The Two Steps Forward podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and other platforms — and, of course, via Trellis. Episodes publish every other Tuesday.

How does a corporate sustainability professional meet the moment? That’s one of the questions we posed to Unilever’s chief sustainability and corporate affairs officer, Rebecca Marmot, in a live-on-stage podcast session during last month’s London Climate Action Week.

Marmot, who joined Unilever 18 years ago after stints at L’Oreal and in the U.K. government, talked about the keys to success for today’s CSOs with my co-host, Futerra “Chief Solutionist” Solitaire Townsend, and I for our Two Steps Forward podcast.

Also in this episode: Soli and I discuss artificial intelligence through the lens of sustainability.

From vision to execution

Marmot explained how sustainability has matured from a loosely defined ideal into a core component of how business is done — an evolving field that now requires strategic depth and operational focus.

“I think those grand goal-setting days were brilliant at the time, having vision and being able to galvanize and bring enthusiasm and drive people behind an agenda. But now I think business skills and acumen are absolutely critical. If I don’t understand, and my counterparts don’t understand, what we need to do as a business, we won’t be able to truly embed sustainability.”

One key part of the role, Marmot said, is shifting from vision to execution. That requires gaining a holistic understanding of the company and its value chain.

Marmot reeled off some requirements for today’s sustainability professional.

“You need to understand the financial planning process. You need to understand how R&D and innovation work. You need to really understand and work super closely with procurement and supply chain, because if you think about consumer goods companies, so much of our Scope 3 — the vast majority — is outside of our direct control. You need to think of the other end of the value chain, working with what we call our customer development teams — our retailers. That’s often the front interface for consumers, when you’re talking about messaging and encouraging people on that sustainability journey. Finance, in terms of reporting and the move to nonfinancial reporting. So many different aspects of the business and the business world are now part of sustainability.”

Strategic alignment and emotional intelligence

Understanding is one thing. Collaborating with all the various components of a company’s value chain is another. And, Marmot emphasized, collaboration is messy, slow and deeply human, requiring both strategic alignment and emotional intelligence.

Success comes from being able to balance head and heart, she said. “Part of it is being very financially focused, commercially oriented, having the KPIs in place and making sure you have the same level of professionalism you would have in any other part [of the business]. And on the other side, bringing the friendship, the emotion, the personal understanding.

“When you start to really try and understand the other person’s perspective and you’re looking at how can you win together, you’re going to be much more successful.”

The Two Steps Forward podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and other platforms — and, of course, via Trellis. Episodes publish every other Tuesday.

The post Live from London: Unilever’s CSO on moving from vision to execution appeared first on Trellis.

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

It’s a conundrum that’s been around since the earliest days of corporate ESG: If a company wants to hire a chief sustainability officer, what’s the better decision? Find someone with strong knowledge of the business and profit-and-loss experience? Or find an expert and leader on ESG?

As detailed in our report for Trellis, How to Set Sustainability Strategy in 2025, the answer is ideally to try to find that rare snow leopard of a candidate who merges both profiles.

The sustainability background

Those who come with a strong sustainability background tend to find themselves fighting more than ever for relevance, credibility and support inside their firms. As one sustainability leader noted, “If you have a sustainability background you’re targeted as a tree hugger or trying to make the company a nonprofit or seeming like you lack objectivity.”

CSOs with an ESG background reported a lack of trust from the C-suite and board of directors. They feel less like a true partner for the business and more like a cost-center reporting shop, compliance function and PR offshoot. Many of these CSOs lack confidence in their understanding of the business, its strategy and how to manage organizational culture and internal politics.

The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), even though it’s been watered down, has become a symbol of a job these CSOs didn’t sign up for: a compliance and reporting function. They express increasing pessimism as to whether they can truly integrate sustainability in a way that shapes business decisions.

In an increasingly adversarial political climate — coming from both Washington, D.C. and inside the corporate office — some CSOs lean into a moral high-road approach, believing those who don’t view sustainability priorities as on par with conventional business priorities are somehow less ethical or intellectually inferior.

“If a company is benefitting from slave labor in its value chain,” a head of sustainable investing recently asked us, “Why is it my responsibility to make a business case for why they need to stop?”

The business background

What CSOs with a strong business and P&L background may lack in ESG knowledge, they make up for with their understanding of how the business operates and how to navigate the C-suite and the organization’s culture. Their experience and attitude are almost 180 degrees different from CSOs with ESG backgrounds. They feel optimistic about their ability to advance an integrated, strategic approach to sustainability. And when a new regulatory framework such as CSRD arrives, they welcome it as an opportunity to leverage more support and resources for sustainability.

This may sound as if we’re recommending a company should hire a CSO — and even a sustainability team members — with business line experience. But not so fast: Research suggests that CSOs with ESG experience and expertise achieve more and encourage their companies to make greater sustainability commitments and have a greater impact than those from the business sector.

CSOs coming from business typically lean towards making incremental progress. They stack a series of achievable victories together rather than setting bold targets, resolving problematic behaviors, transforming business models or embracing holistic policies. Furthermore, CSOs from the corporate world often lack relationships and experience in dealing with NGOs, advocates, communities, labor unions and policymakers. They often need support with external stakeholder management.

Finding a snow leopard

Too often, companies and their leaders overlook the substantial skills and assets that CSOs with strong ESG backgrounds bring. First, they often have more comfort and an intuitive grasp of the need for sustainability tension management. Many have come to understand how to align economic, environmental and social needs. They often consider views on when and how to make tradeoffs when alignment isn’t realistic.

Second, they maintain strong relationships of trust with external stakeholders and have a deep understanding of their culture. They also comprehend the dynamics of the court of public opinion and how reputation crises germinate. They can express the company’s purpose and values to influential networks of key stakeholders. Driven by passion, they often refuse to settle or sacrifice. If their firm is contributing harm to people or planet, they will push, cajole and persuade their employer to shape up and live its stated values.

Ideally, a company should encourage their CSOs to meld the best of both worlds. CSOs with strong business experience can build their sustainability tension management capabilities and expand their relationships with ESG stakeholders. CSOs with environmental and social expertise can build their knowledge of how their firm’s business model works, what business KPIs drive behavior and how to make a business case. They can learn to speak in the P&L language.

What good looks like

CSOs who thrive push themselves to build skills and competencies drawn from each background. For example, one tech company led by a CSO with a strong ESG background has set a sustainability strategy that includes clear business value propositions and metrics tied to growth and cost reduction. The CSO has created an internal steering committee of peers from relevant business lines. Together they’re working to connect major ESG commitments around net zero, responsible sourcing, and waste and circularity to operational business cases. They’re creating a dashboard to track both ESG and financial performance metrics.

One CSO who came from the finance office found that upon taking the CSO job, most people expected him to behave like a stereotypical CFO and cut costly ESG commitments. Instead, he had an epiphany. Data had always driven decisions for the finance team, which in turn pushed business lines to increasingly make data-driven decisions. Yet, the company’s sustainability report, with all its data, was used primarily for external communications and disclosure requirements. The CSO realized the company needed to get real-time, actionable ESG data in the hands of business line leaders monthly. Showing who was leading and lagging became a powerful engine to drive continuous improvement.

We’ve also seen companies create a two-headed governance approach. In one case, a CSO who came from a business line drives the strategic integration of sustainability, while another senior-level vice president, leads the company’s ESG efforts, reporting and compliance. Collectively, they work to advance results for people, planet and profit from different angles.

Employers and leaders are often drawn to simplifying choices into black-and-white, either-or decisions. Either sustainability is a compliance cost center or it’s a strategic driver of business success. The most essential lesson for CSOs and those who hire them is to ensure that they don’t fall into this trap. It’s vital to manage tensions and priorities to determine when profit must take precedence, when people and planet must take precedence and when they can align and move forward together.

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Google remains committed to its “intentionally ambitious” pledge to achieve net zero by 2030 — even though the company’s overall greenhouse gas emissions have increased dramatically since its 2019 baseline year.

Google’s emissions reduction strategy, which it says was validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in February, calls for a 50 percent cut to its market-based Scope 1 and 2 emissions (for operations and purchased energy) and to its Scope 3 supply chain footprint. Google plans to “neutralize” the residual emissions with carbon removals. 

The integrity of that target is unclear, according to an analysis published June 26, and Google’s 2025 environmental report casts further doubt. The tech giant’s total footprint rose 11 percent in 2024, reaching 11.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). 

That total excludes some emissions related to Alphabet’s operations, which aren’t part of Google’s SBTi-validated goal. Without those exclusions, the company reported 15.2 metric tons in emissions. 

Either way, Google is reporting a cumulative increase of 51 percent since 2019, which is a lot of ground to make up over the next five years, particularly given the hostile U.S. policy climate for clean energy, voracious interest in artificial intelligence and uncertainty over the future direction of greenhouse gas accounting rules. 

“The thing with a moonshot goal is it is intentionally ambitious,” said Google Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt. “It can seem impossible at the time that it’s set, and we know that this kind of innovation is not going to be linear. It can take longer than expected, but we do really feel like continuing to pursue these moonshots.”

Obstacles ahead

The biggest drag on Google’s progress in 2024 was the emissions associated with its capital expenditures and use of sold products, which leapt 38 percent to 6.3 million metric tons of CO2e. That’s more than half of Google’s Scope 3 total, and it’s related primarily to construction of new data centers. 

Another obstacle that’s beyond Google’s control are the fossil fuels-dominant grids in key regions outside the U.S. “Asia Pacific remains a really big challenge, both for our own operations and also for our suppliers,” Brandt said. 

Google is getting around those obstacles by being “resourceful.” 

In Singapore, for example, the company is supporting a plant that will burn waste wood along with pilot-scale carbon capture technology. In Taiwan, it is developing a 1 gigawatt solar project portfolio. Some of the power the installations produce may be offered to suppliers and manufacturers in the region, home to many semiconductor plants. It took five years of collaboration to make the partnership possible, Google said.

Getting suppliers to transition to clean power is a heightened focus — independent analysis suggests it could be one-third of the company’s footprint — and Google supports a number of projects meant to encourage alignment with its goals. 

In 2023, for example, it started asking key suppliers to adopt a Clean Energy Addendum that commits them to using 100 percent renewable energy by 2029 for the electricity they use to produce Google products.

The company doesn’t have a publicly stated goal for participation, but Brandt said many key suppliers have signed on.

Source: 2025 Google Environmental Report

Bright spot: data center emissions

One thing that makes Brandt optimistic is the reduction Google reported for its data center emissions, which it cut 12 percent to 3.1 million tons of CO2e in 2024 despite a 27 percent increase in electricity consumption. 

The biggest story is Google’s contracts to procure carbon-free energy, which aim to achieve 100 percent by 2030; the company’s latest calculations put it at 66 percent.

Google signed deals to put 8 gigawatts of geothermal, nuclear, solar and wind power on global grids in 2024, more than in any other year. That’s about four times the company’s incremental load growth between 2023 and 2024. It’s trying to get ahead of demand. 

From 2010 to 2024, Google contracted for more than 22 gigawatts of power, which is roughly the amount of electricity used by Portugal annually. The impact of those purchases is an estimated 44 million metric tons of CO2e in avoided emissions, according to Google’s report. The company has also invested about $3.7 billion in projects aside from its power purchase agreements; those installations will eventually produce about 6 gigawatts. 

Energy efficiency measures such as changes to cooling technology, new chips for AI processing and changes to Google’s software coding models for training AI algorithms were equally important for reducing data center emissions. The net effect is that Google’s data centers can deliver six times more computing power per unit of electricity than five years ago, the company said.

AI’s emissions-slashing potential

Another topic you’ll hear Brandt raise frequently in the months ahead is the potential for Google’s services to enable up to 1 gigaton of emissions cuts for customers.  

Last year, for example, the company introduced a tool that lets marketers measure the emissions associated with specific campaigns. Google is already using AI to help schedule non-urgent computing tasks — such as processing YouTube videos —where and when emissions are lower.

Google has pledged to help cities, businesses, individuals and other partners cut emissions by 1 gigaton of CO2e by 2030. It hasn’t reported its cumulative progress against that goal, but in 2024 five of the company’s AI-enabled products helped others cut emissions by 26 million metric tons. They were the Nest thermostat, Google Earth Pro, a solar planning tool, fuel-efficient routing in Google Maps and the Green Light city traffic optimization resource.

“This is indicative of the huge potential we have for AI to be a major environmental solution,” Brandt said.

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Five tech companies often cited as exemplars for emissions reductions ambition face a strategy crisis exacerbated by growth plans for artificial intelligence and outdated greenhouse gas accounting practices, finds an analysis by two European think tanks.

The companies — Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft — are closely evaluated in a chapter of the 2025 Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor, published June 26 by NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch. “Tech companies’ GHG emissions targets appear to have lost their meaning and relevance,” the analysis found.

Tech companies can reclaim their leadership positions by recasting their renewable electricity investments to more closely match the hourly energy consumption of cloud computing operations; innovating to increase the lifespan of the hardware in their product lines and data centers; and boosting the amount of recycled materials and critical minerals they use, according to the report.

“Our real criticism is about the system: how do we improve the rules of the game,” said Thomas Day, a climate policy analyst with NewClimate.

Amazon, which received an advance copy of the report, said through a spokesperson that it “mischaracterizes our data and makes inaccurate assumptions throughout— its own disclaimer even acknowledges [NewClimate Institute] cannot guarantee its factual accuracy. By contrast, we have a proven, independently audited, seven-year track record of transparently delivering facts that follow global reporting standards.” 

No plans to change

All five companies remain resolute in commitments made at the beginning of this decade. Microsoft, which in May reported a 23.4 percent cumulative increase in its carbon footprint since 2020, is “pragmatically optimistic” about its plan.

“We remain committed to developing and supporting innovative solutions to reduce emissions from key data center and operational inputs including electricity, building materials, chips and fuels, focusing on long-term solutions over short-term stopgaps,” a company spokesperson said in response to questions about this report. “To do this, we have been adapting our strategies to leverage new sustainability technologies and address the challenges of expanding energy demand.

Google, Amazon and Meta have likewise reported increases since their baseline years. They have yet to publish their latest updates, although Google’s update is due imminently.

Apple, Google and Meta did not respond to requests for comment.

Energy demand for data centers grew 12 percent annually between 2017 and 2024, and there’s nothing to suggest a reversal. “If energy consumption continues to rise unchecked and without adequate oversight, these tech companies’ existing GHG emissions reduction targets may likely be unachievable,” the report said, “as companies may struggle to install additional renewable electricity generation fast enough to meet this increase as well as reduce existing emissions.” 

Apple has so far cut emissions by 60 percent since 2015, according to its April update, but its data center exposure is smaller than the other companies and its calculations rely heavily on avoided-emissions estimates.

Apple’s claims also lean heavily on its push to get its supply chain to transition to renewables. So far, key suppliers have brought 17.8 gigawatts of solar and wind online, which represents about 95 percent of its spending. The goal is to get them to use renewable energy for 100 percent of their production by 2030.

“Apple is the only one of these companies with a meaningful target for supply chain electricity from renewables,” said Day. “This remains a huge blindspot for this sector.”

At least one-third of the emissions footprint from tech sector companies comes from energy used to manufacture computer hardware, according to the report.

Outdated Scope 2 accounting methods

All five companies based their emissions reductions targets on current guidance from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which allows them to write down their energy footprints with renewable electricity certificates. Many are sourced through virtual power purchase agreements or deals with utilities to put more solar, wind and other renewables on the grid. 

Those methods are being revised, with huge implications for how they’ll be able to report on progress in the future. One change under consideration, for example, would require the companies to match location-based energy consumption with renewables on an hourly basis. That’s stricter than the approach they can use today. 

While Microsoft and Google have embraced the hourly approach, Amazon and Meta advocate a different method that focuses on the potential of corporate renewables investments to reduce emissions on fossil fuels-heavy grids. Apple’s position is somewhere in the middle. 

The bottom line: “The companies will likely need to update their targets in accordance with the revised accounting rules,” the report said.

Untapped opportunity

The tech giants could improve the credibility of their emissions reductions targets by setting more specific targets for increasing the lifespan of the hardware — both the electronic devices sold to consumers and those used in their data centers. None of the five companies considered have set specific targets to increase the longevity of their hardware, according to the report.

“We need more benchmarks and guidance around this,” Day said. “But they need to move ahead of the rules of the community.”

The analysis also recommends more focus on increasing the share of recycled materials and critical minerals in servers, personal computers and other devices. So far, their commitments are limited. 

Meta “prioritizes” recycled content. Apple aims to use 15 priority materials including rare earths from recycled sources, but isn’t specific about a target date. Google has goals for its consumer products, although not for data centers. Microsoft started mining hard drives for rare earths in April and Amazon supports recycling and trade-in programs. Neither, though, have specific targets.

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With the wildfire season rapidly approaching, California policymakers and businesses are attempting to make homeowner’s insurance accessible again in the state. The outcome could send ripple effects across the economy as weather disasters become more frequent and severe.  

California has adopted new regulations aimed at enabling people to insure their properties and insurers to remain solvent. But the changes, which ease restrictions on how insurers set rates, may not be enough. 

Across the country, losses by major insurers following climate-related disasters have reached hundreds of billions of dollars in recent years, and it’s clear that the industry and regulators need to innovate dramatically if insurers are to stay in business and property owners are to find insurance. 

A collapse in the property insurance market would hurt not only homeowners. It would directly threaten banks, mortgage lenders, developers and others with exposure to risk in the housing market, as mortgages will be harder to obtain if homes can’t get insurance. And it would have widespread repercussions across an economy that relies on a robust housing market.

Incentives for mitigation by homeowners, communities and insurers; more precise risk analysis — especially at the property level; and a shift in insurers’ underwriting business away from fossil fuels, are among the innovations experts say could reduce damages from future disasters. But no one has found the sure bet in this unprecedented era.

“We are dealing with a set of systems — insurance, finance, water, FEMA — that were built for a stable climate,” said Kate Gordon, CEO of California Forward and a one-time senior advisor to former U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and California Governor Jerry Brown. “These systems are not prepared for intensifying climate change.”  

Coast to coast risk

This is hardly a California-only problem. 

The U.S. has spent almost $1 trillion in disaster recovery and related climate expenses in the year ending May 1, according to a new report from Bloomberg Intelligence. That is equivalent to 3 percent of GDP.  

Following $747 billion in insured losses from hurricanes, floods and wildfires intensified by climate change between 2020 and 2024, major insurers have pulled back from writing home insurance in many regions — not only coastal states like Florida, Louisiana and California, but also Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Carolina and others. 

As regulators have made it easier to raise premiums to cover extreme weather risks, insurers in some states have spiked prices to a point that appears to be hurting the housing markets. Home insurance rates in Florida are set to average $15,460 this year, up from $14,140 last year, according to Insurify.  In Louisiana, premiums surged 38 percent on average last year and are on pace to rise another 27 percent this year to $13,937, according to Insurify. High insurance prices along with high mortgage rates are said to be contributing to the softening of Florida’s housing market, where homes often sit on the market for months.

After more than a million California home insurance policies were not renewed in recent years, the state’s insurer of last resort, the FAIR Plan, experienced a 115 percent jump in enrollment from desperate homeowners who couldn’t find private insurance. California’s Insurance Commissioner responded with new regulations allowing insurers to pass along their reinsurance costs and use future catastrophe models, instead of just past losses, to calculate premiums. In exchange, insurers are required to increase their underwriting in high-risk areas by 5 percent every two years until they match 85 percent of their overall market share in the state.

“We’re hopeful these changes will stabilize the market,” said Seren Taylor, vice president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, an industry association. “We’re seeing confidence returning to the market,” as insurers can “more accurately price risk.” 

The state Department of Insurance did not respond to repeated requests to comment on the current insurance market and legislative and market proposals.  

Former rules kept premiums artificially low, said Taylor. California’s Proposition 103, enacted decades ago, requires state approval and public hearings for rate hikes above 7 percent. 

California state legislators have also proposed new laws that would require regulators to post wildfire mitigation advice and insurers to consider mitigation in non-renewal decisions, and create a legal pathway for insurers to sue fossil fuel companies for losses from extreme weather disasters.

New catastrophe risk models under development could help insurers more accurately calculate premiums. But experts say more needs to change.

“We’re not going to be able to rate hike our way out of the crisis,” said Dave Jones, director of the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California Berkeley Law School.

A test for new regulations 

The Los Angeles wildfires that broke out in January will in some ways test the new regulations’ effects. 

The Palisades and Easton fires incinerated 16,000 structures, killed 30 people and caused an estimated $30 billion in insured losses. State Farm, the state’s largest insurer, applied for an emergency rate hike and was granted a 17 percent increase. Hit with 12,870 claims from the LA fires and payouts over $4.03 billion, State Farm plans to seek another 11 percent increase this year. Travelers and other insurers also indicated they’ll be seeking rate hikes this year. 

Meanwhile, the state’s insurer of last resort needed a bailout of $1 billion after the fires, which insurers and their customers are on the hook to pay.

How to reward mitigation 

Broken markets breed innovation, and several new start-ups now offer property insurance plans or business models that differ from those of traditional insurers. The need has also led to legislative proposals to modernize insurance.

Delos Solutions, founded by two aerospace engineers in 2020, developed an AI-based algorithm to analyze myriad data on wind patterns, topography, rainfall, weather and home attributes to determine the wildfire risk profile of a property. It offers home insurance in areas of California that many insurers have abandoned, identifying individual properties in those areas that can be insured. 

A “wildfire resilience insurance policy” — developed by the Nature Conservancy, the Willis division of the WTW capital and risk management firm and the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at the University of California — offers another model. Described as “the first-of-its-kind insurance policy that takes into account efforts to mitigate fire risk,” the pilot program provides $2.5 million in coverage from Globe Underwriting for the Tahoe Donner Association, a homeowners’ group of thousands of residences around Truckee, Calif. The region’s robust forest management allowed “a 39% lower premium and 89% lower deductible than would have been the case without nature-based forest management.”

On the commercial side, startup Premiums for the Planet is a licensed broker of commercial property casualty insurance that is building a purchasing partnership involving 25 companies and organizations (so far). The parties want to steer insurance purchases away from companies that are also insuring coal, oil and gas expansion projects.

U.S. insurers took in $21 billion in premiums from insuring fossil fuel companies in 2022, according to non-profit group Insure Our Future.  In California, insurers that have restricted property coverage because of extreme weather — including AIG, AllState, Berkshire Hathaway, Chubb, Farmers, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Tokio Marine andTravelers — earned $3.6 billion from insuring fossil fuel projects that year, said the non-profit.

When customers purchase insurance from major U.S. carriers, “they are spending money on something that is supposed to mitigate risk that is actually adding to risk,” said Nick Gardner, head of partnerships for Premiums for the Planet. “New fossil fuel projects literally cannot get off the ground without insurance.” 

‘We’ve got to be honest’ 

The ultimate answer lies in accelerating the economy’s transition away from burning fossil fuels. To help, “states can and should pass laws requiring insurers to transition out of writing insurance for and investing in the fossil fuel industry,” said Jones,. 

But that transition is decades away. In the short term,  there is a fourth remedy: restrict building homes in high-risk areas such as in or adjacent to forests and along coastal cliffs. To date, no serious proposals to restrict developments have been formalized because California faces a severe housing shortage.

“We’ve got to be honest about stopping building in high-risk areas,” California Forward’s Gordon said at a San Francisco Climate Week forum on wildfires and home insurance.

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