Executive Summary For about a decade, ESG was mostly a story. A glossy report, a bold net-zero pledge, a warm paragraph in the annual review. It lived in the communications department, and the main question anyone asked was "what did you promise?" That era is ending. The question for 2026 is sharper and far less comfortable: "can you prove it — and will your numbers survive an auditor?" This piece is about that shift, the move from ESG ambition to ESG execution. It's the tran