What's Happening in Sustainability & ESG (18.08 - 24.08) 🌎

This week’s read time: 8 minutes

Welcome to this edition of Green Digest, where you will get updated about everything happening in the Sustainability & ESG space in less than 10 minutes. 🌎

We go through tons of articles and data from the most reliable sources, filter & simplify them, and serve them to you in bite-sized chunks every week. 🍀

In this edition, we’ll cover:

• New research reinforces that climate risk is becoming a present economic force 🌍

• The IFRS Foundation Trustees approved a five-year operating and financing plan for the IASB and ISSB 📑

• The World Bank raised $4 billion through a new seven-year benchmark Sustainable Development Bond 🏦

• PepsiCo has redesigned its sustainability reporting strategy to make information easier for AI systems 📑

• Consolidation continues in the sustainability solutions space, with osapiens acquiring Nasdaq Metrio, and Diginex acquiring Resulticks 📊

• and other news 🌍

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THIS WEEK’S TOP NEWS

Regulatory Oversight & Industry Insights

🌍 Climate risk is starting to ‘cascade’ through the economy, with a new study showing the first effects across the US. The analysis, covering homeowners insurance across 2,700 US counties, found a clear ripple effect: climate-related damages drive insurers to pull back, insurance non-renewals contribute to foreclosures, and house prices and local spending fall. A 1 percentage point increase in non-renewals was associated with a 0.91 percentage point increase in foreclosures, an 8.3% fall in average single-family home values and an 8.6% decline in local retail sales, according to research highlighted by the Financial Times.

The risks are showing up elsewhere too. A separate FT analysis argues that climate change is becoming a major geostrategic force, reshaping trade, logistics and energy systems. Drought cut Panama Canal trade volumes by 32% during 2023 and 2024, while low water levels have disrupted shipping on the Rhine and Danube. At the same time, the melting Arctic is opening new shipping routes between China and Europe, including through China’s Polar Silk Road strategy with Russia.

The European Commission estimates climate-related disasters already cost the EU around 1% of GDP, potentially rising to 2.3% by 2050. The Commission says Europe needs to invest around €70 billion a year in adaptation measures such as flood prevention and urban cooling, compared with an estimated €29 billion currently. EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra warned that adaptation spending is now a “crystal clear necessity”, with climate-related damage to infrastructure and physical assets already averaging around €45 billion annually.

Institutional investors are also increasingly questioning whether traditional climate strategies are enough to address systemic climate risk. Research involving more than 100 investors managing roughly $33 trillion found growing interest in moving beyond portfolio net zero targets, divestment and corporate engagement toward policies that shape the real economy, such as power generation and carbon pricing. Currently, only a quarter of investors’ climate engagement resources go toward real economy policies, while investors believe the optimal share would be roughly twice that.

MORE INTERESTING NEWS

Latest developments, reports, insights, and trends

📑 The IFRS Foundation Trustees approved a five-year operating and financing plan for the IASB and ISSB, aimed at securing more durable funding and resources through 2031. The plan comes as ISSB adoption expands, with more than 45 jurisdictions now using its standards and companies in 18 jurisdictions expected to report under them by 2027. The Foundation will also open a new Geneva office in mid-2027 as the seat of the ISSB, expanding its multi-location model alongside Beijing, Frankfurt, Montreal and Tokyo, with Frankfurt remaining its EU engagement hub.

🇨🇦 Canada announced an agreement supporting nearly C$70 billion (US$50.5 billion) of hydroelectric, wind and transmission projects. The agreement includes up to C$10 billion in federal support and is expected to enable roughly 14 GW of renewable power through projects including upgrades to Churchill Falls, the proposed Gull Island hydro facility, 2 GW of onshore wind in Labrador and associated transmission infrastructure.

🇳🇿 New Zealand lawmakers passed legislation preventing civil lawsuits against companies for environmental harm caused by their GHG emissions, a measure the government says will provide businesses with greater certainty over their climate obligations. The law directly affects litigation brought by Māori climate activist Mike Smith against six major emitters, including Fonterra, and effectively shifts responsibility for determining climate obligations away from tort law and toward Parliament and the country’s existing regulatory framework.

🇨🇳 China is considering a proposal to host the UN climate summit COP33 in 2028, which would give Beijing a major platform to shape global climate diplomacy at a time of growing geopolitical fragmentation. A Chinese COP would carry added significance given the country’s position as the world’s largest emitter, its dominance in clean technology manufacturing and its central role in climate trade and finance.

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WHAT ARE COMPANIES DOING?

Corporate sustainability, new tools and services & companies in the news

📑 PepsiCo has redesigned its sustainability reporting strategy to make information easier for AI systems as well as people to find and interpret, shifting away from relying primarily on lengthy annual PDF reports toward shorter reports and regularly updated webpages. Its 2025 ESG summary is less than half the length of the previous year’s version, while more information now sits on an ESG Topics A-Z site that is updated as soon as data is ready rather than released in one annual “avalanche.” PepsiCo is also using clear subsection headings, consistent page structures and timestamps to help AI tools parse the information accurately, reflecting a broader change in corporate communications as users increasingly receive sustainability information directly through AI assistants rather than traditional search engines or company reports.

⚡️ Microsoft and Qcells are expanding their alliance beyond solar supply to explore ways of pairing new AI data center demand with new energy capacity, including a “bring-your-own-capacity” model under which Qcells would develop generation alongside Microsoft’s expanding data center footprint. The companies are also exploring virtual power plants that aggregate residential and commercial batteries to support grid reliability, limiting the burden of AI infrastructure on local communities and extending economic benefits to participating households.

🟢 Senken signed a multi-year offtake agreement with Carbonsate covering 50,000 tons of permanent carbon removal, described as Europe’s largest biomass storage deal to date and the second-largest buyer commitment globally in the biomass geological storage category. The removals will come from Carbonsate’s project in Namibia, where waste wood is stored in engineered underground chambers to prevent decomposition or burning, with deliveries expected to begin in 2026 and continue through 2028.

Solutions

📊 osapiens acquired Nasdaq Metrio, Nasdaq’s sustainability reporting and carbon accounting software platform, together with its customer base, strengthening its presence in North America. The deal brings Metrio’s reporting capabilities across frameworks including CDP, GRI, IFRS and SASB into the osapiens HUB, expanding its AI-driven compliance, carbon accounting and supplier intelligence offering. The acquisition follows osapiens’ recent unicorn funding round and gives the company an established US customer base.

📊 Diginex agreed to acquire Resulticks in an all-share transaction valuing Resulticks at $1.05 billion. The combination would bring Diginex’s ESG, sustainability and compliance platform together with Resulticks’ customer intelligence technology, while significantly expanding its reach across North America, Asia and the Middle East. Resulticks generated $150 million in revenue and $17 million in profit after tax in FY2025, and its shareholders and new investors are expected to own around 86% of the combined company.

EVERYTHING FINANCE

Sustainable finance, funding rounds, acquisitions & private equity deals

🏦 The World Bank raised $4 billion through a new seven-year benchmark Sustainable Development Bond designed to finance green and social projects, programs and activities across member countries. Investor demand exceeded $11 billion, with banks, bank treasuries and corporates accounting for 43% of allocations, central banks and official institutions 30%, and asset managers, insurers and pension funds 27%.

📈 Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners closed its Growth Markets Fund II at approximately $3 billion, nearly tripling the size of its predecessor and targeting large-scale renewable energy infrastructure in 15 high-growth, middle-income markets across Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. The fund has already committed about $1.6 billion across nine investments and is focused on complex greenfield projects in markets including India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Mexico and South Africa.

📑 CPP Investments launched an enhanced climate disclosure framework that classifies holdings across Carbon Intensity and Transition Governance to provide a clearer point-in-time view of the composition of its global portfolio carbon footprint. Carbon Intensity measures Scope 1 and 2 emissions relative to enterprise value, while the governance dimension assesses how portfolio companies oversee and manage the transition.

📑 Emirates NBD launched its inaugural Transition Finance Framework to guide financing for carbon-intensive businesses undertaking credible, time-bound decarbonization pathways, supporting its goal to mobilize $30 billion of sustainable and transition finance by 2030. The framework is designed to complement the bank’s existing Sustainable Finance Framework by clarifying eligible transition activities and expanding access to financing for companies that may not yet qualify as green but are making measurable progress toward lower-carbon business models.

Funding rounds

⚡️ Dimension Energy secured $857 million of additional capital to accelerate its US distributed solar platform and support its target of reaching 1 GW of operating assets by 2028. The financing includes a $200 million increase to its corporate credit facility, bringing that facility to $650 million, and a $657 million construction-to-term debt and tax equity package supporting 29 distributed solar projects totaling 149 MW across five states.

🌾 Mafix raised $5.4 million in pre-seed funding to scale a silicon fertilizer that is designed to improve soil and crop health while removing CO₂ from the atmosphere. The Stanford spinout uses a mineral conversion process to turn abundant silicate rocks into fast-weathering fertilizers that release nutrients and permanently remove CO2 through enhanced rock weathering, targeting both agricultural productivity and carbon removal.

🟢 Neocrete raised $3.5 million to support expansion into Europe and the US and continued commercial deployment in Southeast Asia of its lower-carbon concrete technology. The New Zealand company develops additives that enable lower-performance materials such as fly ash and volcanic ash to replace 30% to 50% of cement in concrete while maintaining strength, durability and workability, reducing both embodied carbon and cost.

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