Environmental, Social and Governance - space industry practices

The space sector is changing fast. European institutions, such as the European Commission with its Space Strategy for Europe and the European Space Agency (ESA) with its Agenda 2025, recognise that Europe must keep innovating to stay competitive. In today’s fast-paced industry, Europe needs to adapt and protect its autonomy, putting Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups centre stage with a bigger role than ever before. 

The space sector can’t thrive unless the gap between what Europe’s space programmes teach and what employers need is closed completely. Tracking how jobs and hiring needs are evolving is key to spotting future skill gaps and ensuring the workforce is ready – particularly as demand grows for cross-domain and multidisciplinary expertise. Climate change, social inequality, higher stakeholder expectations, rapid digital advances and the push to future-proof operations have put Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices at the top of the agenda for many businesses across the EU space sector. ESG isn’t just a box to tick – it’s becoming a real competitive advantage. By the time you finish this book, you’ll see why.

To better align the skills taught in Europe’s space programmes with what the workforce needs, AZO – Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO) – launched a peer-to-peer ESG learning process as part of the EU-funded ASTRAIOS initiative. Over three years, ten space entities from different European regions, climates, sizes, governance models, technologies and services shared their ESG approaches, challenges, opportunities and trends. And here’s the best part: they all joined voluntarily, giving their time and expertise to help shape this book. We’re incredibly grateful for their openness and generosity!

This book urges academia, policymakers and industry leaders to drive innovation, integrate ESG practices and boost the EU space sector’s global competitiveness. Through real-world ESG stories, we aim to inspire companies to embed ESG into their missions and help shape curriculums that will equip the next generation with the skills to tackle space industry challenges and seize emerging opportunities. For companies, it provides insights to identify skill gaps and adopt best ESG practices. For academia, it advocates for expanding curriculums to include non-traditional courses that nurture soft skills and beyond. For EU policymakers, it provides practical insights to guide policies that support ESG integration and the development of non-traditional skills. Ultimately, our goal is to strengthen the European space sector, making it more competitive, sustainable, inclusive and globally influential.