative example
Four categories. Every one traceable to the evidence behind it.
The pillars place a company in one of four categories. Unlike a rating, the category never stands alone: every one opens onto the findings, pages and gaps that put the company there.
Emerging Adopters
Respond to market and investor pressure by disclosing what each jurisdiction expects. Sustainability has not yet changed operations or the value proposition.
Integrative Practitioners
Use sustainable practices to improve efficiency and optimise operations and costs, and have started to reshape their offerings and products.
Strategic Innovators
Treat sustainability as a core element of business strategy. It drives innovation, opens new markets and is part of their competitive advantage.
Visionary Pioneers
Have put sustainability at the heart of purpose and mission. They lead their industry and help shape wider societal and environmental agendas, creating long-term value beyond financial performance.
Five roles. One set of results.
Everyone reads the same evidence through their own lens, so the conversation moves from “whose numbers?” to “what do we do about this finding?”
Not a report you file — an evidence base you interrogate. On your own company, on a target, on a supplier, or across a portfolio.
Does sustainability change my view of this company — not just whether I screen it out?
Compare direction, delivery, integrity and environmental coherence across companies, and see which value claims are proven and which are still assumptions — using evidence already in the public domain.
Where does sustainability hit cash, capital and enterprise value — and what will investors ask?
Translate carbon, water, resources, waste and transition requirements into financial exposure, capital-allocation questions and value-creation pathways. See your company the way an investor’s analyst will, before the roadshow.
Which sustainability claims to customers will survive their scrutiny?
Know which claims your evidence can carry, where your own documents contradict each other, and how you compare with the competitors your customers are also assessing.
What should we actually change next?
Turn disclosure gaps into a prioritised roadmap. Benchmark competitors. Know what is proven, what is missing, and what evidence would change the assessment.
Can we defend the strategy we claim to have?
See where ambition, governance, investment and execution reinforce each other — and where they contradict each other. Then see the gaps nobody in the sector has closed yet, and decide which ones are worth leading on.
Carbon is one question. We ask all of them.
Five pillars — board strategy and involvement; trust, transparency and completeness; integration in core activities; environmental footprint; purpose and value creation — with Transition and Value Creation modules drawn from them.
Everything read from the same body of company-authored disclosure, in a single reporting period.
Holistic
Climate · energy · water · pollution · biodiversity · materials · circularity · waste · supply chain · product use · end of life
Strategic
Board · targets · business model · growth · innovation · CapEx · procurement · resilience · value creation
Financial
Externality exposure · margin at risk · transition finance · cost of inaction · growth opportunities · strategic optionality
Auditable
Every answer shows the document and page it came from, how firm the reading is, where the wording is ambiguous, and which standard it satisfies.
The methodology is public. The intelligence is proprietary.
The category is the headline. The real output is the structured, sourced answer set behind it, ready to become a strategy document, a value-creation case, a gap list, or a year-over-year progress tracker, depending on what the moment calls for.
Sustainability Compass: Evidence to Value
Publicly available assessment framework for sustainability strategy and value creation.
Not a white paper. In 2027 the full documentation is made publicly available, so any analyst, academic or competitor can read exactly what is asked, why it is asked, and what it is worth.
- Every question, word for word
- The research each question is built on
- How the questions are weighted
Vela Sustainability Compass
Sustainability Decision Intelligence, built on that framework.
What it takes to run the framework against real documents, real portfolios and real deadlines.
- Reads the whole report, annexes and filings — not the summary
- Links each answer to the document and page it came from
- Says where the wording is ambiguous instead of guessing, and flags where the report contradicts itself
- Compares against peers, and against the same company last year
- Shows how far each value claim is proven — measured, evidenced, or still an assumption
- Prices the footprint, tests the transition plan, rolls it up across a portfolio
Open framework, governed name. The CC BY 4.0 licence permits anyone to copy, adapt and commercially reuse the framework with attribution. Use of the Sustainability Compass name — and any claim that an assessment is official or certified — is governed separately by trademark, so openness never comes at the cost of integrity.
Built in a research group. Argued with in a classroom.
Originated through the Sustainability Strategy Barometer at CEDEP and developed further through research with the Financial Economics Institute at Claremont McKenna College. Continuously stress-tested with executives through teaching and live company assessments.
Mapped to major frameworks including ESRS, ISSB, TCFD, TNFD, GRI, SBTi and other transition and environmental standards.
Bring us a company. We will show you what it can prove.
Tell us which decision you are trying to make, and we will run it.