Sustainability legal services

Sustainability is increasingly core business for our clients. Our Oceania Law team understands this and has developed a legal sustainability services offering that is central to our business. Our EY Oceania Law team can help your business identify and manage risk associated with sustainability ambitions and operations to drive value and ensure your business remains future ready. We provide a set of services that can be customized and integrated to provide knowledgeable legal guidance, operational improvements and scalable support throughout your business and business teams.

Related topics Law Sustainability Forensics

What EY can do for you

Our lawyers and legal and compliance departments within our clients’ businesses are uniquely situated at the nexus of law, policy, investor relations, risk management and business operations. Increasingly, we are being called on to play a more proactive role in protecting and creating value across all parts of the organization by helping drive the agenda for the business. This is causing some businesses to ask and expect law and compliance departments to expand their involvement in daily business operations and manage non-legal risks in areas lacking clear regulatory guidance. Already facing concerns around talent, workload and budget, the growing volume and complexity of sustainability work is an additional challenge for many law and compliance departments.

EY Oceania Law multidisciplinary teams include legal, project management and technology professionals who are at the forefront of regulatory developments and well placed to help clients across industries with their growing sustainability needs. A full complement of sustainability legal services is available to law and compliance departments and business teams more broadly and can be customized to help address the highly differentiated sustainability priorities and challenges of your organization.

Legal Advisory Services provide knowledgeable legal advice to help businesses better manage risk and navigate complex and evolving sustainability regulations and issues. EY Legal Function Consulting and Legal Managed Services teams offer strategic guidance and the support of over 1,000 legal professionals to help law departments more efficiently and cost effectively manage growing sustainability workloads.

EY sustainability services for law departments span four key areas :

  • Environmental sustainability

    Advising clients on regulations, including policies and potential regulatory reforms, and actions to address climate change and environmental degradation, including:

    Renewable energy, Renewable Power Purchase Agreements and clean technology

    • Heat transition and combined heat and power generation (CHP) projects
    • Circular economy frameworks including requirements for products and packaging, eco-design and environmental fees
    • Decarbonization and energy transition strategies
    • Carbon pricing regimes, emissions trading, carbon credits, carbon offset assets, carbon border adjustments and carbon capture utilization or storage projects
    • Guidance on generation projects, including new construction, modernization and improvements on existing power plants and facilities
    • Incorporation of environmental policies in financing strategies, investment decisions and purchase agreements
    • Review of the available sources of financing for the sustainable investments, to include an indication of the evaluation criteria, the time horizon, the level of support and a description of the application process
    • Regulatory tracking and compliance

  • Workforce sustainability and compliance

    Helping clients maintain legal and regulatory compliance and design initiatives to address employee safety, wellbeing, diversity, equity and inclusion to improve employee engagement, productivity and retention, including:

    • Employment law tracking and compliance
    • Pay equity
    • Codes of conduct
    • Whistle-blower frameworks
    • Child labour and human rights policies
    • Diversity initiatives
    • Return to office policies

  • ESG due diligence

    Providing due diligence support to identify human rights and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in transactions, the supply chain, high-risk projects and the entire value chain, including downstream and internal operations. Services are provided in connection with:

    • Legal and compliance diligence
    • Vendor diligence
    • Transaction diligence
    • Supplier questionnaire review
    • Identification and remediation of contract processes, legal content and counterparty contracts

  • Sustainable finance law and regulation

    Providing legal advice that helps clients take environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into account when making lending and investment decisions including:

    • corporate clients assessing relevant criteria to qualify for ESG-related lending, investments or incentives, financial institutions defining ESG-related lending practices and financial market participants issuing and advising on ESG-related instruments or products.

    Services are provided in connection with:

    • Supervisory requirements, disclosure and reporting obligations
    • Calculation of green asset and investment ratios
    • Market communication on ESG products
    • Qualification of green loans, green bonds, social bonds, sustainable derivatives, structured products and sustainability funds
    • Low-carbon benchmarks

We also work closely with our EY Law teams around the globe to ensure cross-regional support for our clients for sustainability law issues.

Explore the full breadth of our value-led sustainability and ESG services at EY Sustainability. 

EY member firms do not practice law where not permitted by local law and regulations.

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