The Norderstedt public utilities are the municipal utility company for Norderstedt and the surrounding area. With its subsidiaries, the Group supplies electricity, gas, water and telecommunications services and operates the local leisure pool and the city park. With 591 employees, it is also one of the largest employers in the region.

Stadtwerke Norderstedt has been working on its sustainability performance for many years. These include measures to increase energy efficiency, equal opportunities within the company and also special products which, for example, provide low-income households with free energy advice.

The group of companies now wanted to go one step further and Sustainability more strategically. In order to provide a solid basis for this, a Materiality analysis were carried out. The aim was to evaluate the relevance of individual sustainability topics. Relevance is defined by two dimensions: Importance for responsible behaviour and the impact of the business model on the environment and society.

The alignment and integration of the entire group of companies with its various service offerings made the analysis particularly challenging, but also meaningful. It was necessary to analyse both the various Stakeholders (from citizens to city administration, local initiatives, suppliers and employees), as well as to condense the multitude of possible sustainability topics resulting from the many services provided by Stadtwerke into the most meaningful ones.

Understanding Stadtwerke Norderstedt was central to the start of this project: the current situation, the structures in which it is integrated as a public company, the players inside and outside the company, the motivation for sustainability. It was extremely helpful to have very committed project managers on the part of Stadtwerke.

On this basis, we were able to start designing the materiality analysis. This concept includes

• ObjectiveWhat should be found out with the materiality analysis? How should the results be further utilised?
• Target objectWhich subsidiaries and service areas of the Group should be analysed and why exactly these?
• Topic structure: If you want to work with existing structures (such as the DNK) in order to bring together the topics to be analysed? According to which principle (here e.g. MECE rule) should the topics be organised in relation to each other?
• Analysis methodology: Which assessments of Materiality should be set in relation to each other?
• Stakeholder selectionWhich stakeholders should be surveyed? Which groups are suitable for which topics, objectives and boundaries?

As our aim was to achieve results that have a strategic benefit for the municipal utilities, the customised concept was a particularly important step. If the scope of the study is too broad, the topics become very general and so do the results. At the same time, the aim was to be able to provide statements for the majority of the group of companies.

In close consultation with Stadtwerke Norderstedt, the topics were gradually narrowed down from a longlist to a shortlist and a coherent clustering. The topics still ranged from "Affordability of basic supply" to "Contribution to the preservation of natural regional livelihoods" and were separated precisely enough to avoid thematic overlaps. Defining the stakeholders to be surveyed, the channels required for this and scrutinising the validity of some groups was also a close and successful process together with the project managers.

We were very pleased that Stadtwerke Norderstedt placed value on a methodologically in-depth analysis, even if it is more complex. Many materiality analyses are subject to a far-reaching error, as they compare the "relevance for external stakeholders" with the "relevance for the company" in a matrix. This means that the sustainability issues to be analysed are only examined in terms of their general relevance, but not with regard to the impact of the business model on the environment and society. The new Clarification of the GRI helps to create clarity here once again - a sustainability issue must always be considered in terms of its relevance for stakeholders and the impact of the business model.

We therefore decided to use an online survey to ask internal and external stakeholders to rate the relevance of 27 selected sustainability topics. This was followed by interviews with experts from science, politics, business and organisations on the same 27 topics. The results of the interviews were used to categorise the 27 sustainability topics as objectively as possible with regard to the impact of the business model on the environment and society. With over 1,200 stakeholder evaluations and 15 detailed expert assessments, we were able to carry out a far more meaningful analysis than average in collaboration with the Group's project managers.

As these are strategically important points for Stadtwerke Norderstedt, we do not go into specific results, but describe the quality and impact of the results.

Due to the high number of responses and the precise selection of topics in the run-up to the survey, the results were extremely valid and therefore suitable as a basis for strategic decisions. The statements from the various stakeholder groups were particularly valuable for the corporate assessment of each topic. For example, more than 350 open comments were entered in the free text fields of the survey on the topic of "mobility transition". This allows the development of the portfolio and communication to be closely aligned with the responses of customers and other stakeholders.

In addition to the stakeholder assessments, the detailed assessments of the experts provided some "aha" moments and created a more detailed understanding of the company's own path to sustainable development. Some topics that the municipal utilities had already assumed to be important were confirmed in their importance by the experts, but completely different ways of pursuing / implementing the topic were pointed out.

Overall, the Stadtwerke Norderstedt group of companies can now use the results to develop and sharpen its own sustainability strategy. Furthermore, the materiality matrix can be established as an important element of its sustainability report and the implementation and communication of the results with and for the individual stakeholder groups can begin.

We would like to thank the group of companies, the project managers, the stakeholders and the experts for their excellent cooperation. We wish everyone involved every success in the next steps of the sustainable transformation towards achieving the Paris climate targets.