For businesses, sustainability is a journey, not a destination. It’s about constantly assessing your systems, processes, products and services to make them ever better for communities, economic resilience and nature.
Right now, for many businesses, it’s about turning goals and policies into action, which is why they won’t want to miss the AIB Sustainability Conference which takes place online from 9am to 1pm on November 27th, and speaks to the theme “where our shared ambition meets action”.
The conference features a stellar line-up of Irish and international speakers, including Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, an internationally renowned change-agent tackling serious environmental degradation with enormous success.
A packed programme of talks and panel discussions will showcase the myriad ways in which Irish organisations are delivering on sustainability, something AIB is actively supporting.
RM Block
“We know that sustainability is good for business, which is why we have a real responsibility to shine a light on it,” explains Mary Whitelaw, AIB’s chief strategy and sustainability officer.
It’s a journey the bank is also on, from reducing its own carbon footprint to providing more green and transition funding than any other bank in Ireland.
That includes finance for infrastructure such as renewable energy and sustainable transport.
“Our half-year results for 2025 show that already 36 per cent of our total new lending is green and transition finance. Our ambition is that, by 2030, the figure will be 70 per cent,” says Whitelaw.
Such finance is helping to move the dial significantly for Ireland Inc.
From electrifying corporate vehicle fleets to the installation of solar arrays on factory rooftops, and from forestry to organic farming, the bank’s green and transition finance is supporting businesses in every sector to make their sustainability transition as efficiently and effectively as possible.
It includes support for large-scale corporates as well as SMEs. Over the past year, AIB has introduced a new low-cost Business Sustainability loan and an online resource, SME Steps to Sustainability, each of which aligns fully with the Government’s climate action plan.
Despite geopolitical headwinds, its commitment is gathering momentum. “We’re fast-tracking, not backtracking,” says Whitelaw.
“We’ve reached a point where we can see that sustainability offers a better way to do business. For example, wind and solar are now well-proven technologies, and businesses using them can be more resilient and not reliant on gas from afar. So, you’re creating business resilience and becoming more cost efficient.”
Sustainability begins at home for Activ8 Solar Energies
Among the speakers at this year’s AIB Sustainability Conference is Ciaran Marron, who founded Activ8 Solar Energies in 2007.
Today it is a leading suppliers of solar PV panels to homes and businesses, with sales both in the Republic and the UK. Since its foundation Activ8 has directly helped 20,000 homes and businesses transition to green energy through solar installations. This offsets 80,000 tonnes of carbon annually.
“We’re an important part of the transition for everyone else but we’re also firm believers in leading by example so we practice what we preach,” says Marron.
That includes the firm going paperless in its offices years ago, long before many of its peers.
At the time, making the changeover from T-cards, a colour-coded system typically tacked to a wall, to a software-based workflow system seemed utterly unimaginable.
“Initially we wondered how we were ever going to manage it but once we did, we found it wasn’t all about saving the planet and saving paper but that actually we became a far more efficient business as a result,” says Marron.
Activ8 has continued to innovate sustainable solutions for its customers too. This includes EnergiHub, an AI-powered energy management app for homes to ensure maximum energy efficiency, and ATLAS, the first solar PV panel engineered in Ireland specifically for Irish weather conditions.
Its corporate power purchase agreements mean commercial customers don’t have to incur capital expenditure to benefit from solar. Such PPAs allow them to reduce upfront costs while locking in the future price of their electricity.
When, in 2022, Marron unveiled Activ8’s new net-zero NZEB-certified headquarters in Carrickmacross, the company continued to lead by example.
The state-of-the-art building features a 121kWp rooftop solar PV system combined with HVAC heat recovery technology, air-to-water heat pumps and a rainwater harvesting system, offsetting 30 tonnes of CO2 annually while exporting excess energy to the grid.
“In all, it’s the first net-zero building in the northeast and everything is monitored and verified,” says Marron, who today employs 300 people.
“Yes, it’s about doing the right thing, but we save a substantial amount on our heating and cooling costs too,” he adds.
Property company gains by taking a Fine Grain-ed approach
Also speaking at AIB Sustainability Conference is Colin MacDonald, founder and chief executive of Fine Grain Property, an Irish-owned international commercial real estate investor and operator.
He set up the business in 2006, in Singapore, specialising in identifying “overlooked and under-managed buildings” which, once acquired, it adds value to, turning them into offices that are suitable for premier buyers and occupiers.
Its office property portfolio across Ireland alone hosts more than 60 clients made up of large international and domestic businesses, with which it works to create highly engaged working communities.
Sustainability has always been at the core of its offering, not least because it typically renovates and upgrades existing buildings rather than builds new ones.
“What we do at Fine Grain Property is build sustainable value. So we buy well, we manage well, and we sell well to drive returns, building sustainable value for ourselves and our investors,” says MacDonald.
The environmental impact of Fine Grain Property’s buildings, as well as the engaging social conditions it helps develop for clients, allied to good governance of the buildings in its portfolio, are all central to the business’s success.
“The property industry often thinks of real estate in terms of glass, steel and concrete. But for an occupier, a building is experiential,” MacDonald explains.
That means making sure people feel comfortable in it, with spaces designed to allow them to meet and interact organically with others, helping to build a sense of community which, in turn, supports recruitment, engagement and retention of staff.
As well as having what MacDonald calls “proxies” for carbon footprint – from building standards and certifications that require provisions such as triple-glazed windows and high-calibre insulation – a key selling point for Fine Grain Property is that it goes further, with sensors and devices that can measure the actual carbon footprint of its buildings in real time.
“We not alone measure our own carbon footprint but we also measure the carbon footprint of our clients within the buildings. That is giving us enormous amounts of data which is hugely valuable in helping us to collaborate with our clients to lower cost, enhance the workplace and reduce environmental impact,” he says.
Register now to join the AIB Sustainability Conference virtually on November 27th 2025 and hear more from these inspiring speakers and many more. See aibsustainabilityconference.ie for more details and access to exclusive content.
