We staged the inaugural IJGlobal ESG Awards last Thursday, presenting awards to winners who could make it on the night, playing host to more than 100 guests in the BAFTA headquarters on Piccadilly, London.

The night went exceptionally well and we were delighted to launch a new set of awards – awards designed to recognise landmark developments in the ESG context across the infrastructure and energy arena.

As with all IJGlobal awards, submissions were reviewed and secretly voted on by an independent panel of judges, all of whom are identified and recused (where necessary) for awards on which their impartiality is not guaranteed.

We believe this makes our awards the most valuable, peer review accolades to be granted across the infrastructure and energy market – and never so much as with IJGlobal ESG Awards 2021 where we took this to the next level.

As this was our launch event, we gave judges the final say on all categories allowing them freedom to rein in our aspirations so as to create a credible set of awards that will be valued by the market and will build to be the most significant events in our stable.

IJGlobal ESG Awards 2021 from Euromoney PLC on Vimeo.

The results of their hard work (and no little effort from the IJ editorial and events team) can be seen here:

• The Company Winners
• The Deal Winners

If the amount of hits LinkedIn posts are receiving is anything to go by (they have gone viral!), the winners’ identities will not come as any great surprise to you, but these stories give an insight into the rationale behind judges’ decisions with their comments from the virtual Judgment Day.

We have yet to publish stories on the winners for the individual awards – 2 rising stars, an outstanding achievement and a lifetime achievement – but those will appear later this week online and in the quarterly (virtual) magazine that will be dominated by IJGlobal ESG Awards 2021.

Like most organisations hosting in-person events, we were disappointed not to be able to get more people in the room… but travel restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic and the global nature of the inaugural event had the far-from unexpected consequence.

Taking Covid-19 into account, we were delighted to have packed out the room with more than 100 guests, all of whom had a thoroughly enjoyable evening in the BAFTA HQ, which most people were visiting for the first time.

From IJGlobal’s side, the launch awards brought to a conclusion 3 years of planning, securing us first-mover advantage by launching a set of awards that we have every intention of rolling out on a regional basis:

• Europe
• Middle East and Africa
• Asia Pacific
• Americas

For now, as hosts of this event – now planning for next year’s awards night – we would like to thank the editorial steering committee that helped create categories back in 2018, the judges who took time out of their busy schedules for a gruelling session where many ground rules had to be set out, and for everyone who submitted and attended.

We greatly look forward to next year’s event when we can continue in our bid to recognise the organisations and transactions that truly move the dial on the environmental, social and governance side of infrastructure and energy.