Material Issues and Sustainability
At Renesas, we want to build a sustainable future where technology helps make our lives easier. To ensure that we are aligned with evolving stakeholder priorities, we conducted a comprehensive materiality assessment to help us identify and prioritize the issues that matter most to our business and stakeholders.
Our Materiality Assessment
Background
We conducted our first comprehensive materiality assessment during 2021 and early 2022 to inform our ESG strategy and broader management approach.
As a part of that process, we invited an extensive range of internal and external stakeholders to help identify and prioritize relevant existing and emerging ESG issues of mutual importance. The assessment involved the engagement of Renesas executives, managers, and ESG discipline experts.
In addition, it was supported by an external engagement process to help ensure we remain responsive to a broad range of stakeholder viewpoints and concerns. This included interviews with representatives from customers, investors, and lenders. Renesas plans to conduct a materiality assessment on an annual basis in order to ensure our strategy and management approach remains focused on the issues that matter most to our business and stakeholders.
Review Process
We review the matrix periodically, in consultation with different internal and external stakeholder groups. Internal stakeholders are engaged annually, with external stakeholders contributing to the process on a biennial basis.
Overview of the materiality assessment process:
- Scoping: Defining an initial scope of potential material ESG issues affecting Renesas and/or its stakeholders. This included desk-based research (with support from third-party sustainability specialists) that included risk assessment results, international reporting frameworks, the external operating environment, and other dynamic factors and events. This stage led to a dashboard of relevant issues and a materiality matrix.
- Internal stakeholder input: Engagement with executives, managers, and ESG discipline experts (HR, Environment, Heads of Business Units, Risk, Procurement, etc.) to verify the results of the desk-based research and to adjust the prioritization of material topics based on feedback.
- External stakeholder input: Engagement with external stakeholders via bilateral interviews, during which participants provided feedback on – and, where relevant, suggested adjustments to – our internally-generated selection of material issues.
- Finalization: Following the engagements, we considered the feedback and finalized the list of prioritized material ESG issues.
Material Issues
This assessment provides a basis for managing current ESG opportunities, risks and impacts, and identifies emerging issues. There was broad overall agreement among internal and external stakeholders on the results of our materiality assessment.
For an issue to be deemed material it needs to meet two conditions:
- Firstly, does it have the potential to impact our business significantly in terms of growth, cost or risk?
- Secondly, is it important to our stakeholders and do they expect us to act?
The outcome of the assessment is the materiality dashboard. The dashboard presents the most material issues facing Renesas. If an issue does not appear in the dashboard of material topics, it does not mean it is irrelevant or is not being managed. Our assessment reflects a particular point in time in which some issues are more central to our ability to create value in line with our purpose.
Note:
- Human rights is a cross cutting issue and is embedded in the relevant categories including - Health, safety and wellbeing; Diversity, equity and inclusion; and Strategic sourcing.
- Risk management and governance are cross-cutting issues and are embedded within the definitions of each of these topics; governance underpins the management of all ESG topics and is inherently material to everything Renesas does.
Equipped with these insights, Renesas’ leadership team, key departments, and Sustainability Promotion Office will establish or enhance KPIs and plan to share our progress annually.