Why US Business Is Beating Washington on Climate

Hey, thanks so much for listening. I would love to be able to help you more on what it is that you are listening to and why you're listening to, to me. If you could click on the link in the show notes, that would be awesome because it will help me define what it is that we should be talking about on this podcast. Why US business is beating Washington on climate. Before we start, the SEC has proposed scrapping climate disclosure rules completely, and American businesses didn't blink. This week, we're looking at the gap between what Washington is doing on climate and what US businesses is actually doing with its money. Stick with me, because by the end, you'll have 3 things you can check in your own business this week. Here's the backdrop. The SEC has proposed rescinding its 2024 climate disclosure rules in full, and it's opened a 60-day commitment period to do it. Commissioner Hester Peirce says the rules exceed the authority Congress gave the SEC. Commissioner Mark Ueda helped— called them a cautionary tale about regulators overreaching. Chairman Paul Atkins says disclosure rules should never dictate corporate behaviour. At the same time, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut short the tax credit window for solar and wind. Developers had until July 4th, 2026 to prove they'd start— they'd started construction or lose access to credits. And they were meant to run until the early 2030s. On paper, this is a double retreat— less disclosure, less incentive. But look at where the capital is actually going, and it tells a completely different story. The evidence. Part 1: Direct investment. Google has committed to buy all the electricity from the first 2 phases of the Steel River Energy Center in Arkansas. That's 1.6 gigawatts of solar and 1.9 gigawatt-hours of battery storage backed by $3.5 billion in financing from Barclays, BNP Paribas, Santander, and Wells Fargo. Cypress Creek's CEO put it simply: solar is the most affordable electricity supply right now, and it's the fastest to market. Antora Energy just closed a $550 million funding round, taking their total financing to around a billion. They're building thermal batteries— essentially giant insulated blocks of carbon, heated by electricity, that release stored heat on demand. One system is already running at a biofuels plant in South Dakota, displacing coal-fired boilers. Another is powering AI data centers. The Evidence, Part 2: How Contracts Are Changing. This is the one I find genuinely interesting. Microsoft, Google, Chevron, and GE Vernova are rewriting their power purchase agreements. Instead of a single source, they're blending solar, wind, nuclear, and storage into hybrid deals that deliver carbon-free electricity around the clock, not just when the sun happens to be out. Google has a deal with Kairos Power using small modular reactors. Microsoft is backing the restart of the Three Mile Island with Constellation. And Chevron, alongside Engine Number One and GE Vernova, is building hybrid energy campuses designed to deliver 4 gigawatts of dedicated power to data centers by 2027 to 2028, using gas turbines that are hydrogen-ready and carbon capture-ready from day one. None of this depends on subsidy surviving the next budget cycle. It depends on getting reliable power to data center faster than the grid queue will allow. The evidence, part 3: tightening their own standards. Here's the one that surprised me the most. Google, Apple, Unilever, and General Motors are actively engaging with the biggest rewrite of Scope 2 carbon accounting in a decade. The greenhouse gas protocol standard used by roughly 97% of the S&P 500. They're doing this at exactly the moment the SEC is loosening its own disclosure requirements. Why bother if nobody's making them? Because courts are already asking the question regulators are stepping back from. Recent legal action involving Delta Airlines, KLM, DWS, and HSBC shows that claims like carbon neutral or net zero now carry real legal exposure if a company can't back them up. Tightening your own accounting isn't box ticking anymore. It's risk management. The evidence, part 4. Infrastructure at scale. The US added a record 3.3 gigawatts And 8.4 gigawatt-hours of energy storage in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Solar and storage together made up 91% of all new generating capacity added in that quarter. Analysts expect cumulative storage capacity to reach 200 gigawatts by 2031, a fourfold increase from today. And Bloomberg's own sustainable finance data shows corporate capital expenditure in clean energy infrastructure and grid resilience reaching record levels, with markets increasingly rewarding companies on operational execution, not on political rhetoric. Why this matters: demand and risk. 2 forces are driving all of this. Demand and risk. On demand, Bank of America projects the US will need more than 230 gigawatts of new generating capacity over the next 5 years. But regulated utilities are only planning to add about 93 gigawatts. That's a gap of more than 100 gigawatts, with data centers alone adding roughly 125 gigawatts Large gas turbines are already sold out through 2030. That's why more than 7.5 gigawatts of onsite generation is already under construction at data center sites, with another 60 gigawatts in pre-construction. If you wait for the grid to catch up, you're queuing behind everyone else for the same scarce equipment. On risk, cost allocation is shifting fast. Ohio's large load tariff in force since July 2025 makes big data center operators commit for the load ramp period plus at least 8 years, pay for their most of their reserved capacity whether they use it or not, and post-collateral if their credit is weak. The effect was immediate. More than 30 gigawatts of preliminary interest narrowed to 5.6 gigawatts once real financial commitments were required. Ohio's Manufacturers Association has appealed, with its president warning that customers are being asked to pay for a future that may never arrive. Virginia's equivalent rule takes effect January 2027 with 14-year commitments and payment for 85% of contracted transmission and distribution demand. The businesses that plan around this are protecting their margins. The ones that don't will find out the hard way what it costs to be an afterthought in someone else's rate case. What your business can do This week. Let's make this practical. 3 areas: adaptation, mitigation, and emission reduction. On adaptation, if your business operations depends on data centers, manufacturing, or high electricity load, model your exposure to that 100+ gigawatt supply gap now, not in 2029. If you operate in Ohio or Virginia, Read the new tariff rules before you sign a long-term power agreement, not after. On mitigation, look at direct procurement or colocation. Following the model of the hybrid power purchase agreements we've just covered, even a modest version reduces how much you depend on someone else's grid timeline. On emission reduction, review your Scope 2 accounting now. Ahead of the GHG Protocol's revised standard, rather than waiting for it to become unavoidable. And benchmark your renewable energy claims against hourly, location-matched, carbon-free electricity, not annual offsets. That's where the standard is heading, whether or not the SEC requires it. So there are 5 facts that stopped me this week. 1, the US added a record 3.3 gigawatts of storage in a single quarter, forecast to reach 200 gigawatts by 2031. 2, solar and storage made up 91% of all new US generating capacity in the first quarter of 2026. 3, 61% of the solar capacity that raced to beat July's tax credit deadline had actually locked in that status a full year earlier. Businesses saw this coming long before the deadlines made headlines. Ohio's tariff turned 30 gigawatts of interest into 5.6 gigawatts of firm commitments the moment real money was required. And 5, corporate capital expenditure in clean energy is at record levels. And at the same time, the SEC is trying to remove the rule that that would have made reporting on it mandatory. Climate strategy has come, come loose from the political cycle. The businesses building solar in Arkansas, financing thermal batteries, and rewriting their own accounting standards aren't doing it because a rule told them to. They're doing it because the economics of AI-driven demands Falling technology costs and legal exposure all point the same way. That's not a compliance story. It's a story about who's planning 3 years ahead, who's waiting to be told what to do. If you want help figuring out where your business sits in this picture, get in touch. And if you know an enterprise leader who would, should be thinking about this, send them my way. The sources from this come from Canary Media, Forbes Business Council, Forbes, Washington Post Intelligence, Utility Drive, Bloomberg Professional Services from June to August 2026. Thanks for listening.

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