Will Richardson covers ten climate stories affecting business this week: Angola's peatlands are four times larger than thought, PepsiCo redesigned sustainability reports for AI, and US AI data centers are driving a surge in planned gas power plants. Climate risk is now directly hitting US property markets through insurer pullbacks and falling house prices.
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Before we start, stick with me to the end because this week, the same 24 hours that saw the world's oceans hit their hottest temperature ever recorded also saw planned gas power for America's AI data centers nearly double. 2 records, one story about who actually pays for growth. This week in sustainability, here are your top 10 stories ranked by what the world is talking about most. Number 10: New Zealand shields corporates from climate lawsuits? If you sell into food and beverage supply chains, watch this one closely. It could reshape how corporate climate liability works everywhere. New Zealand has passed a law blocking civil lawsuits against companies for the emissions they cause. It directly halts a case brought by Māori climate activists against 6 major emitters, including dairy giant Fonterra. Expect other governments to be watching how this plays out. Number 9: Kimberly-Clark ditches trees for toilet paper. Any business with paper or fiber packaging in its supply chain should pay attention to this shift. 2 years after promising natural forest-free sourcing, Kimberly-Clark is building a plant to scale Hesperoli, a desert plant fibre, as an alternative to wood pulp. It spent $250 million over the past decade hunting for alternatives. P&G is doing the same with bamboo. Number 8: ESG software gets its biggest shake-up yet. Worth knowing if you're a benchmarking sustainability platforms for your own organization. Osapiens has acquired Nasdaq's carbon accounting platform Metreo to expand into the US. Meanwhile, Diginex is buying Resultics in a deal worth just over $1 billion, pairing ESG reporting with customer intelligence technology. Consolidation in the space is accelerating fast. Number 7: Africa's hidden carbon vault just got bigger. A genuinely exciting one for anyone working on nature-based carbon removal. New research shows Angola's peatlands are at least 4 times bigger than we thought— an area the size of Qatar. They sit next to the Congo Basin peatlands, which alone store an estimated 29 billion tonnes of carbon. Scientists think there's more still to find across the continent. Number 6: Sustainability reporting gets a reset. This is relevant for every food and beverage and MMA business rethinking how they publish sustainability data. PepsiCo has redesigned its sustainability reporting to be read by AI systems as easily as people. Its latest ESG summary is under half the length of last year's, with updates published continuously rather than dumped in one annual PDF. It comes as 3 senior sustainability leaders at Netflix, McDonald's, and the Science Based Targets Initiative all moved on this month. Number 5: Climate change just sent your coffee bill up. Straight to the heart of food and beverage margins, this one. A magnitude 7.4 earthquake hits Colombia's coffee-growing regions this month, but the industry's real worry is El Niño, which could be the strongest on record. US retail coffee prices have climbed nearly 50% in 2 years, from $6.32 to $9.32 a pound. Weather, not the commodity market, is now setting the price for your morning cup. Number 4: Renewables build-out keeps accelerating. Good context for anyone weighing up renewable power purchase agreements. China's Rudong offshore wind farm has passed 10 billion kilowatt-hours generated, avoiding 7.4 million tonnes of CO2. Canada has committed roughly £37 billion to hydro, wind, and transmission. And in Scotland, CIP's Colburn 1 is now Europe's largest battery storage system, right on our— and really my— doorstep. Number 3, the rulebook behind corporate climate targets just changed. If your organization has an SBTI-validated target, this is the story to read properly. The Science Based Targets initiative has published its first net-zero standard update since 2020, and it split opinion straight down the middle between those who say it strengthens corporate accountability and those who say it dilutes it. What are your thoughts? Please come back to me if you've got any thoughts on this. I would love to know. So anyone with a live SBTi target should be reading the detail, not just the headlines. Number 2, climate risk just became a property market problem relevant to every business with physical premises, stock, or supply chain that touches property. New analysis of the 2,700 US counties found a clear chain reaction. As insurers pull back from climate-exposed homes, foreclosures rise, and local house prices and retail sales fall with them. In London, subsistence insurance payouts have jumped 90% in 4 years to £297 million. This isn't a 2050 risk. It's showing up on balance sheets now. Number 1, AI's energy bill is now everyone's problem. This is the story of the year so far for media, marketing, and advertising, and for any business with a £100 million turnover or above running serious cloud infrastructure. Planned gas-fired power capacity for US data centers nearly doubled in 6 months to 189 gigawatts. Public opposition has jumped too. 75% of voters now oppose new data centers near them, up from 42% a year ago. In Georgia, regulators are pushing back on a $20 billion OpenAI power deal over consumer protections. However you use AI in your business, the energy bill behind it is becoming a genuine reputational And cost-rich risk. So top 3 mind-blowing environmental facts from this week. Number 1, the Congo Basin peatlands next to Angola's newly mapped carbon vault store an estimated 29 billion tons of carbon, roughly 3 years' worth of the entire world's CO2 emissions in one wetland. In America, A 1% point rise in home insurers refusing to renew policies is enough to trigger a 0.91 point rise in foreclosures and knock more than 8% off average house prices. And number 3, on the 22nd of August this year, the world's oceans hit their hottest surface temperature ever recorded at 21.1 degrees centigrade. In the same week, planned US gas power for AI data centers nearly doubled. If you want to be a part of our network, please DM me or comment below.
Grab free access to Will's Substack while it lasts. Every week we pull together the top sustainability stories from dozens of trusted sources Then he breaks down the big issues facing business right now in plain, practical terms. Link in the description. Grab free access to Will's Substack while it lasts. Every week we pull together the top sustainability stories from dozens of trusted sources. Then he breaks down the big issues facing business right now in plain, practical terms. Link in the description.
