Canada Climate Week Xchange Part 3: ESG in Action

The Canada Climate Week Xchange (CCWX) took place across Canada from November 24–30, 2025, bringing together innovators, researchers, and leaders to support collaborative solutions and opportunities on the road to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030.

This conference chatter series spotlights a session from each day's events. Part 2 of the series can be found here.

The session from November 26, 2025, titled “ESG in Action: Driving Profitability Through SDG-Aligned Growth” was presented by CIMA+, a Canadian firm that specializes in sustainable engineering.

The talk illustrated how CIMA+ uses a revenue framework informed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to pursue its sustainability vision, including GHG reduction to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040, climate resilience, and support for local and Indigenous communities. The company reported that 62.3% of its 2024 revenue was SDG aligned, with a target of reaching 65% by 2027. This approach provides an excellent template for other businesses looking to establish SDG-aligned programs in any industry.

In 2022, CIMA+ began developing its framework to determine the alignment of its projects with the SDGs. It analyzed several potential frameworks before settling on the Corporate Knights Sustainable Economy Taxonomy, which supports GHG reduction, water conservation, waste minimization, climate resilience, and contributions toward local and Indigenous communities.

“It was really well-suited for Canadian companies like CIMA+,” said CIMA+ senior ESG advisor Tanya Abelhauser-Gosselin. “It provides a global framework that integrates the principles and benchmarks from multiple international taxonomies, so we felt that this was a really comprehensive way of working.”

CIMA+ used the Corporate Knights taxonomy to build its own guidelines for the framework. Projects are assessed based on their level of contribution to SDG-driven revenues with a 25% margin of error to accommodate variations in scoring. Scores are then validated through ESG committees and external assurance.

Abelhauser-Gosselin noted that there are some sectors that fit naturally into the framework and are therefore considered 100% SDG aligned, including water (SDG 6 on clean water and sanitation), renewable energy (SDG 7 on affordable and clean energy and SDG 13 on climate change), and electrification of transportation (SDG 13 on climate change).

“This is the easiest part of the project, the ones that fall automatically into one of these markets,” said Abelhauser-Gosselin. “There is a wide array of other projects that fall into other markets, and these require an evaluation on a project-by-project basis.”

CIMA+ aims for incremental progress each year to reach its 2027 targets, which it achieves by integrating the principles of sustainability into each project.

“We give people who work on projects different tools and resources,” said Abelhauser-Gosselin. “We also have a responsible and sustainable engineering guide, which is a step-by-step resource on how to integrate sustainability into every stage of a project.”

Challenges and Opportunities With SDG-Aligned Approach

As CIMA+ makes progress toward its 2027 goals, the opportunities and benefits become clearer. According to Abelhauser-Gosselin, since the creation of the framework in 2022, CIMA+ has better positioned the business for competitive advantage and growth, integrated sustainability into financial planning, and enhanced client engagement and ESG accountability.

“More clients are starting to include sustainability criteria in their proposals,” said Abelhauser-Gosselin. “We want to work with them to go over and beyond the initial ask, so in this way CIMA+ can have a greater positive impact in its projects.”

At the same time, with over 10,000 projects to analyze, data quality, sector compatibility, and validation become critical components for success.

“This is a lot of data, work, and manual labor,” said Abelhauser-Gosselin. “We integrated our new ERP system this year, which will help us track and manage this data and reduce the risk of error and excessive manual work, because it is very resource intensive.”