What's Happening in Sustainability & ESG (Week Recap 02.12 - 08.12) 🌎

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:

• The EU Parliament and Council reached a final Omnibus deal that significantly scales back the CSRD and CSDDD 🇪🇺

• Leaked documents reveal a secret alliance of major multinationals that orchestrated a campaign to dilute EU sustainability laws 📑

• The green economy surpassed $5 trillion in annual value in 2024 and is projected to exceed $7 trillion by 2030 📈

• AT&T scrapped all of its DEI policies to secure US FCC approval for a $1 billion purchase of US cellular spectrum licenses ⏪

• and other news 🌍

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From Fragmented ESG Data to a Unified, Audit-Ready CSRD Foundation

As CSRD continues to evolve, organisations must standardise ESG data, reduce manual work, and build reliable, automated reporting processes.

Fedrus International, a leading building materials group operating across many countries and business units, faced the same challenge: ESG data scattered across systems, formats, and spreadsheets, creating gaps in traceability and slowing validation.

To solve this, Fedrus International turned to Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, powered by the Terra ESG Platform, to consolidate ESG data across all entities and build a scalable data foundation for CSRD-aligned reporting.

In this story, you’ll learn how Fedrus International:

• Unified ESG data from multiple countries, business units, suppliers, and systems

• Eliminated inconsistencies and reduced manual consolidation

• Established a structured, auditable ESG dataset ready for CSRD

• Automated reporting workflows that deliver more frequent, actionable insights

THIS WEEK’S TOP NEWS

Regulatory Oversight & Industry Insights

🇪🇺 The EU Parliament and Council reached a final Omnibus deal that significantly scales back the CSRD and CSDDD, weakens due diligence obligations, and delays implementation.

• The CSRD scope is slashed by about 90% to only companies with 1,000 employees and €450m turnover, though a review clause signals policymakers may reconsider later.

• Climate transition plan requirements are removed entirely.

• The tier-1 limitation in due diligence is gone, but the new rules allow minimal scoping instead of full value chain mapping and give companies broad flexibility to prioritise direct partners even when severe impacts may sit elsewhere, effectively lowering expectations.

• The CSDDD is restricted to only the largest companies with 5,000+ employees and €1.5bn turnover, and the climate transition plan clause is removed. Penalties are capped at 3% of global turnover, and compliance is pushed to July 2029.

The agreement is expected to pass with EPP and far-right backing, cementing what many see as a disproportionate, evidence-free rollback of EU sustainability rules that frames CSRD and CSDDD as cost burdens rather than strategic advantages for Europe. Formal approval by Parliament and Council is still required, but it is expected to pass. EU lawmakers also agreed to delay the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) by 12 months, pushing the application date to 30 December 2026. The European Parliament will hold the final vote on both the Omnibus and the EUDR on 16 December.

In other related news, EFRAG released its finalized proposal to overhaul the EU’s ESRS, cutting required datapoints by 61%. The revision simplifies materiality assessments, eases value-chain data demands, removes voluntary disclosures, and introduces reliefs such as “undue cost or effort.” EFRAG said the revised ESRS will cut reporting costs by 44%, with large companies saving about €1.1 million per year and smaller firms around €150,000.

Leaked documents reveal secret alliance of major multinationals that orchestrated a campaign to dilute EU sustainability laws

Leaked documents reveal that a covert coalition of eleven major multinationals, dominated by US fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies, and Koch Industries, orchestrated a systematic campaign to weaken the EU’s CSDDD and other sustainability regulations.

Operating under the name “Competitiveness Roundtable” and coordinated by consultancy Teneo, the group targeted all branches of EU decision-making, seeking to “divide and conquer” EU governments in the Council, sideline “stubborn” Commission departments, and push the European People’s Party in Parliament into alliances with the far-right to secure the weakest possible position on climate, civil liability, and supply chain scope.

The Roundtable also enlisted the Trump administration and other non-EU governments to pressure Brussels, tried to mobilize third countries with “minimal US visibility,” and funded the TEHA Group think tank to publish a competitiveness report and event that echoed its anti-CSDDD messaging without transparent disclosure of corporate backing. Tactics discussed included orchestrated letter campaigns, leveraging trade talks and tariffs, and even potential “dark posts” on LinkedIn to influence policymakers out of public view.

MORE INTERESTING NEWS

Latest developments, reports, insights, and trends

📈 The green economy surpassed $5 trillion in annual value in 2024 and is projected to exceed $7 trillion by 2030, making it the second-fastest growing sector after tech, according to a new BCG and WEF report. This growth driven by falling costs for renewables and electric mobility that make green investments more financially attractive and less politically vulnerable. Green revenue streams grew twice as fast as traditional ones between 2020 and 2024, and companies earning at least 10% of their revenue from sustainability saw the strongest growth and cheaper capital. CEOs are pursuing mature technologies, scale, policy engagement and diversified funding, while increasingly “green-hushing” to avoid political backlash.

📑 The Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) - the framework for measuring financed emissions - released an updated version of its Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard, expanding how banks, asset managers and insurers measure emissions linked to their financial activities. The widely used financed-emissions framework now adds new methodologies for instruments such as securitizations, use-of-proceeds financing, sub-sovereign debt, undrawn loan commitments and insurance products, along with new guidance on avoided emissions and forward-looking metrics.

📈 LinkedIn’s Green Skills Report 2025 shows demand for green-skilled workers is surging far faster than green skill development. Green hiring grew 7.7% last year versus 4.3% growth in green skills, and green-skilled workers are hired 46.6% more often than the global average. Green skills are now used widely beyond sustainability roles, with 53% of green-skilled hires going into non-green titles, and interest in green careers is rising, especially among younger workers. Growth is strong across all major regions and sectors, but LinkedIn warns that without major investment in training, the global green skills gap will threaten both climate progress and economic opportunity.

WHAT ARE COMPANIES DOING?

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

🇬🇧 The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned sustainability-related ads from Nike, Lacoste, and Superdry for misleading environmental claims. The rulings follow an ASA investigation using AI to monitor fashion-sector ads. Regulators said claims such as “sustainable materials,” “sustainable clothing,” and “Sustainable Style” implied full life-cycle environmental benefits that the companies could not substantiate, despite their use of recycled or responsibly sourced materials. The ads cannot run again, and the companies were instructed to provide clear, well-evidenced environmental claims going forward.

⏪ AT&T scrapped all of its DEI policies to secure US FCC approval for a $1 billion purchase of US cellular spectrum licenses, after FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr warned that DEI-promoting firms could face blocked transactions. The company pledged it will no longer have DEI-focused roles, use race- or gender-based hiring goals, or run DEI trainings, and it has removed DEI references from internal and external materials.

⏪ bp scrapped its planned H2Teesside blue hydrogen and carbon capture project, citing falling industrial hydrogen demand and a conflicting plan to build a data center on the same site. Originally announced in 2021 and envisioned as a 1 GW project, H2Teesside has been dropped following bp’s strategic shift away from low-carbon investments and reduced local demand as major consumers scaled back or delayed decarbonization plans.

EVERYTHING FINANCE

Sustainable finance, funding rounds, acquisitions & private equity deals

🇬🇧 The Bank of England issued a new supervisory policy (SS4/25) strengthening expectations for how banks and insurers manage climate-related risks, replacing its 2019 framework. The policy demands stronger board oversight, enhanced risk-management methodologies, better use of scenario analysis, and improved climate-data quality, with proportionate application based on a firm’s risk exposure. The rules take effect immediately, with firms required to review gaps and produce action plans within roughly six months.

🇪🇺 Crédit Agricole CIB and the European Investment Bank launched a strategic agreement to mobilize up to €8 billion for wind energy projects across Europe. The EIB will provide a €500 million counter-guarantee, allowing Crédit Agricole CIB to issue up to €1 billion in guarantees for new wind farm investments and to attract additional private capital.

Acquisitions

🤝🏻 Diginex signed an MOU to acquire Plan A. The all-share deal would combine Plan A’s carbon accounting and decarbonization engine with Diginex’s ESG, supply-chain, and analytics tools. Plan A brings 1,500 clients and advanced AI capabilities, while the combined platform will offer end-to-end emissions measurement, reporting, and decarbonization solutions across global markets.

⚡️ CVC DIF acquired a majority stake in renewable energy developer Low Carbon, securing over $1.4 billion to scale the company into a leading pan-European Independent Power Producer. Low Carbon has 1 GW of operating and in-construction assets and a 16 GW pipeline, and the new capital will support major expansion in the UK, Germany and Poland.

Startup funding rounds

🟢 Pantheon Regeneration received an investment from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund to scale its nature-based restoration projects. Pantheon develops high-impact ecosystem projects that turn degraded peatlands back into carbon sinks, generating large volumes of high-quality carbon credits alongside water and biodiversity benefits.

⚡️ Modo Energy, a tech firm building software to value electrification assets, raised £25 million in a Series B round to accelerate global expansion. The company aims to grow from five markets to 20 as it scales its AI-powered valuation software for batteries, renewables, data centers and other electrification assets.

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