The overall sustainability index (OSI): A suitable way to measure the sustainability of electrical industry in Italy

The objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive and effective quantita-tive method to measure the overall sustainability performance of electric companiesin Italy. Due to the vast diversity of the sustainability issues, many methods havebeen developed to measure the sustainability performance of companies, but withresults that are, in our opinion, not fully satisfactory, either because they are difficultto apply or because they only cover some of the sustainability aspects. In an attemptto overcome these shortcomings, we have applied a methodology to meet therequirements of our research, on the basis of its high versatility (https://lab24.ilsole24ore.com/qualita-della-vita/). The analysis was carried out on the 12 largestItalian electricity companies, by calculating the overall sustainability index (OSI) forthe years 2020 and 2021, taking into account 56 different indicators, chosen fromthose made available by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for corporate sustain-ability reporting. For a more comprehensive evaluation of the sustainability perfor-mance of the electricity companies, selected indicators were chosen from all thethree pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, social). The OSI results of thisresearch have allowed to highlight the critical points of the corporate reporting sys-tems on sustainability providing valuable indications on the targets achieved andachievable in view of the European Commission's Green Deal 2050. This work alsohighlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the method