Amazon is the latest company to test an analytical approach that can illuminate emissions data that’s often hidden within supply chains. By shining a light on flows of commodities and connections between companies, the approach can help tailor programs aimed at supporting suppliers in decarbonizing.

Amazon’s Scope 3 emissions, which include emissions from its supply-chain, totaled 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2024, close to three-quarters of the company’s footprint. Figuring out which suppliers in that ecosystem to engage with in order to drive down emissions is a challenge that the company has been working on for some time, said Chris Roe, who leads Amazon’s work to reach net zero by 2040.

Amazon also needed to better understand where those emissions come from, added Roe: “We need to dive deep into not just the companies but the commodities that are core to deeper tiers of our supply chain.”

Into the matrix

To do so, Amazon adapted what’s known as an input-output (IO) model: a matrix that describes how different sectors of an economy are connected. Among other things, policymakers use these models to estimate the likely impact of specific projects, such as a stimulus package or a city hosting a major sporting event. 

When combined with environmental data, IO models can also generate spend-based emissions factors, a widely used, if crude, tool for estimating the emissions associated with purchases of everything from construction materials to semiconductor chips. In this case, Amazon tweaked the process to preserve the supply-chain data in the IO model. This creates a series of data points describing the emissions generated by the network of companies that sit behind Amazon’s direct suppliers.

“Spend-based approaches get thrown under the bus because we’ve only tried to use them one way — and that one way is really limited,” said Tim Smith, founder and CEO of TASA Analytics, a consultancy that uses a similar analytical approach and counts Microsoft among its clients. “There’s a lot more richness in this data that is available and useful.”

Intervention points

Armed with a more detailed picture of where its emissions come from, Amazon is now considering how to use the data to shape its supply-chain decarbonization efforts, including programs that support suppliers in accessing renewable energy. 

“This science-based model allows us to identify where to focus our efforts within the supply chain to pursue these decarbonization opportunities most effectively,” said Roe. “It also gives us the ability to estimate the emission reduction potential when our suppliers take action on carbon-free electricity adoption.”

Companies can also use the method to collaborate with peers, because even the wealthiest cannot afford to decarbonize an entire supply chain, noted Smith. “You can start building a coalition of the willing,” he said. “And I think that’s the next step of how to scale implementation.”

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Steelmaker Nucor and data center operator Aligned are among the small but growing number of corporations investing in energy storage systems at or near their facilities — a trend expected to accelerate in 2026. 

The motivation: The need to add reliable, lower-carbon electricity capacity quickly in an era of increasingly constrained supply. 

Nucor’s installation in Arizona, engineered by service provider Ameresco, will provide it with access to 50 megawatts (or 200 megawatt-hours) of electricity at a steel factory that uses an electric arc furnace to produce 600,000 tons annually.

The batteries will be integrated with 25 megawatts of solar energy. The batteries are operational, but the solar won’t be switched on until next year. The project is on Nucor’s land.

“This is pretty unique, but it opened our eyes to the need for heavy industrials to add power,” said Jon Mancini, senior vice president for solar and battery energy storage systems at Ameresco. “They can save money by putting in batteries. Over the past year, we’ve been taking a lot of inbound phone calls that are looking to do something similar.”

The motivation for Aligned’s contract in the Pacific Northwest, orchestrated by another service provider, Calibrant, was similar. It’s for a 31-megawatt (62 MWh) battery energy storage system at a data center that handles artificial intelligence services and other high-performance computing applications.

“With this [system], we’re converting our load from a potential grid liability into a dynamic grid asset, providing the regional utility with the tools needed to accelerate our ramp,” said Aligned CEO Andrew Schaap, in a statement. “And we’re doing it responsibly, without impacting ratepayers.”

Record year for additions

Utilities, business and energy providers around the world are expected to deploy 92 gigawatts of energy storage in 2025, a growth rate of 23 percent, across a wide spectrum of duration capacity, scales and technology types, according to an October forecast by BloombergNEF. The U.S. and China are the two biggest markets for installations.

The prospects for commercial and industrial additions in 2026 are far more modest given the overall market, but the phaseout of tax incentives for solar and wind projects has more businesses with emissions reduction agendas considering energy storage as a way of reducing their electricity costs and adding new capacity that isn’t fired by fossil fuels.

Most commercial and industrial installations use lithium-ion technology, but some companies, such as Google, are investing in formats that can last far longer — up to 24 hours.

There are many drivers, particularly the opportunity to reduce electricity bills by switching to batteries during periods of peak demand, industry executives and analysts said.

“We are also seeing growing interest in behind the meter energy storage co-located with data centers,” said Isshu Kikuma, analyst for energy storage with BloombergNEF. “That said, interest does not necessarily translate into actual deployment, at least not yet, as we are only seeing a few deals.”

Flexible finance

While the One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashed tax incentives for clean energy resources such as solar and wind, companies investing in energy storage can still benefit from investment tax credits that cover part of the project costs. 

“The administration looked at reliability and deemed that storage was a net positive when it comes to reliability,” said Ethan Paterno, a partner in the energy practice for PA Consulting. 

One caveat: The technology used is subject to foreign-entity-of-concern requirements that favor domestic vendors, which will affect how projects qualify.

Some states offer virtual power plant or microgrid incentive programs under which utilities pay battery owners for reducing their load on the electric grid during certain peak periods of demand, in exchange for rate cuts.

Kaiser Permanente benefited from a $8.3 million grant to Faraday Microgrids, which installed 2 megawatts of on-site solar panels and 9 MWh of battery storage technology to reduce the electricity costs at the Ontario medical center in Southern California. The installation can serve as a source of clean backup power — an alternative to the usual diesel generators — for up to 10 hours.

Distributed resources allow operators to add capacity where it is most needed, said Jigar Shah, co-managing partner at strategy firm Multiplier. “Even in places where there isn’t a specific financial incentive, there is a speed to power incentive,” he said.

Batteries are being added most quickly in Texas, California, Colorado, New York, New Jersey and the grid served by PJM in the mid-Atlantic part of the U.S. — where many new data centers are gobbling up the available power supply. California, Massachusetts and Illinois led in new deployments in the third quarter, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie.

“These markets are getting a lot of attention,” said Ameresco’s Mancini. “In 2026, we expect to see much more of this both from utilities that are using battery storage as well as their customers that have heavy loads.”

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Our Chasing Net Zero series, a company-by-company look at the state of corporate decarbonization efforts in 2025, provides a set of parables about good intentions and meaningful action bumping up against intractable market forces and regulatory inaction.

Written by Jim Giles, Heather Clancy and Saul Hansell, the case studies began running in July. Our reporting, also featured in a session at Trellis Impact 25 entitled “The State of 2030 Climate Targets: Lessons Learned from the Chasing Net Zero Series,” has fueled ongoing conversations in the sustainability community, including a debate over the value of reducing emissions intensity rather than absolute emissions — so we wrote about that too. 

Many of the companies we’ve profiled — including Nestlé, Salesforce and Intel — have made significant achievements in lowering their carbon footprints. Yet few of them are on track to reach the goals set in a more optimistic and favorable time.

As Trellis contributor Alison Taylor, a clinical associate professor at NYU Stern School of Business, wrote in July, a focus on numbers alone can obscure real achievement and useful lessons: “The ultimate paradox in responsible business is that best and worst practices are often found side-by-side in the same industry. Sometimes even in the same factory.”

In the coming months we will publish more case studies, with a new focus for 2026 on management guidance from experts advising on what each one can do next. Subscribe to Trellis Briefing to follow the series and join in the conversation. 

Here’s what we’ve found to date:

Nestlé is on track to halve emissions by 2030. Here’s how (holes and all)

The Swiss food giant has reduced emissions by 20 percent since 2018, hitting its interim target a year ahead of schedule. But the company’s roadmap relies heavily on carbon removals, a strategy that environmental groups have questioned.

Why IKEA’s $47 billion retailer is on pace to halve emissions by 2030, while rivals falter

Ingka Group, the largest seller of IKEA products, is investing in startups and technologies crucial for achieving its net-zero goal. The biggest challenge: How quickly can IKEA transition to lower-carbon materials?

GSK made the biggest climate promise in pharma. Can it keep it?

GSK promised to slash emissions by 80 percent by 2030 from 2020 levels, a far deeper cut than any of its rivals. The company’s path forward lies partly in a low-emissions replacement for its asthma inhaler, which accounts for half of its overall emissions.

Inside steel giant ArcelorMittal’s struggle to reach its 2030 climate goals

The largest steelmaker in the Global North set an ambitious decarbonization agenda in 2021. But oversupply and high energy prices are holding back low-carbon investment across the steel industry.

How AI forced Salesforce to reset its 2030 climate goals

Facing a surge in AI-related emissions, the $38 billion enterprise software company pivoted on its emissions plan to set a target it looks likely to reach as early as next year. The new target is based on cutting emissions per unit of profit, rather than absolute emissions.

How Intel’s sales tailspin sidelined its 2030 sustainability ambitions

The company that led the microprocessor revolution was long a leader on sustainability. Now, after a critical technology mistake led to a decade of business turmoil, it’s quietly scaling back its climate efforts.

The post Chasing Net Zero: ambitious targets, meaningful achievement and intractable challenges appeared first on Trellis.

The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.​

At the start of 2025, if you asked chief sustainability officers what their primary role was, the answer was to continue to push for change, get their executive leadership onboard and make the business case to integrate sustainability into corporate infrastructure. The Weinreb Group asked this very question and published their perspective, which largely noted that they anticipated staying the course in the years to come. 

On one hand, that prediction was accurate: commitments to corporate sustainability have remained largely unchanged despite considerable financial, political and societal headwinds. In fact, many companies have deepened their commitments. What has changed, however, are two key shifts, both of which directly impact the professional overall. 

The first is a shift in messaging from external communications to internal ones. While the work is still happening, the desire to promote it in the current environment has both waned and changed course dramatically. Instead of touting climate or social impact, today’s communications are more internally-focused and place a much greater emphasis on business benefits. 

The second and related change is that sustainability has shifted towards primarily being a legal and regulatory function within organizations. The result of these two changes is that the role of the CSO and all sustainability professionals have also morphed in terms of messaging and reporting relationships. 

The evolution of messaging 

Long gone are the days when the CEO and CSO would stand on stage for an all-employee meeting and tout the virtues of sustainability while tying commitments to that CEO’s legacy. The shift was chronicled in a report from Deloitte, which noted that “CEOs are focusing on cost management, supply chain resilience and AI to drive sustainable growth.” 

This shift is indicative of a broader industry change we’re seeing: company leaders are prioritizing business value over impact. The emphasis has gone from “show me the impact and money” to “show me the money.”  

Of course, many sustainability professionals have been making the business case for years. But the message often hasn’t made it through, because of: 

• Opponents’ messaging: Sustainability opponents have worked hard to paint sustainability as a profit-killer, with efforts ramping up in recent years to depict sustainability as a lever that dilutes shareholder value.
• Absence from high-profile communications: Financial impacts are often left out of sustainability messages. For example, Cambridge University and BCG found half of the speeches at COPs 27 through 29 didn’t mention economic impacts at all. Tensie Whelan of New York University told Trellis, “ESG reporting metrics neither integrate financial performance nor provide guidance on how to understand and drive better financial performance.” 
• Missing the cost of inaction: The cost of inaction is consistently vastly underestimated. Although it can be quantified, very few companies do so because they don’t know how to do it or how to get the CFO on board. This makes it look like inaction is costless, although nothing could be farther from the truth.

The reality of a regulatory role

When it comes to reporting relationships, CEOs’ prioritizing efficiency over impact has changed things. In general, CSO reporting lines are further from the CEO, and there’s a strong emphasis on CSOs working to mitigate legal risk. The Weinreb Group’s most recent CSO report found the number of CSOs reporting into the legal department has doubled in just the last two years. And the role of ESG controllers rose in 2024 because of their ability to apply financial analysis to non-financial data, such as climate risk. 

In addition, sustainability teams are increasingly being disbanded and distributed across business functions. This year, we’ve seen heads of sustainability depart from Nike, Unilever and Apple while their responsibilities have dispersed elsewhere

Greenwashing, too, has evolved from being a marketing issue to a legal one through the dramatic rise in global legislative initiatives that have cost companies millions. Just this month, for example, the UK banned ads from 3 major clothing brands, citing misleading green claims. 

The sustainability job in 2026

Where does this leave sustainability leaders? We have five suggestions for how to lead in today’s regulatory-driven environment: 

• Take an auditor to lunch. Given the increased expectation for data to be verified and assured, you don’t have to become an auditor, but you should get to know the ones your company uses. Find out what they prioritize and how they think, so you can align your strategy accordingly. The relationship you build will help you both. 
• Track lobbying efforts. Corporate lobbying in opposition to sustainability rules rose this year, and that is likely to continue. It’s important to stay apprised of such efforts, because they could significantly affect regulatory changes that aim to keep climate law and human rights efforts intact. Keeping  an eye on developments specific to your industry will make you smarter and able to ask the right questions. 
• Embrace AI and big data. It’s easy to dismiss AI as a tech issue, or avoid it because of concerns about how it consumes resources. But AI isn’t going anywhere and the professionals who gain an understanding of its benefits and how to apply it to climate strategies will have an advantage going forward. 
• Tell  your stories, but differently. Storytelling is one of the oldest and most enduring formats of societal change. To be heard, you’ll have to evolve the language you use to ensure non-partisan engagement. And you’ll also need to emphasize business benefits to overcome current messaging challenges. This may look difficult, but don’t give up on the power of creating a narrative that communicates progress, value and impact. 
• Don’t lose sight of the human side of sustainability. While the emphasis right now is on policy and efficiency, at the end of the day sustainability is about our ability to ensure a healthy, equitable and thriving planet for all people.

There’s no question sustainability is an enduring profession. It’s been through many pendulum swings over the past decades, and we can guarantee we’ll see many more. Your job isn’t to become everything to everyone, but to double down on your resilience and meet the needs of today. 

The post How sustainability leaders can get ahead in 2026 appeared first on Trellis.

In a year of political and economic turbulence, it was reassuring to hear many companies say they were sticking with their sustainability commitments. But the “staying the course” narrative omits something critical: Commitments are table stakes. What really matters is progress toward those goals, and the story there is much less comforting.

The past 12 months saw a wave of companies report slower-than-expected emissions reductions. Others are almost certain to do the same in 2026. At the heart of the issue is a fundamental gap between the emissions cuts that companies say are possible and the scale of the change they are being asked to deliver.

The rest of this article could be filled with examples. To state just a few from 2025: HSBC said it would achieve net-zero operations by 2050, two decades later than originally planned; PepsiCo watered down interim 2030 goals and pushed its net-zero date from 2040 to 2050; Salesforce set a new 2030 that requires little more progress than it has already made; and Intel quietly dropped a key commitment to reduce supply-chain emissions, its second-largest source.

Hard truths 

There are notable exceptions, such as Ingka Group. The retail behemoth operates most IKEA stores and was one of the first companies we profiled in Chasing Net Zero, our company-by-company look at progress toward emission goals. Leaders there place sustainability at the heart of business decisions and are on track to halve emissions by 2030. But there are also many businesses that aren’t even at the starting line, like the 56 percent of large U.S. companies that by 2023 had still not set interim emissions targets — or the 12 percent that did not even report direct emissions.

One factor behind the troubled targets is maturity: The sustainability profession is growing up and discovering some painful truths. Talk to people who were in the room when the first round of net-zero targets were set — many between five and 10 years ago — and you hear tales from a different era. 

The prevailing advice, said Alison Taylor, a business-school professor at New York University, was to set over-ambitious targets to signal ambition and galvanize change — even if the path to execution wasn’t clear. With companies in court over net-zero marketing and emissions reporting mandatory in some regions, legal and compliance departments are also now at the table. 

Another sustainability leader, who requested anonymity while discussing their former employer, recalled sending the company’s first net-zero commitment to in-house lawyers around five years ago. They quickly said all looked good — a speedy turnaround unthinkable today. “I can’t believe we got those climate commitments out the door,” the leader said.

Out of reach

Still, this evolution on its own doesn’t explain why so many goals now seem out of reach. A bigger factor is the slow pace of global decarbonization. Under current policies, the world is on track to warm 2.6 degrees Celsius by 2100, according to the nonprofit Climate Action Tracker. Most large companies are exposed to a slice of the global economy through their suppliers and customers, which often make up 70 percent or more of a company’s footprint. Yet net-zero frameworks typically require companies to decarbonize in line with a 1.5C future, far faster than current policies enable. It’s no wonder many are saying they can’t.

A challenge of this magnitude can seem unsurmountable, especially as the current U.S. administration has another three years to run. But that doesn’t mean sustainability professionals can’t work to change the dynamics that are causing companies to miss targets.

One area to explore is the widening array of tools that allow companies to decarbonize supply chains and deduct the benefits against emission inventories. These include industry-specific coalitions in aviation, concrete and other areas that aggregate demand for emerging low-carbon technologies, as well as carbon accounting rules with the potential to unlock “vast new climate finance.” Government support for these schemes would be welcome, but it’s not essential — the tools are ready now and available to use.

How not to be undermined by lobbying

Then there’s the long-standing and decidedly thorny issue of company lobbying. One reason global policies are off track is that companies lobby against legislation that would cut emissions, either directly or through membership of trade organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The ambitions of sustainability teams, in other words, are being undermined from within. (Check your company’s position on the Climate Policy Obstruction Scorecard from advocacy group Climate Voice.)

Going head-to-head with company lobbyists is a daunting ask at the best of times, and even more so when sustainability professionals are feeling marginalized. But advocating for lobbying reform need not require career-imperilling tactics, as Climate Voice’s advice shows. Many companies now routinely review trade association membership, and those reviews are an opportunity for sustainability teams to highlight the conflicts that membership brings. Or focus on strength in numbers: pressure from employee groups has been cited by executives as a key force in changing sustainability strategies.

These two interventions feel very different. But both change how the game is played. And change of that nature is what’s required right now, because the existing rules are not delivering the decarbonization that a habitable planet requires.

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