Our commitment to reporting

At National Grid our reporting is transparent. Our governance framework is aligned with our purpose, vision and values. Executive and senior leadership pay is linked to our responsible business commitments across several metrics to strengthen the alignment of performance and our responsible business activities.

We apply responsibility as a principle through our values every day, by doing the right thing, finding a better way, and making it happen. Our vision is to be at the heart of a clean, fair and affordable energy future. We have a responsibility to demonstrate our contribution to society.

We are committed to responding to our material issues and commitments by developing appropriate strategies, policies, programmes, and performance indicators and reporting regularly and transparently on our progress in our annual Responsible Business Report.

Our reporting suite of documents detail our responsible business journey. As ESG reporting standards evolve, we will adapt the way we report in line with what is required to ensure transparency in our reporting.

View our reporting suite of documents and relevant policies

ESG materiality assessment

Materiality is the principle that determines which responsible business issues are sufficiently important that it is essential for us to report on them and ensure the emphasis within our report reflects their relative priority.

As part of our charter refresh and in conjunction with stakeholders, we have undertaken a new environmental, social and governance (ESG) materiality assessment. Read our materiality assessment disclosure note for full details.

Download our materiality document

Reporting challenges

In preparing the ESG-related information contained in this report, National Grid has made a number of key judgements, estimations and assumptions. The processes, methodologies and issues involved are complex. The information in this report includes non-financial metrics, estimates or other information that are subject to significant uncertainties, which may include the methodology, collection and verification of data, various estimates and assumptions, and underlying data that is obtained from third parties.

The ESG data, models and methodologies are often relatively new, are rapidly evolving and are not of the same standard as those available for financial and other information, nor are they subject to the same or equivalent disclosure standards, historical reference points, benchmarks, or globally accepted accounting principles. It is not possible to rely on historical data as a strong indicator of future trajectories, in the case of climate change and its evolution. Outputs of models, processed data and methodologies are also likely to be affected by underlying data quality, which can be hard to assess and we expect industry guidance, standards, market practice and regulations in this field to continue to evolve. There are also challenges faced in relation to the ability to access data on a timely basis and the lack of consistency and comparability between data that is available. This means the ESG-related forward-looking statements, information and targets discussed in this Charter carry an additional degree of inherent risk and uncertainty.

In light of this, particularly in relation to the nature of future policy and market response to climate change and other ESG-related issues, including between regions, and the effectiveness of any such response, and as market practice and data quality and availability develops, National Grid may have to update models and/or methodologies, or alter our approach to ESG analysis which may require amendments, updates and recalculations to our ESG disclosures and assessments in the future, its ESG ambitions, goals, commitments and/or targets or its evaluation of its progress towards its ESG ambitions, goals, commitments and/or targets. ESG information will have not been independently verified or assured, unless clearly marked in the relevant disclosure.
 

Our areas of responsible business

Our key areas where we can really make a difference by ensuring responsibility is woven through everything we do.