‘Nature positive’ is not a slogan – it’s an inspiring ambition and a measurable goal

Embracing change is necessary as the climate and nature crises move toward irreversible tipping points, and the costs for individuals and the economy rise exponentially. In fact, change is inevitable — whether we choose it or wait until it is forced upon us by nature herself. 

But transitions are filled with uncertainty, and natural evolution has forged in us a short-term, risk-averse attitude. In addition, vested interests and privilege holders who benefit from business as usual are resisting change. We are seeing all this play out today. In our conflicted, polarized and confused world, the old is failing and the new is not yet emerging at the scale and pace necessary.

In this environment it’s critical to frame a clear, concrete and inspiring vision that fundamentally drives change. Generic narratives and vague aspirations won’t drive action and may contribute to deeper cynicism and the feeling that change is not possible. The world has adopted relevant and measurable goals for climate, such as maintaining the average global temperature rise well below 2°C and “halting and reversing biodiversity loss” — or becoming “nature positive,” for short.

Against this backdrop of urgency, the article “14 Sustainability clichés to retire in 2025,” published by Trellis on July 30, suggests that we abandon some key terms that represent goals vital to achieving a sustainable future. I argue that this is not what we need. What we need, instead, is to ensure that companies, organizations and governments use them correctly.

The terms in question include “net-zero emissions,” “nature positive” (initially defined in a 2021 paper then adopted the next year in the language of the Mission of the Global Biodiversity Framework of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity), and “circularity” in the context of circular economies, commonly defined as a strategy to “reduce, reuse and recycle” in order to live within the world’s natural resource limits. 

Confusion and cynicism

Dismissing these well-defined and broadly adopted terms means also dismissing the ambition they signify, and the goals, targets and pathways that drive action — that are, in fact, crucial to mobilizing and merging efforts. Listing them alongside generic adjectives like “green” and “ecofriendly” while calling for them to be “retired” or “ditched” is dangerous. It runs the risk of feeding confusion and cynicism — and worse, undermining action — at a time when representatives of the status quo are already actively seeking to derail the momentum on sustainability.  

The specter of a post-truth world is upon us — one in which emotion and personal belief shape public opinion more than objective facts do. But facts matter. The planet is finite, and we need to come to terms with living within its boundaries. So when we witness attempts to undermine ambition or blatantly misuse important terms, our collective response must be to defend both the terms and their ambition, and call out those who intentionally misuse them.

If we believe that decarbonizing our economy, halting and reversing biodiversity loss and reducing overconsumption and waste are key pillars of a sustainable, safer, more prosperous and equitable future, do we really think that erasing language (and the targets they represent) like net-zero emissions, circular economy and net-positive biodiversity will help advance the climate, nature and waste agendas?

We must resist this temptation, because the only alternative is to begin afresh with new terms and new definitions that will themselves have to follow a long and arduous path to political and societal acceptance — a process that humanity simply does not have time for, given the current runaway climate change and collapse of crucial ecosystems and the benefits that nature provides. The real issue is not with the terms themselves, but rather with the way they are used. Unsubstantiated words and claims should be opposed without hesitation. The clearer the definitions, the easier it is to call out their misuse.

Measurable ambition to drive action

That’s why we were so careful in defining the term “nature positive” from the start, and in expanding upon it in the recently published Becoming Nature Positive. It’s also why we are now finalizing metrics and guidance to credibly and practically measure nature-positive outcomes, with the help of a group of global companies from the most relevant sectors and with oversight from a group of leading technical organizations that will ensure credibility. 

At the Nature Positive Initiative we are strong advocates of measuring concrete action and outcomes. Still, I believe that the use of inspirational language like nature positive — not as a slogan, but as a clear vision and a measurable goal — is essential to draw people in. More important, in defining the aspiration to less expert audiences, such language galvanizes action at the scale required to achieving our collective sustainability goals. 

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IBM’s sustainability chief: 3 strategic ways I’m using AI today

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

The role of a modern-day CSO can seem like it has an ever-expanding remit. In addition to traditional work around reporting and compliance, many of us now focus on strategy, innovation and business transformation. Like the chief digital officers of the early aughts, the best CSOs are catalysts. They spearhead efforts to capture cutting-edge data on risk and operations, and embed it into business processes.

So it’s not surprising that the latest to-do on many CSOs list is how we should be thinking about AI.

Of course, one intersection between AI and sustainability stands out: energy costs and emissions. But because a CSO’s success relies so heavily on cross-functional data collection and advocacy, AI can also be a key tool in identifying opportunities, automating efficiencies, making cases for action and helping organizations become resilient against risks so they can deliver value for quarters, years and decades to come.

To help the sustainability community understand this tension, here’s how I’m thinking about it.

Making work more efficient

First, the obvious point: AI can be enormously helpful with core sustainability work, by, for example, reading utility bills globally and categorizing spend data within various reporting frameworks — and automatically handling the currency and unit conversions along the way. This kind of streamlined reporting can accelerate progress on corporate goals that may involve renewable energy, waste and water commitments.

The opportunities to plug AI into businesses for more sustainable operations are nearly limitless. At IBM, for example, new AI-powered maintenance module is helping us monitor, maintain and optimize operations with fewer people hours. It helps us boost energy efficiency, minimize unneeded repairs and replacements and reduce waste. The module is estimated to save us 10,000 people hours per year.

AI has also reduced costs and energy use in our cloud workloads and an AI-driven natural language processing model is helping our emissions reporting platform analyze documents and categorize spend by type of emission. It’s also helping with planning and forecasting. That platform has helped reduce reporting costs by 30 percent.

We’re also using AI to help solve a pain point that comes up so often among CSOs behind closed doors: the dramatically increasing number of client inquiries. Banks, manufacturers and government agencies all have procurement criteria or reporting needs that increasingly cause them to ask: How many and what scope of emissions are attributable to our engagement? What circularity options do we have? How do your goals align with a specific framework? Rather than have a relatively small team handle these queries manually, we now have an AI assistant that pulls information from various sources and offers quick, custom answers on such questions.

Adopting AI intentionally

This moment is custom-built for CSOs to influence their internal peers. Any company’s adoption of AI will come with significant energy needs, which are closely aligned with both costs and emissions. CSOs have the wind at their backs as they tap their cross-functional connections with CIOs, COOs and CFOs to make sure their company is pulling every lever possible to minimize AI’s energy consumption.

Those levers involve everything from how power is sourced, to what chips and infrastructure are used, to the size and architecture of selected AI models, and how these models are tuned and deployed. Without CSO involvement, decision makers may focus only on maximum performance, speed or minimizing fixed costs.

It’s still early days to point to dramatic outcomes in this area, but my office has worked closely with IBM’s research teams — that develop our models—and product teams to explore how we can measure energy use in a robust and comparable way, and then how we can integrate improvements into products and articulate the sustainability and lower costs as a software selling point. The point is for CSOs to be a voice at the table and to bring relevant data into consideration.

A CSO can articulate trade-offs others might not be thinking about with water, energy, ongoing total and variable costs and more. They may raise the idea of sufficient performance or speed and help avoid choices that “lock in” challenging pathways when considering longer-term corporate goals. That influence may help an organization choose a more lightweight implementation of AI without raising downstream challenges on costs or progress toward goals or regulatory requirements. For example, a company could use a smaller AI model that handles 90 percent versus 95 percent of initial customer-support inquiries a millisecond slower, but at significantly lower compute costs, reduced need for storage infrastructure, and correspondingly lower need for energy, cooling and maintenance.

CSOs at companies actually building AI models or infrastructure can take an even more muscular approach, emphasizing the design, development and use of models, chips and more that balance realistic business needs with reasonable costs and environmental impacts. At IBM, the best example of this is an approach that favors smaller, less-energy intensive models designed for specific purposes compared to a more energy-hungry, one-size-fits-all option. Nokia’s Head of Sustainability has also discussed his role in this area, pointing to energy-efficient hardware choices, small models and an end-to-end review of the environmental impact of AI systems.

Driving growth and innovation

As CSOs face increasingly expansive missions, AI can help them drive growth, innovation and revenue.

For example, the AI assistant I mentioned above is much more than just a time-saver for my team. It gives our sales team a competitive edge by providing them bespoke, up-to-date information so they can respond to requests for proposals and supplier questionnaires faster. And, by capturing which sellers are requesting the data and why, the assistant brings hard data and visibility to sustainability’s “book of business” and sheds light on the highest-potential business development opportunities.

AI also frees up teams to work on higher-value initiatives. Our AI-powered “Safer Materials Adviser,” for example, detects PFAS compounds in parts, components or formulations, and is being further developed to help source substitutes. This has applications for our own workflows such as chip design, but also for other companies involved in clean energy and packaging. We’re working with Nestlé to use AI to speed up development of environmentally friendly packaging.

For CSOs, taking steps to mitigate the energy challenges posed by AI are table stakes. This moment calls for much more than that and CSOs can rise to the opportunity to shape their organizations’ AI adoption so that it drives sustainable, long-term outcomes.

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As plastics treaty talks enter the final round, here’s what to expect

The plastics treaty talks that convened on August 5 in Geneva look like the last chance to deliver a meaningful global deal to stem the tide of plastic that is infiltrating our bodies, overwhelming our landfills and devastating our oceans. If successful, it would be the world’s first coordinated legal framework for tackling plastic pollution at scale.

If not? Well, read on. 

The background

Launched in 2022 by the U.N. Environment Assembly, the talks seek a legally binding global treaty to end plastic pollution. The goal is to address plastics across their full life cycle — from design and production to use and disposal.

Negotiators have met five times so far, most recently in Busan, South Korea, in December. That session, meant to finalize the treaty, collapsed without agreement on a single article — including the treaty’s objective.

Where are we now?

The current “Chair’s Text” — the draft agreement guiding negotiations — reflects a deeply divided process. Though it includes measures to improve waste management, on the whole it avoids the most controversial issues: limits on plastic production, regulation of toxic chemicals and how to pay for it all.

“There’s a clear majority of countries that have made statements committing to strong measures on chemicals of concern and limiting the production of plastics,” said Sam Winton, a researcher studying the treaty process who is attending the talks. “But there are a small number of countries that consider those topics completely out of the scope of the Treaty.”

This resistance comes primarily from oil-producing nations — reportedly led by Saudi Arabia and including Russia and Iran — and plastic-exporting economies that want to focus only on downstream solutions, such as recycling. Meanwhile, ambitious countries — including coalitions led by Rwanda and Mexico — are pushing for upstream controls and legally binding global targets on the use of harmful chemicals and products.

Following a July meeting in Nairobi, the Trump administration issued a statement opposing production limits: “We support an agreement that focuses on efforts that will lead to reducing plastic pollution, not on stopping the use of plastics.” 

What’s at stake?

Over 460 million metric tons of plastic are produced annually, of which 20 million end up in the environment. Plastics contaminate virtually every ecosystem on Earth, driving biodiversity and ecosystem loss. Globally, the production, use and waste management of plastics is responsible for 4 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.

But this treaty is about more than environmental protection. It could reshape markets, supply chains and regulations for years to come.

For businesses, an agreement would mean:

  • Tighter rules for plastic packaging and product design
  • Restrictions on hazardous chemicals in plastic goods
  • A global push toward reuse, refill and alternative material
  • Increased costs through extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws, such as those in California, Colorado and five other states

What will Geneva focus on?

The Geneva session will center on four unresolved issues:

Scope and ambition

Will the treaty cover only waste or the entire plastic life cycle — including how much plastic is made and how? The current draft leans toward a voluntary, national-level approach. Many countries say that’s not good enough, and that a global, enforceable agreement is needed.

Plastic production

Proposals include setting global targets to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers. Petrochemical-producing nations strongly oppose this, seeing plastics as a growing market for fossil fuels in a world in which demand for energy production will fall in the coming years.

Chemicals and products of concern

More than 16,000 chemicals are used in plastics, many with unknown health effects. Some countries want to begin phasing out the worst offenders. Others — including industry groups — oppose these moves, citing cost and supply chain complexity. Specific chemicals of concern won’t be decided at these talks, but negotiators could agree to begin to develop a list ahead of future meetings.

Finance and implementation

Developing countries such as the Philippines, with weak to nonexistent recycling systems, want support to implement the treaty, including technical assistance and a dedicated funding mechanism. Wealthier countries prefer to work through existing platforms such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Who pays — and how much — remains unresolved.

What are the possible outcomes?

There are four broad scenarios for how the Geneva talks could end:

  • Low ambition: A weak treaty focused on voluntary, national-level waste measures. This would be relatively easy to reach but risks being ineffectual.
  • High ambition: A legally binding global treaty covering chemicals, product bans and production limits, along with a roadmap for implementation. This is what many countries want, but it faces stiff opposition in certain quarters.
  • Middle-ground package deal: The most likely scenario: a compromise that trades stronger commitments in one area (such as chemicals) for softer language in another (such as production). Behind-the-scenes negotiations will be key to achieving this.
  • No agreement: If talks fail entirely again, the process could collapse. That could cause some countries to pursue separate high-ambition treaties outside the U.N. Others may fall back on national or regional regulations — creating a patchwork of compliance risks for global businesses.

Why this matters

The treaty’s outcome will set the direction for plastic regulation, innovation and compliance over the next two decades. A robust agreement would accelerate the shift away from single-use plastics, force businesses to rethink packaging and material choices and create new reporting and transparency requirements across supply chains.

Even companies not directly involved in plastic production would face new obligations as part of EPR schemes, product bans or chemical phase-outs.

“It is very likely that an ambitious, successful treaty will impact various parts of your operations, probably some parts that you haven’t already thought of,” said Winton. 

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Google’s Kate Brandt plays a central role in its AI strategy

Google’s chief sustainability officer, Kate Brandt, isn’t just responsible for the company’s emissions reduction and environmental conservation agenda — a mission complicated by a planned $85 billion investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure in 2025 alone.

Her team is tasked with dreaming up ways to use AI in applications that help other companies, cities and individuals cut emissions at least 1 gigaton annually by 2030.

Brandt recently celebrated her 10th anniversary with Google, which she joined after leaving her position as chief sustainability officer for the federal government. She reports to Ben Gomes, chief technologist for learning and sustainability, a direct reflection of the growing importance of Google’s sustainability team to innovation. Her team doesn’t have explicit revenue goals, but money-making potential is considered in the design review process.

“We have been an AI-first company since 2017, and we’re really in a moment now where we need to figure out how to develop AI in a bold and responsible way,” Brandt told me in the latest episode of the Climate Pioneers interview series. “I really see the work we do on sustainability as being squarely within that mission.”

One example of that boldness: A company policy, since May 2020, to not use AI for oil and gas applications — in contrast to its primary rivals in cloud computing services, Amazon and Microsoft. 

“But really, a lot of the work is more oriented around not the negative screen, but the positive application,” Brandt said. “Having things like our gigaton aspiration enables us to align product areas across the company — from Google research to Google Deep Mind cloud and other teams — around the opportunity space of using this technology as a climate solution.”

Forerunner: Google Earth

Many applications championed by Google’s sustainability team build on decades of work on such widely used services as Google Maps and Google Earth, the latter of which was overhauled at the end of July with a major AI capability called AlphaEarth Foundations. The new “virtual satellite” tracks crop health, deforestation, water resources, new construction and other environmental changes, by accessing dozens of public data sources including optical satellite images, radar and climate simulations.

Other apps the sustainability team has had a hand in developing or revising are one that helps pilots minimize condensation trails; a fuel-efficient router in Google Maps; the Green Light city traffic optimization resource; and a solar planning tool that helps developers pick better sites and contributed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 6 million metric tons in 2024.

“We’re seeing huge opportunities to drive that kind of positive change, and we need to keep going,” Brandt said. “Furthermore, we see AI as a very powerful tool when it comes to climate resilience and adaptation.” Two high-profile examples are FireSat for wildfire detection and the Google Flood Hub for local riverine flooding. 

Dilemma: How to tame AI infrastructure

Brandt is also regularly included in high-level discussions about decreasing the energy and water appetites of Google’s data center infrastructure and investing in lower-carbon energy resources such as geothermal and advanced nuclear technologies.

“I really orient the discussion toward the idea that the work is squarely within the company’s mission, within our objective to be bold and responsible in how we deploy AI,” she said. “I think that really resonates.”

Her advocacy has paid off in new training methods for AI models that speed the process by 39 percent and in big improvements in AI chip efficiency. Google’s latest custom-built AI processor, Ironwood, which launched in April, offers double the performance per watt of technology announced in 2024.

Despite these efforts and Google’s big investments in solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear power — 60 deals in 2024 alone — the company’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 51 percent since its 2019 baseline year. Still Google remains committed to its “moonshoot” pledge to cut its carbon footprint 50 percent by 2030.

“These really big challenges that we’ve taken on that have a societal benefit to them — the point isn’t necessarily a check-the-box or a 100 percent achievement,” Brandt said. “It’s sort of inherently meant to be hard, to drive us to try new things, to find unusual partnerships, to innovate.”

Watch the Kate Brandt interview and check out past Climate Pioneers episodes.

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Amazon’s secret weapon for countering higher emissions: fellow Climate Pledge signatories

Like its closest rivals in artificial intelligence and cloud computing, Amazon’s greenhouse gas emissions rose in its latest ESG reporting update. And like Microsoft and Google, the company is committed to its existing goal, which commits it to becoming net zero by 2040 through the Climate Pledge framework it co-created in 2019.

Amazon’s sustainability chief, Kara Hurst, points to investments in climate technologies such as Rivian’s electric delivery vans, Amazon’s expansive purchases of clean energy and the joint action it is mobilizing with the 549 other signatories (as of December 31, 2024) in the Climate Pledge as reasons to remain “firm” even when progress is less than linear.

“No matter what we’re faced with in the future, we’ll remain steadfast in our commitment to sustainability and continue to invest, innovate and obsess over our progress each year, with the same intensity and focus that has defined Amazon from Day One,” she said in Amazon’s 2024 sustainability report.

Watch this metric: carbon intensity

Amazon’s emissions have grown 34.4 percent since its 2019 baseline year, to 68.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent for 2024. For comparison, in their most recent environmental update from earlier this summer, Google disclosed a cumulative emissions increase of 51 percent, to 15.2 million metric tons since its 2019 baseline, while Microsoft recorded a 24.3 percent increase since 2020, to 14.9 million metric tons.

As its emissions totals illustrate, the magnitude of Amazon’s e-commerce operations — more than 10 billion items delivered within 48 hours in 2024 — add a complexity to the Seattle company’s net-zero pledge that neither Microsoft nor Google faces. Scope 3 emissions from the company’s supply chain are about 74 percent of the total. 

Amazon doesn’t break out the carbon footprint associated with data centers that power Amazon Web Services. It does, however, closely monitor another metric, carbon intensity, which measures grams of CO2 equivalent per dollar of merchandise sales. For 2024, that number was 72.6 grams, off 40.9 percent — from 122.8 grams — in 2019. During that timeframe, Amazon’s total revenue more than doubled to $638 billion.

Targeted Climate Pledge recruitment  

Amazon studies carbon intensity so it can gauge the effectiveness of investments and efficiency measures across its supply chain. As 2040 draws closer, the company’s sustainability team is looking to collaborations between Amazon and other signatories to the Climate Pledge, especially big suppliers, to scale that work.

“We are heavily encouraging our suppliers, especially our top-emitting suppliers to join us in the Climate Pledge,” said Sally Fouts, Amazon’s director of the Climate Pledge. “And if they can’t commit to the pledge, we still work with these companies in other ways.”

In 2024, 76 companies joined the pledge — an average year for new signatories, said Fouts. Two of them were Amazon’s high-emitting suppliers, Crane Worldwide Logistics and Shorr Packaging. There was also a specific push to recruit businesses from Asia Pacific and the high-emitting fashion industry; among those to take the leap: jeans maker DL1961 and fashion designer Stella McCartney. 

“Our decision to join the Climate Pledge reflects our deep commitment to bold, science-based targets,” said DL1961 CEO Sarah Ahmed. The company already closely tracks the carbon footprint of its jeans, and it uses waterless processes and recycled fabrics or those harvested from organic and regenerative sources to drive down emissions. Its goal is to cut its footprint in half by 2030.

Growing priority: collective action

Amazon is recruiting in specific supplier categories with the aim of creating working groups that can share best practices or collaborate on specific projects. Six projects were launched in 2024, involving 16 signatories, making a total of 19 initiatives now up and running, Fouts said, including a few focused on one of Amazon’s biggest emissions categories, transportation and logistics.

One example is Laneshift, created to accelerate the installation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in cities throughout Brazil, India and Mexico. Several Climate Pledge companies are supporting a 370-kilometer EV freight corridor in India between Bengaluru and Chennai. Another is Joule, which is building a charging network across Bengaluru and matching the electricity consumption with renewables.

“If we can get those companies that have a vested interest and may play a different role in that ecosystem of getting that network off the ground, then we can hopefully move faster,” said Fouts.  

Amazon has deployed more than 10,000 EVs in India, on the way to realizing a larger aspiration of putting at least 100,000 electric delivery vans on the road worldwide by 2030. It had deployed 31,400 as of Dec. 31, and delivered more than 1.5 billion packages in 2024 using electric vehicles.

Brooks Running, among the first 40 companies to become a Climate Pledge signatory in 2020, benefits from these collaborations, said Dave Kemp, director of corporate responsibility for the footwear maker. 

Brooks’ involvement with the Climate Pledge has enabled it to participate in contracts that reduced emissions related to aviation and maritime shipping and that enabled renewable energy investments in its supply chain. “It helped unlock partnerships and collaboration we wouldn’t have thought about or had access to,” Kemp said.

Branding blitz

Amazon is also counting on its Climate Pledge Friendly labeling program — which sellers can use to market products covered by more than 60 eco-certifications — to make a dent in its Scope 3 emissions. Amazon carried more than 2.2 million Climate Pledge Friendly products in 2024, compared with 250,000 in 2021, when the program began.

In 2024, Amazon customers purchased more than 1.7 billion products carrying the label, an increase of 48 percent from 2023. That includes 75,200 businesses that use Amazon for procurement, up from 18,000 in 2022. 

Another data point Amazon touts in its 2024 report: 38.8 million customers switched to Climate Pledge Friendly brands in 2024 after buying other options in the same category in the previous two years.

Looking forward, Amazon is encouraging more sellers to qualify products under the labeling program. It’s also stepping up its support of those selling preowned or refurbished products, said Cameron Westfall, head of product and engineering for the Climate Pledge Friendly program. 

“One of the things that we’re super excited about is that getting Climate Pledge Friendly is more impactful for those brands that are less discoverable on their own,” Westfall said. “So small businesses end up being some of the biggest beneficiaries of investing in sustainability.”

The Climate Pledge Friendly concept can also be applied to delivery and packaging options that surface during the checkout process. “We are starting to embed that more, and you’ll start seeing it more on the site,” Westfall said.

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Is corporate sustainability dying? 100 executives respond

My recent column, “No, corporate sustainability is not dying,” prompted a wave of thoughtful responses on LinkedIn from sustainability professionals across sectors and borders. And, while most agreed on the general diagnosis about the profession, there was debate over the causes and prognosis.

Of course, this was hardly a representative sampling. Trellis readers — and my LinkedIn followers — trend heavily toward sustainability professionals in the trenches. They live the confusing and confounding moment I wrote about, every day.

Following is a synthesis of the 100 or so LinkedIn comments, including some of the more striking and pithy insights.

Not dead — but definitely ailing

“100% agree, Joel,” wrote Jim Hartzfeld, longtime sustainability strategist and protégé of the legendary founder of Interface, Ray Anderson, about my hypothesis. “Not dead but evolving out of ‘the end of the beginning’ phase of this inevitable transformation.”

Others echoed this sense of a maturing field. Catherine McKalip-Thompson, sustainability manager at Bechtel, who formerly ran the a White House environmental task force under Bill Clinton, offered a memorable metaphor: “Figuratively, sustainability is in its late twenties. The total optimism and drive are maturing into a more pragmatic stage.”

RepRisk’s Jonny Hardaker added: “I often think of the contrast between tech, where the mantra ‘fail fast, fail often’ is celebrated in the pursuit of disruption, and sustainability, which seems to be ‘fail once and face the executioner!’ There’s always going to be a learning curve when trying something new and complex that’s never been done before.”

But the maturity of the field also brings a more sobering reflection on the slow pace of progress. Auden Schendler, former senior vice president for sustainability at Aspen One and author of “Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul,” was characteristically blunt: “The problem: most consultants in this field, most journalists and almost every practitioner is making their paycheck doing the same thing we were all doing 20-plus years ago,” he wrote. “Voluntary operational greening, targets, reports, efficiency — was never going to achieve sustainability in any form. So, time for something new.”

Hype, hope and headwinds

“Unfortunately, ‘not dead’ does not mean ‘fully vibrant,’” warned BSR CEO Aron Cramer. “Many companies are reining in ambition, communicating less and some are withdrawing resources.” He noted that the corporate greenhushing trend has contributed to policy backsliding: “That silence contributes to policy retreats that increase costs, delays and uncertainties.”

Cramer sounded simultaneously optimistic and ominous: “The companies that stay the course will be rewarded. And those that don’t will regret it.”

Several commenters noted that the profession’s early enthusiasm has largely given way to box-checking. “Progress has been diverted to reporting and calculations without adequate budget, courage or support for genuine innovation and solutions,” noted Catherine Greener, a decades-long veteran in the field.

Microsoft’s Matthew Sekol agreed. “There are definitely companies that are pivoting to integration, but there are those that are lost in the metrics and those using the push[back] as a convenient excuse to halt efforts.”

Mark Coleman, of engineering consultancy TRC Companies, provided a somewhat more encouraging view: “A ‘pendulum of extremism’ has taken over politics and the airwaves, leaving many business and society leaders uncertain on how best to weigh their options. There is a zone of pragmatism where progress is measured and can effectively be made.”

And Sara McKinstry, senior sustainability advisor at the corporate reporting service Labrador, offered a historical reminder of the profession’s ups and downs: “It wasn’t dead during the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II years and it’s not dead now … Certain political voices, louder than ever, may try to push everyone’s heads into the sand, but the global challenges we face are only getting worse. As the great Kelly Clarkson sings, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ So too for corporate sustainability. We are tired but we never give up.”

Performative sustainability is dead — and that’s OK

There was a shared recognition that the era of performative sustainability — the kind built around slogans, slide decks and press releases — may be over.

That includes the language we use, as my colleague Elsa Wenzel recently noted. “The word ‘sustainability’ has become stretched so thin and contorted it no longer holds the weight of this moment,” said Justin Adams, formerly of BP and The Nature Conservancy. “Perhaps it’s time to let it go — or at least reframe it.”

Sustainability communications expert Catherine Cruveillier agreed: “What has started to die is the jargon and the abstraction. And that’s a good thing. More jargon needs to die so we can get where we want to be.”

Strategic integration is the new frontier

While the headlines may focus on setbacks, many professionals pointed to promising developments, notably the quiet embedding of sustainability into business strategy, operations and governance.

“Quiet, steady — and often — ambitious work is being done every day,” wrote Alexis Fuge, director of sustainability strategy at Sandisk. “While folks aren’t shouting their goals from the rooftops, we are expending energy to embed targets, metrics and working norms into the everyday operations of businesses worldwide.”

Madrid-based Iñigo Jodra, another sustainability veteran, noted a shift from lofty goals to real strategies: “Companies now face a logical calibration of their sustainability targets: from the initial, top-down and aspirational ones to those supported by tangible, profitable, sustainability-driven strategies and operating models that leverage factors such as circularity and climate risk management.”

As always, money talks. “If we see climate and equity performance moved from corporate impact reports into executive comp … we can say sustainability efforts are evolving,” said Dune Ives, an independent board director and former CEO.

Rob Shelton, who penned some of the earliest articles on what was then called “green business,” offered perspective via U.S. Admiral Hyman Rickover: “Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience … so a continuous effort is required.”

Or, as consultancy CEO Simon Mainwaring put it: “There is not a slight chance it is dead with this amazing cohort of practitioners in this chain. We’re not that easy to kill.”

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This Google-backed startup makes bbatteries that last up to 24 hours

Google is investing an undisclosed sum in Energy Dome, a startup developer of long-duration battery technology that pairs with solar, wind and other intermittent renewable sources to provide clean power around the clock.

Energy Dome’s CO2 Battery uses liquid carbon dioxide to store electricity as it is generated. When the power source shuts off, the gas expands, running turbines to release energy to the grid. The initial edition of the technology can dispatch 20 megawatts for up to 10 hours. A future version would provide five times that capacity, according to the company’s founder and CEO, Claudio Spadacini. 

Google plans to support “multiple” commercial deployments of Energy Dome’s technology — already being used commercially in Sardinia, Italy — the company said in a July 25 blog post. Generally, these installations would be sited near solar and wind facilities. “Solar is very suitable and quite predictable,” said Spadacini.

Google didn’t disclose the locations that would be touched by the new partnership, and it declined further comment about terms of the relationship. 

Strong commercial potential

“Long-duration energy storage has the potential to commercialize much faster than some of the other advanced clean energy technologies in our portfolio,” said Google energy strategists Ainhoa Anda and Michelle Chang in the blog. “This means we can use it in the near term to help the electricity system grow more flexibly and reliably, alongside other tools we’re developing, such as data center demand response.”

Energy storage deployments are expected to grow 35 percent for 2025, with a projected 94 gigawatts of additional capacity, according to researcher BloombergNEF. Currently, the most dominant technology for stationary applications related to renewable energy are lithium-ion chemistries.

The price of that technology is appropriate for applications requiring less than four hours of backup electricity during peak demand hours but is tougher to justify for long-duration applications, said Sam Jaffe, principal analyst at consulting firm 1019 Technologies. The artificial intelligence buildout offers one compelling use case.  

“The data center boom is coming, and that is an ideal application for longer duration storage paired with solar,” said Jaffe. “You could do a completely renewable data center that way.”

Innovation: Using CO2 to reduce CO2

Energy Dome’s technology involves a tent-like structure resembling an enclosed sports center that needs a lot of space: 10 acres for the small version of the battery. Still, that’s less than 10 percent of the space in a typical solar-plus-storage installation, Spadacini said. 

Competitive approaches include flow batteries, which use electrolytes to offer increased capacity, hydrogen fuel cells and pumped hydropower. The U.S., for example, has at least 100 gigawatts of pumped hydro, much of it located next to nuclear sites. 

One advantage of Energy Dome’s technology is the well-established supply chain of equipment for liquid CO2. “We are not dependent on made-in-China products,” said Spadacini. That makes the technology eligible for some of the incentives offered under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

One challenge will be making sure that Energy Dome’s systems are kept leak-free. “CO2 is a very small molecule and will want to escape,” Jaffe said.

The backstory

Energy Dome was founded in 2019 with seed funding. The Italian startup announced an $11 million Series A raise from 360 Capital and Barclay’s in November 2021, and has raised more than $135 million in all.

The company employs about 90 people, with a small U.S. office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founder Spadacini, a mechanical engineer and serial entrepreneur, has also been involved with startups focused on biogas and geothermal applications.

Google is Energy Dome’s first publicly announced corporate contract. Engie is the startup’s partner in Italy. The company’s first U.S. contract is with utility Alliant Energy, which plans to use Energy Dome’s technology for a storage project that can keep 18,000 Wisconsin homes online for up to 10 hours.

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How the AI energy reckoning will reshape corporate climate commitments

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

The artificial intelligence revolution is driving energy demands that could reach 400 terawatt-hours by 2030, up from fewer than 100 terawatt-hours in 2020. What makes this moment particularly consequential isn’t just the scale of these energy demands, but how they’re reshaping the landscape of corporate climate commitments for companies outside the tech elite.

The new energy pecking order

The “Magnificent Seven” — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla and Nvidia — account for roughly one-third of the S&P 500’s total market capitalization. These companies possess something that most other corporations don’t: the financial resources and strategic leverage to secure dedicated clean energy sources for their operations, no matter the cost. 

Microsoft, for example, has signed a 20-year agreement to restart Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island Unit 1 reactor. Amazon announced $334 million in investments for small modular nuclear reactors. This isn’t corporate virtue signaling; this is securing competitive advantage through energy infrastructure control.

When the world’s most valuable companies purchase their way to carbon-free electricity through long-term nuclear contracts, they create a two-tiered system where a company’s sustainability efforts become increasingly correlated with market capitalization.

The grid under siege

Energy demand for data centers could increase by as much as 165 percent by 2030, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis. Most electricity consumed by data centers currently relies on fossil fuels. While the MAG-7 secures clean energy through private agreements, the broader electrical grid is being strained to accommodate the growing demands of everyone else.

This creates a cascading effect that undermines the sustainability efforts of virtually every other industry. In Northern Virginia, for example, the region’s concentration of data centers has forced utilities to keep fossil fuel plants online to meet demand. When utilities must fire up additional gas plants to meet AI-driven electricity demand, the carbon intensity of the entire grid increases, making it more difficult for all grid-connected companies to achieve their emissions reduction targets.

Consider the math: Companies are still committing to Net Zero but only reducing emissions by 30 percent on average by 2030, falling short of the 43 percent reduction required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. These already insufficient results become even more challenging when the electrical grid itself becomes more carbon-intensive due to AI’s energy demands.

When utilities must fire up additional gas plants to meet AI-driven electricity demand, the carbon intensity of the entire grid increases,

Proponents of AI expansion will tell you the technology’s potential to drive efficiency gains could offset energy consumption. But that argument represents optimistic forecasting and ignores the immediate realities of deployment: training AI models consume thousands of hours of electricity and generate hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide. It’s like the Jevons Paradox but applied to AI: improvements in efficiency lead to increased consumption — not conservation.

Other companies find themselves in a difficult position. They face rising electricity costs as utilities struggle to meet AI-driven demand, limited access to clean energy sources that are increasingly locked up in long-term contracts with tech giants, and stakeholder pressure to maintain ambitious climate commitments. The result is a growing gap between stated intentions and achievable outcomes.

This is particularly acute for manufacturing companies, which typically operate on thinner margins than tech firms and cannot easily absorb increases in energy costs. When the price of electricity rises due to grid strain, and when clean energy sources become less available due to tech sector capture, these companies face a choice between seeking to achieve their climate commitments and maintaining their competitiveness.

Facing reality

The uncomfortable truth is that we’re witnessing the emergence of a bifurcated approach to corporate sustainability. Companies with sufficient capital and strategic importance can secure clean energy sources and maintain credible climate commitments. Everyone else must compete for increasingly scarce and expensive clean electricity while operating in a grid environment that is becoming more carbon-intensive due to AI-driven demand.

Recent innovations such as in-memory computing, optical data transmission and more efficient AI models such as China’s DeepSeek, which reportedly consumes 10 to 40 times less energy than comparable models, demonstrate that AI’s energy consumption is not immutable. Yet the dominant approach remains focused on scaling up energy supply rather than optimizing demand.

For non-tech-giant companies, the path forward requires several strategic adjustments:

  • Sustainability commitments must be recalibrated to reflect grid realities. Companies will have trouble achieving agreed to science-based targets on a grid that’s becoming more carbon-intensive due to factors beyond their control. This doesn’t mean abandoning climate goals but rather setting targets that account for systemic constraints.
  • Companies must invest more heavily in direct energy efficiency measures and on-site renewable generation. When clean grid electricity becomes less available, the next best option is to reduce dependency on the grid altogether.
  • Corporate climate advocacy must shift toward systemic solutions rather than individual commitments. The Science Based Targets initiative aims to commit 20 percent of the global economy to fully validated science-based targets by 2025, but these targets become meaningless if the underlying energy infrastructure cannot support them.

Broader implications

What we’re observing in the AI energy boom is a microcosm of broader challenges in addressing climate change through market mechanisms. When critical resources — in this case, clean electricity — become scarce, they flow to the highest bidders rather than the most socially beneficial uses. Hyperscalers like Google and Amazon aren’t villains in this story; they’re rational actors responding to market incentives. But their rational behavior creates externalities that undermine the climate commitments of virtually every other company.

As AI’s inevitable development continues, energy implications must be addressed at a systemic level rather than left to individual corporate procurement strategies. This requires policy interventions to ensure that clean energy deployment keeps pace with AI-driven demand and that access to clean electricity isn’t determined solely by purchasing power.

The companies driving AI development have the resources to reconcile these tensions for themselves through private energy agreements. For everyone else, the path forward requires acknowledging that sustainability in the age of AI will be more challenging, more expensive and more dependent on systemic solutions than we’ve been willing to admit.

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How Carter’s, H&M and Gap are making kidswear more sustainable

Kids wear out onesies, footed PJs and T-shirts at an exhausting rate. (For parents, anyway.) And like most of fashion, children’s clothing hasn’t typically featured the circular economy staples of durability, reuse and recycling. 

But with the industry facing a sustainability reckoning — and big brands having been slow to capitalize on expectations that used children’s apparel sales will grow 11 times faster than fashion overall — Carter’s, H&M Group and Gap Inc. are taking varied approaches to address the waste, chemicals and carbon footprints of their kidswear.

They’re doing so in a fast-expanding ecosystem fueled by increasingly concerned parents:

That said, few consumers will pay a huge premium for clothing that makes healthful claims.

To support their net zero goals, validated by the Science-Based Targets initiative, the following best-selling names in kidswear focus less on product end-of-use. Instead, they’ve made headway on their materials footprints through things such as organic-cotton certifications and investment in textile recycling startups. Here’s a snapshot of how three best-selling children’s brands approach these efforts:

Carter’s

The 160-year-old Atlanta company holds a roughly one-fifth market share for children’s clothing, including its namesake brand and Osh Kosh B’Gosh. With 1,200 U.S. stores and wholesale partnerships with Amazon and Walmart, its sales reached $2.8 billion last year.

Carter’s sustainability strategy centers around safety, durability and sourcing, according to Anu Piduru, senior director of sustainability. 

By this fall, 99 percent of its clothing will have Oeko-Tex 100 certification. That label reflects testing of every part of a garment — including zippers, buttons, prints and labels— for the absence of 1,000 chemicals of concern, such as PFAS, bisphenol-A and heavy metals. This exceeds most regulatory requirements.

Carter’s maintains a restricted substances list for finished products and is rolling out the same for manufacturing, in alignment with respected standards.

The company’s small organic-cotton Little Planet line has taken off over the past four years, according to Piduru, “The biggest draw is the sustainable aspect, the certified organic cotton and the recycled materials that go into those products,” she told Trellis. Little Planet meets the Global Organic Textile Standard, which ensures organic fibers with “clean” chemistry.

The company wants to use cotton — which makes up 70 percent of its fiber mix — that is 100 percent sustainably sourced by 2030, enabled in part by the Better Cotton standard.

In May, Carter’s rebooted its KidsCycle takeback initiative; what was once as a mailback program has now expanded into (some) stores. In the most recent full year of the program, Terracycle helped Carter’s downcycle 22,467 pounds worth of products into bedding and sports equipment.

According to Piduru, Carter’s is still trying to understand its customers’ perception of brand sustainability and circular business models. That’s especially important, she said, because kidswear production cycles aren’t at a fast-fashion pace. “We don’t just kind of turn and burn through these designs,” Piduru said.

Carter’s hasn’t jumped into branded resale, partly because so many informal and third-party networks exist for people to keep kids’ clothes in circulation. For example, tens of thousands of Carter’s items sell each year on eBay, ThredUp and elsewhere. 

“As a mom myself, I know that children’s clothes in general are getting probably more used or used by more people than adult clothing is,” Piduru said. “You buy one shirt as an adult, and you might wear it once and donate it once, but I’ve got kids’ clothes that have been handed down to us by nieces and nephews and siblings.”

Eventually, though, “Circularity in childrenswear makes sense given its shorter lifecycles,” said Tasha Lewis, a North Carolina State University professor of human sciences who researches sustainability in fashion.

Gap Inc.

The San Francisco company, which had $15.1 billion in revenue last year, sells one-fifth of all baby clothes in the U.S., according to IBIS World. Relevant brands for the under-18 set include Gap Baby, Gap Kids, Old Navy and Athleta.

Gap Inc. got rid of PFAS in 2023, ahead of state regulations. It keeps restricted substances lists both for finished products and manufacturing.

Leaning heavily on natural fibers, Gap reached 98 percent cotton from “sustainable sources” in 2024, toward a 100 percent goal this year. That includes Better Cotton-certified material. Forty percent of its polyester is recycled, toward a 45 percent goal for 2025. As with H&M, however, it’s unclear, exactly where such preferable materials appear within children’s clothing.

Notably, Gap Inc. recently invested in Ambercycle, producer of textile-to-textile recycled polyester. It also committed to secure 10,000 tons per year of recycled polyester from textile-to-textile recycling startup Syre. And the company’s participation in the ThredUp resale marketplace kept 848,800 pieces of apparel out of landfills in 2024. That was mostly from its Athleta brand, the company said.

“As the resale revolution continues to gain momentum, participating in re-commerce is not only good for our planet, but good for business,” said Mark Breitbard, Gap Inc.’s president of specialty brands, in 2020.

H&M Group

Stockholm-based H&M Group, with 4,338 stores in 2024, accounts for 5-9 percent of the kids’ apparel market, according to Future Market Insights.

It’s not easy to determine exactly how much of the privately held group’s $24 billion in annual sales last year came from its juvenile offerings, but in its H&M retail stores, non-adult clothes appear to take up at least 10 percent of floor space. 

Although a fast fashion mainstay, the company seeks to become fully circular. “That means reducing waste and emissions across the value chain, and creating new business models that keep garments in use longer,” said CEO Helena Helmersson said in 2023.

As for resale, the H&M Pre-Loved line has since 2023 offered used clothing for all ages in partnership with ThredUp. H&M is also a majority owner of the European secondhand site Sellpy.

Meanwhile, H&M is also investing in recycled materials. For example, last year it co-launched startup Syre. It also recently revived its support of cotton-recycling startup Circulose and and has invested in lab-grown cotton startup Galy.

In 2024, 89 percent of the materials across H&M’s brands were recycled or “sustainably sourced,” toward a goal of 100 percent by 2030. All of its cotton is recycled, organic or otherwise sustainably sourced through programs such as Better Cotton. Ninety-four percent of its polyester is recycled, toward a 100-percent goal for 2025.

H&M was ahead of the curve 30 years ago in publishing its restricted materials list. The brand went PFAS-free more than a decade ago. It has demonstrated leadership in chemical management within its supply chain, backed up with well-respected third-party standards. However, like Gap, H&M has not focused on consumer-visible certifications such as OEKO-TEX.

One exception: its small collections of infant apparel with C2C Gold Certification from 2023. These organics could be composted at home, according to the standard overseen by the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute.

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See you in court: Judicial action is key driver of sustainability outcomes

Sometimes it takes a lawsuit to get things done.

Many sustainability experts say judicial action is one of the most powerful tools civil society can use to drive sustainability outcomes in the near term, according to a global survey by Trellis data partner by GlobeScan in collaboration with ERM and Volans. This view has gained significant traction in light of the International Court of Justice’s historic advisory opinion on climate change issued in July, which declares that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a fundamental human right.

The ICJ’s landmark ruling affirms that countries have legal obligations to prevent environmental harm under international law. Crucially, the ruling finds that states failing to meet their climate commitments are in breach of international law and that they must cooperate to achieve concrete emissions reduction targets. This reframes climate action as a legal imperative rather than a policy preference, and elevates the strategic importance of litigation, legal systems and accountability mechanisms in the global sustainability agenda.

Alongside legal avenues, experts also point to education and leadership development, policy advocacy and media scrutiny as top civil society strategies to accelerate progress. In contrast, less structured or symbolic approaches, such as NGO campaigns, public protests or boycotts are seen as less impactful in achieving systemic change.

What this means

The ICJ’s advisory opinion may be a turning point for climate justice. Although technically not legally binding, it sends a powerful message that could reshape international climate negotiations and jurisprudence. For the more than 3,000 pending climate lawsuits globally, the ICJ’s affirmation of legal obligations offers fresh momentum and potential legal precedent for holding governments and corporations accountable.  

For businesses and policymakers, this means climate litigation risk is rising. The advisory opinion may also influence the tone of negotiations at COP30, fueling increased pressure for enforceable targets and climate finance for vulnerable countries.

Looking ahead, legal action may no longer be a last resort and could instead become a primary lever in the sustainability toolbox. Companies would be wise to monitor evolving legal norms, proactively align with international commitments and embed climate risk into their governance and strategy before courts and public pressure force their hand.

Based on a survey of 844 sustainability practitioners across 72 countries conducted April-May 2025.

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