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CEZ Group

Stakeholder dialog

The relationships of CEZ Group with its stakeholders are governed by the Community Relations Policy. The policy covers all business activities to ensure a proper stakeholder engagement. CEZ Group wants to maintain long-term, stable, and strong stakeholder relationships built on trust, recognition of commitments and legitimate interests, and open communication.

The Community Relations Policy also outlines seven principles of stakeholder engagement:

  • Accountability

    We act responsibly and build relationships based on ethics, integrity, sustainable development, and respect for human rights and communities affected by CEZ Group's business activities.

  • Transparency

    We act transparently in our relationships and financial and non-financial communications, sharing truthful, relevant, complete, transparent, and useful information.

  • Active perception

    We train our employees to listen actively, promote two-way and effective communication, and engage in direct, smooth, constructive, diverse, inclusive, and cross-cultural dialogue.

  • Participation and engagement

    We encourage stakeholder participation and engagement in all CEZ Group business activities, supporting voluntary consultation processes or similar avenues of information exchange, particularly in the planning, construction, operation, and decommissioning of CEZ Group power projects.

  • Consensus

    We strive to reach consensus with stakeholders, especially local communities and populations, considering their views and expectations.

  • Cooperation

    We encourage cooperation with stakeholders to contribute to the CEZ Group's goals and values and to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

  • Continuous improvement

    We continuously strive for improvement and regularly review our stakeholder engagement mechanisms to ensure that we respond to stakeholders' needs most effectively.

Stakeholders

We communicate with our stakeholders regularly. The objective of the open dialog is to establish their perception of the sustainability strategy and their opinion on the future direction of CEZ Group in relation to sustainability. The respective results shall be used in updating plans and strategies.

Identifying stakeholders is an essential step towards successful stakeholder engagement. CEZ Group recognizes 13 groups of stakeholders that have been identified within the value chain of our business. They are listed below in alphabetical order:

  • Certification bodies
  • Customers
  • Educational institutions and research facilities
  • Employees
  • Insurance companies and banks
  • Local governments, local communities, and the public
  • Media
  • Non–profit organizations
  • Professional unions and associations
  • Public and regulatory authorities
  • Shareholders and investors
  • Suppliers and contractors
  • Trade unions

In order to obtain the broadest possible range of information and to find out the views and priorities of our stakeholders, we try to reflect their communication preferences within our dialogue, engaging through different communication channels.

Based on the analysis of the identified inputs and information for 2023, it was confirmed that environmental protection, including climate change and decarbonization, remain the main important themes. Among the social issues, the main topics are social dialogue, CEZ Group's role as a responsible employer, including the protection of human rights and employees' health, support for local communities, and also customer support and communication. Transparent communication and disclosure of information related to CEZ Group's sustainability activities is also one of the priorities of the addressed stakeholders.

As a result of the survey, a materiality matrix was constructed, which showed the crucial topics and areas of interest of CEZ Group’s stakeholders. These are primarily focused on the environmental and social areas, indicating the current and future relevance of environmental protection, emissions (decarbonization), and safe operation and facilities. In the social area, two topics are significant: CEZ Group as a responsible employer and CEZ Group’s collaboration with local communities.

Materiality matrix

An important step in the preparation of our sustainability report is to review the most important environmental, social and governance issues that are of interest to our stakeholders and have the greatest impact not only on the environment, people and society, but also on our business.

For the purposes of this year's report, we conducted a formal impact materiality assessment in line with the GRI 2021 standard to ensure that we continue to consider a wide range of perspectives and focus our attention and efforts on relevant topics and areas.

As part of this process, we have reviewed topics and issues that are of relative importance to our environmental, social, governance and economic priorities, and their impacts (positive and negative) on both our business and our stakeholders. We used the following internal processes to identify and assess sustainability priorities within our business and topics for our report:

  • Through ad–hoc research, we conducted an assessment of relevant topics and trends across our sectors using peer–reviewed publications, sustainability reporting standards, rating agencies' recommendations and other sources, including analyses of sustainability strategies of peer companies.
  • We have taken into account applicable regulations and other mandatory requirements and best practices in the energy sector.
  • We have estimated our impacts and their importance within our value chain.
  • We have benchmarked and reviewed previously identified priority sustainability themes, including the data supporting them.
  • We evaluated and prioritized topics considering a range of perspectives through workshops and knowledge sharing with various internal and external experts.
  • We have taken into account the views of our main affected stakeholders through the analysis of our on–going dialogue.

Based on our analysis, we have identified and confirmed the topics that are most relevant to our business because they have a significant impact on the environment, society and/or Group value.

These topics are closely related to our business model and therefore need to be included in the CEZ Group's strategy and objectives.

We focus on providing information on our positive and negative impacts on the economy, environment and people. Financial materiality and economic value creation for shareholders is core perspective of our Annual financial reports and used in selected chapters such as E Taxonomy KPI disclosure.

In 2024, CEZ Group will continue its ESG initiative to engage stakeholders and adapt materiality assessments to ensure compliance with the double materiality principle required by the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).