Google on the clean data required to escape the ESG report trap

This article summarizes an episode of On Call with Insignia’s video series featuring Spencer Low, Google’s head of regional sustainability for Asia Pacific.

In developing Asia, companies struggle to reduce emissions when they treat sustainability as separate from growth.

Spencer Low, head of regional sustainability for Asia Pacific at Google, argues that business leaders must integrate power access, expansion, climate risk, and customer trust into a single strategy.

As disclosure rules tighten and AI makes data quality a competitive advantage, this alignment is becoming critical.

Companies must know what stage they are in

Corporate sustainability develops in distinct stages, each requiring different talent, budgets, and board attention. Companies stumble when they frame sustainability as a strategy but execute it merely as a reporting exercise.

To move from basic compliance to true business value, leaders must follow this progression:

• Start with compliance by automating disclosures for board review.
• Use reporting deadlines to identify missing data, unclear ownership, and audit risks.
• Translate climate risks into concrete decisions about suppliers, physical assets, and raw materials.
• Embed sustainability into product design, new services, and customer value.
• Test whether sustainability actively builds long-term customer trust.

Low describes this journey in three phases. The first is compliance, followed by risk mitigation, and finally business model transformation. Many companies remain stuck in the first two.

When boards use strategic language but only fund compliance tools, the business remains exposed. This gap becomes obvious when extreme weather or supply chain shocks disrupt operations, forcing executives to explain their lack of preparation to investors.

APAC cannot be managed as one market

These maturity gaps are especially difficult to manage in Asia, where regional averages obscure local realities.

Low treats APAC as a collection of highly distinct markets. India, Japan, and Southeast Asia operate with vastly different regulations, power grids, and cost structures.

Sustainability leaders must decide where to focus first. “Asia Pacific has been the fastest-growing region for Google… but it is quite fragmented,” Low explains. “You have to look at prioritization both from the organizational perspective… and from the sustainability impact that you can have.”

This fragmentation requires localized decision-making. The fastest-growing markets require massive infrastructure investments, while the largest carbon reductions might come from upgrading older systems elsewhere.

Southeast Asia must separate growth from emissions

Data systems are now a board issue

AI helps more when the data is clean