Nasdaq 2024 Sustainability Report
Adena Friedman
Chair & CEO, Nasdaq
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Chair & CEO, Nasdaq
As I reflect on our journey over the past year, I am proud of Nasdaq’s unwavering commitment to powering resilient growth across the global economy.
Over the course of the year, we made substantial progress on our vision to be the trusted fabric of the world’s financial system by helping our clients solve their most complex challenges.
Leading in a Dynamic Landscape
Nasdaq’s clients across the financial system face an increasingly complex operating environment as they navigate shifting geopolitical and macroeconomic policies. As an organization, Nasdaq is committed to reducing complexity and minimizing friction for our clients.
Through our markets as well as the markets we power, Nasdaq fosters local economic growth and development opportunities. Across our own markets, Nasdaq’s move to the cloud has enhanced our ability to navigate the current environment successfully with increased scalability of our market infrastructure. Through our expanded partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), we plan to leverage expertise gained from our own transition to help market operators around the world accelerate their modernization journeys.
Across our Financial Technology Division, we now have a complete suite of solutions for our financial institutions clientele designed to enhance their resilience, help manage their compliance and regulatory reporting responsibilities, and root out financial crime.
Through our suite of issuer and investor solutions, we are connecting capital to opportunity, as we support thriving ecosystems and enable innovation-led growth. We are at the forefront of providing more access to more investors, helping them achieve their objectives.
Finally, as an organization we continue to build on our decades of regulatory advocacy to help shape the future of the financial system, ensuring it continues to serve all stakeholders effectively.
Supporting Global Energy and Sustainability Goals
As we look ahead at the key themes that will define the sustainability landscape, we continue to see energy as the foundation of our modern economy — transforming economic potential into prosperity and fueling unprecedented human progress. Today, energy powers every aspect of our society and economy, while enabling artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock unprecedented productivity growth.
This demands an energy future designed for security and sustainability, driven by diversified energy sources, strengthened grid resilience, accelerated technological innovation, and affordable access to support continued economic growth. To successfully achieve these goals, breakthroughs are needed across climate technology, capital, disclosures and transparency, and the scaling of new market and infrastructure solutions. Nasdaq plays a pivotal role across each of these pillars:
INCREASING CAPITAL TO DRIVE INNOVATION
Nasdaq helps companies access capital through its primary exchange listings, including companies driving climate innovation. For example, across our U.S. equities markets, we are proud to list more than 50 climate tech companies with a combined market cap of more than $1.2 trillion. In addition, Nasdaq Sustainable Debt Market and Bond Network connects corporates and the investor community for sustainable financing solutions. There are now over 650 listed sustainable debt instruments on Nasdaq Sustainable Debt Market and over 18,000 bonds are covered through Nasdaq Sustainable Bond Network. We also partner with our clients to offer dedicated indexes that track climate technology and sustainability leaders. These global indexes help to drive green economy practices with key thematics focused on solar, wind, water, and greener buildings.
ENHANCING DISCLOSURE AND TRANSPARENCY
Nasdaq’s Sustainability & Climate Advisory service helps our clients analyze, assess, and put their sustainability programs into action. During 2024, we enhanced the carbon accounting functionality in Nasdaq Metrio™, enabling clients to seamlessly calculate and track Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions for better carbon footprint management. We also enhanced the AI-powered benchmarking capabilities of Sustainable Lens®, enabling sustainability reporting teams to quickly extract relevant data and insights from thousands of reports and corporate filings to inform sustainability strategy decisions. In addition, Nasdaq’s IR Intelligence platform allows investor relations officers to target and engage with sustainability-focused investors. This solution compliments Nasdaq’s investment intelligence solutions, which provide clients with the insights they need to make the most informed investment decisions in an increasingly complex and fast-moving capital markets environment.
SCALING NEW MARKET AND INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS
Nasdaq is developing the technological infrastructure needed to scale carbon markets to meet growing climate commitments. We operate a pioneering new technology that securely digitizes the issuance, settlement, and custody of carbon credits. It is provided to market infrastructures, registry platforms, and other service providers globally. In addition, Nasdaq is a majority owner in Puro.earth, a crediting program for engineered carbon removal. In 2024, Puro.earth launched the first carbon dioxide removal (CDR) credit for industrial biochar in India and, by year end, had issued more than 400,000 CO2 Removal Certificates (CORCs) to suppliers to date.
Delivering on Nasdaq’s Goals
We also stayed focused on advancing our own corporate sustainability journey in 2024. The execution of our sustainability strategy, including our decarbonization initiatives, solidifies our business resilience. By employing sustainable business practices across our entire organization, we manage and reduce long-term risks and drive sustainable growth.
Alongside our commitment to environmental sustainability, we continued to empower our workforce to achieve their highest potential, with a focus on fostering a culture of belonging that helps us attract and retain top talent across the world. Through professional development programs, holistic benefits offerings, and employee engagement initiatives, we achieved record low attrition in 2024. Our biannual employee sentiment surveys provide us with the feedback needed to continuously improve our employee experience while building and maintaining an engaged workforce.
During 2024, the Nasdaq Foundation continued to drive forward our purpose by working with organizations to support under-resourced communities. The Foundation provided grants to 23 organizations that share our mission with a focus on reimagining investor engagement and equipping communities with the financial knowledge needed to share in the wealth that markets create.
Nasdaq is proud of the unique role we play in bringing transparency and reduced friction to a complex operating environment. In the pages that follow, we share an update on how we are progressing against our sustainability strategy and showcase examples of how Nasdaq is powering resilient growth for our organization and our clients.
— Adena Friedman, Chair & CEO, Nasdaq