What's Happening in Sustainability & ESG (Week Recap 05.08 - 11.08) 🌎

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:

• CDP’s new report highlights the business case for climate and environmental action 📈

• Over 170 countries are meeting in Geneva for final negotiations on the UN-backed Global Plastics Treaty 🌎

• UK’s FCA to 'streamline' sustainability reporting framework 🇬🇧

• UBS exited the NZBA, becoming the first major European bank outside the UK to exit the coalition 🏦

• and other news 🌍

PRESENTED BY ECONOMIST IMPACT

Economist Impact’s 10th anniversary Sustainability Week | March 10th – 12th 2025, London

Economist Impact’s 10th anniversary Sustainability Week will empower businesses to go beyond “reduce and reuse” and to accelerate their sustainability strategies. With more than 400 speakers and over 2,500 in-person attendees, the event will present original insights and practical solutions focusing across all industries, driving action on sustainability. Meet the most influential speakers and experts who will deliver discussions on achieving net-zero by 2050, with sessions for challenging sectors, technology, agriculture, supply chains and more.

Register here and use discount code GD-SW/MP20 to get 20% off on your ticket

THIS WEEK’S TOP NEWS

Regulatory Oversight & Industry Insights

🌍 The new ‘Disclosure Dividend 2025’ report from CDP underscores a clear business reality: environmental and financial risks are increasingly intertwined. Drawing on disclosures from companies representing two-thirds of global market capitalization, CDP estimates that large corporates face $6.5 trillion in potential environmental risk impacts, compared to an estimated $1.4 trillion cost to mitigate them.

This cost-benefit gap underlines the potential return on investment, with every $1 spent on climate resilience offering possible returns of up to $21. The report also points to tangible examples already shaping markets: from drought-related disruptions to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, to shifting agricultural commodity prices and changes in insurance costs.

The data shows that 67% of corporates and SMEs have identified environmental risks with substantive financial implications, most commonly linked to policy changes, acute physical events, and long-term environmental shifts. Sectors such as manufacturing, services, and materials report the highest revenue exposures across both transition and physical risks.

According to CDP, 90% of large companies either have, or plan to implement within two years, systems to assess and address these risks. CDP frames disclosure not just as compliance, but as a strategic lever - enabling companies to make better-informed decisions, improve operational resilience, and identify growth opportunities in a changing market environment. Full report here.

MORE INTERESTING NEWS

Latest developments, reports, insights, and trends

🌎 Over 170 countries are meeting in Geneva for final negotiations on the UN-backed Global Plastics Treaty, widely seen as the last chance to secure a legally binding global deal, but divisions over ambition threaten its outcome. While over 100 nations support binding measures covering plastics’ full life cycle - including production limits, chemical phase-outs, and financing - the US, aligning with petrochemical industry positions and oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia, is pushing for a narrower focus on waste management. Advocates warn against a watered-down pact, with some calling for a vote or a breakaway deal among ambitious nations if consensus fails. The treaty’s outcome could reshape packaging rules, material use, and extended producer responsibility laws for decades, with scenarios ranging from a weak voluntary agreement to a high-ambition deal with binding targets — or even no treaty at all.

🇬🇧 The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is planning to streamline and enhance its sustainability reporting framework for asset managers, life insurers, and pension providers, aiming to simplify disclosure requirements and reduce regulatory burdens. The move follows a review of its 2021 climate reporting rules, which found benefits in risk management, strategy integration, and transparency, but also highlighted challenges such as overly granular requirements for retail investors, overlapping disclosure regimes, and data limitations for forward-looking metrics.

🇪🇺 The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued a no-action letter advising regulators not to prioritise enforcement of certain ESG Pillar 3 disclosure templates until planned amendments to its disclosure standards take effect. The guidance applies to large listed institutions and other banks newly brought under ESG disclosure rules, covering templates EU 6–10 and specific columns in Templates 1 and 4. The move aims to ease legal and operational uncertainties amid changes under the EU’s Omnibus sustainability reporting package. The EBA also updated its ESG risk dashboard, noting stable risk levels across EU/EEA banks, and said future editions will align with the no-action letter.

🇺🇸 The Trump administration will terminate the $7 billion “Solar for All” grant program aimed at expanding solar power in low-income US communities. EPA chief Lee Zeldin said the program lost its funding under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed last month, ending Biden-era grants awarded in 2024 to 60 nonprofits, tribes, and states to serve nearly 1 million households. The move aligns with Trump’s broader rollback of federal support for solar and wind, which he calls costly and unreliable. US utility-scale solar capacity grew about 10% in the first half of 2025 despite President Trump ending subsidies and tax breaks for renewable developers. The pace is far below 2024’s 33% jump, but advocates see growth amid hostile policy as a win.

WHAT ARE COMPANIES DOING?

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

🔋 Lyten, a US lithium-sulphur battery startup backed by Stellantis and FedEx, will acquire most of bankrupt Swedish battery maker Northvolt at a steep discount, aiming to revive its operations and bolster European battery independence. The deal includes Northvolt’s projects in Sweden and Germany, IP, and plans to acquire its Canadian unit. Lyten will restart the Skelleftea plant to resume lithium-ion cell deliveries in 2026, targeting automotive, defense, and energy storage markets, and will retain several former Northvolt executives.

📊 Watershed, in partnership with Stanford’s Sustainable Solutions Lab, launched “Cornerstone,” an open-access hub for two leading Scope 3 carbon accounting models — the US EPA’s USEEIO and Watershed’s CEDA — which together power around 65% of global corporate value chain emissions measurements. Led by former EPA model architect Dr. Wesley Ingwersen, the initiative will merge the models into a single global open multi-regional input-output system, expanding beyond greenhouse gas tracking to include air and water quality, water use, and waste. The platform aims to maintain and enhance access to critical datasets after the EPA announced it would stop updating USEEIO, and will onboard additional open-source contributors over time.

🏦 Standard Chartered signed a five-year agreement with the government of Brazil’s State of Acre to act as the exclusive seller of jurisdictional forest carbon credits aimed at protecting the Amazon rainforest. Expected to bring up to 5 million credits to market in 2026, the program will channel 72% of proceeds to indigenous and local communities for initiatives such as sustainable livestock farming, reforestation, and eco-tourism, while the remaining 28% will fund forest management, monitoring, and climate resilience measures.

⚡️ JERA and bp have officially launched JERA Nex bp, a 50:50 renewable joint venture combining their offshore wind assets into one of the world’s largest developers, owners, and operators. With 13GW of net potential generating capacity across projects in nine countries, including 1GW of installed capacity, a 7.5GW development pipeline, and 4.5GW of secured leases, JV is backed by up to $5.8 billion in committed capital funding by 2030.

EVERYTHING FINANCE

Sustainable finance, funding rounds, acquisitions & private equity deals

🏦 UBS has withdrawn from the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), becoming the first major European bank outside the UK to exit the coalition. The move follows recent departures by HSBC, Barclays, and several North American banks, and comes after UBS reset its climate targets earlier this year, delaying its operational net zero goal to 2035 and scrapping a 2030 target for aligning 20% of its asset management portfolio with net zero, citing the integration of Credit Suisse.

🇳🇴 Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund has cut ties with external asset managers in Israel and sold stakes in 11 Israeli companies following a review linked to Gaza and West Bank operations. The central bank–run fund, which held stakes in 61 Israeli firms as of June 30, said the divestments are complete and further reviews are underway, with future investments limited to select companies in the equity benchmark index.

📊 ISS Sustainable Solutions acquired geospatial risk modeling firm Sust Global to enhance investors’ access to AI-driven climate and nature-related physical risk insights. The deal expands ISS Stoxx’s climate risk assessment tools, integrating Sust Global’s geospatial modeling engine with proprietary asset data to better map risks to companies and portfolios.

⚡️ Blackstone agreed to acquire energy-focused SaaS and analytics platform Enverus from Hellman & Friedman and Genstar Capital, in a deal reportedly valuing the company at over $6 billion. Founded in 1999, Texas-based Enverus serves 8,000 customers in 50 countries, offering tools for capital allocation and asset optimization across the energy sector.

Funding rounds:

⚡️ Energy Vault secured a $300 million preferred equity investment to launch Asset Vault, a subsidiary that will build, own, and operate global energy storage assets. Backed by a major infrastructure fund, the deal is expected to enable over $1 billion in capex and accelerate 1.5 GW of projects across the US, Europe, and Australia.

🏡 Swedish heat pump startup Aira raised €150 million in equity funding to accelerate the scale-up of its clean energy solutions aimed at decarbonizing residential heating. Aira offers air source heat pumps that can cut household heating costs by up to 40% and eliminate CO₂ emissions when powered by renewables.

⚡️ Sunly secured nearly €85 million in funding to build four solar parks in Latvia totaling 329 MW, enough to power up to 180,000 homes annually. Part of a €203.9 million project, the parks, set for completion by early 2027, will later integrate wind and battery storage to create hybrid facilities, enhancing grid stability and energy security.

⚡️ Bling Energy secured €15 million in funding to expand its residential solar subscription service in Portugal, targeting 3,000 more households with 20 MW of new capacity. The Lisbon startup’s “as a service” model removes upfront costs by including installation, maintenance, and management, aiming to make solar more accessible.

PARTNER WITH US

Increase your brand awareness and visibility by reaching the right audience and target market. Showcase your company, solutions, services, products, reports, surveys, events, or other content in front of our highly targeted audience of +4,700 Sustainability & ESG professionals. Contact us at [email protected] if you think we can partner in some way.