Nobody feels the effects of rising global temperatures than workers exposed to severe heat. 

For construction workers, farm laborers, delivery people and millions of others who get paid to work outdoors, extreme heat has become a normal part of the day that presents increasing risks of heat-related illness or even death. Indoor workers, too, can face similar dangers in buildings that haven’t been designed or upgraded for long periods of extreme heat.

Research from the Workers Compensation Research Institute found a seven-fold increase in heat-related illness on days with temperatures between 90 and 95 degrees compared to days between 75 and 80 degrees. On days over 100 degrees, they’re 18 times more likely. Notably, these injuries are most common with younger and less-experienced workers, suggesting that workers with less experience in navigating extreme heat would benefit from clearer guidance on how to manage it.

A federal policy void

The federal government took steps last year to start addressing these challenges when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a draft heat rule for workers that would require training, on-site shade and water, regular breaks and other measures depending on the temperature. Originally proposed under the prior administration, the regulatory process is still ongoing — despite the Trump administration’s general disinterest in climate policy. 

While it’s uncertain whether or how the current administration will move forward with the policy, its main purpose remains critical: to reduce the risk of heat-related injury and illness for workers. At the same time, it gives businesses a valuable test case for climate adaptation and an opportunity to support smart risk management that contains heat-related costs while also protecting workforces and productivity.

In the absence of a federal standard, several states have implemented workplace heat safety rules, such as California, Colorado and Maryland, and some leading companies have taken measures of their own. Best practices that companies can take include:

• Training on heat hazards, including how to identify the symptoms of heat stroke and other health issues
• Scheduling regular breaks or allowing workers to take them as needed, in designated shaded or cool areas close to water and bathrooms, to prevent and monitor for heat-illness symptoms
• Adjusting dress codes to allow for cooler attire
• Employer-provided cool water and electrolyte drinks
• Employer-provided shaded areas at worksites
• Scheduling work for the coolest times of the day

A costly risk for companies

Beyond looking at policies, unmitigated risk is costly for businesses. The rate of heat-related worker compensation claims in the U.S. Southwest more than doubled on average between 2009 and 2019, according to risk management consultancy Marsh, from 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of all claims – although that is almost certainly an undercount due to inconsistent reporting and data collection methods. 

Other research has found that heat-related occupational injuries across the U.S. have increased by about a third between 2000 and 2020. Marsh also found that heat exhaustion can affect mental and physical abilities that result in other accidents, noting: “The absence of dedicated regulations leaves workers vulnerable to heat-related health risks.”

The Swiss Re Institute, the research arm of the Swiss risk management giant, has found that between workers compensation, higher medical costs and the risk of litigation, “extreme heat poses a growing threat to the insurance industry.” 

Without clear public policies, businesses can expect an accelerated rise in insurance costs and even the possibility of un-insurability in regions of the country that face dangerously high temperatures. The consequences of extreme heat are already driving the loss of insurance in other parts of the economy, such as utilities unable to secure affordable insurance for transmission lines and other infrastructure in wildfire-prone areas.

Addressing the effects of heat on workers will require a policy foundation that ensures both workers and companies remain protected and productive: workers through safer workplaces and their employers through consistent risk management practices at worksites that facilitate a stable insurance market despite rising temperatures and extreme heat.

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The literary canon dedicated to decoding corporate climate strategy has swelled since legendary author John Elkington coined the term “triple bottom line” in his 1997 book, “Cannibals With Forks.”

His argument that businesses should be judged on three foundational elements — social justice, economic prosperity and environmental quality — reshaped management practices.

Few other corporate sustainability titles have had the same disruptive impact, but here are six bonafide best-sellers that should also be on every sustainability professional’s bookshelf.

“Thinking in Systems”

By Donella Meadows

“Thinking in Systems” was published posthumously in 2008, more than 15 years after the late scientist and farmer first circulated a draft. It argues that the world’s biggest problems, including environmental degradation, can’t be fixed in isolation “because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the efforts of too-narrow thinking,” as one description explains. If you’re in a binge-reading mood, revisit Meadows’ earlier book, “Limits to Growth,” her 1972 warning about the dangers of unchecked consumption.

“All We Can Save”

Edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson

Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and climate drawdown strategist Katharine Wilkinson co-edited this anthology featuring inspirational and passionate essays by 40 women ranging from Indigenous activists to entrepreneurs. It is meant to inspire, as Johnson told me in September 2020, when the book was originally released: “For people who haven’t yet found their role in climate work, we hope that this book will help them see where they fit in. And for people who are already doing the work, we hope that this will help them feel less alone and bolstered for the next years and rounds and decades of the work that needs doing.”

“Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”

By William McDonough and Michael Braungart

First published in 2002, “Cradle to Cradle” was co-authored by architect Bill McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart, both already well-regarded for prioritizing environmental concerns in their work. It was one of the first books to espouse a circular economy in which waste from one process becomes a resource for another. Today, with more than 1 million copies in circulation, it’s the centerpiece of countless university courses in industrial design and the inspiration for a widely used product certification framework of the same name. 

“Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming”

Edited by Paul Hawken

This New York Times best-seller from 2017 outlines 100 practical applications for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, ranging from technologies for clean energy generation to simple but profound ideas, such as educating women and girls in low-income countries about regenerative agriculture and land management practices. Don’t expect lists of specific solutions. This is a guide meant to inform potential entrepreneurs and investors, but the research is continually refreshed as part of Project Drawdown. 

“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need”

By Bill Gates

The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist’s Breakthrough Energy venture firm has funneled more than $2 billion in 160-plus climate tech startups since 2015. Gates has also personally invested more than $1 billion in nuclear company Terrapower. This 2021 book provides a glimpse into Gates’ investment thesis — he’s looking for ways to decrease the “green premium,” or the cost differential between using clean technologies versus ones that will contribute more greenhouse gases. 

“Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take”

By Paul Polman and Andrew Winston

Former Unilever CEO Paul Polman teamed up with consultant and author Andrew Winston to argue that it’s possible for companies to give more to the world than they take. “Net Positive” offers many examples of businesses that have made a practice of considering social and environmental impacts as equal partners to revenue generation — ranging from oft-cited exemplars like apparel maker Patagonia and IKEA to companies that get fewer headlines but also deserve credit, such as Kenyan telecommunications firm Safaricom and home improvement retailer Kingfisher. 

What book would you recommend to other sustainability pros? Share your suggestions at [email protected].

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Walmart’s latest environmental report confirms what it warned of in December: the world’s largest retailer won’t meet its 2025 goal to cut the carbon footprint from its retail operations and energy consumption by 35 percent and looks unlikely to meet its pledge for a 65 percent reduction by 2030. 

Yet, in its ESG report published Sept. 8, the company’s chief sustainability officer characterizes progress toward Walmart’s goal of reaching zero emissions by 2040 as “meaningful.” Why the optimism? Here are three highlights.

A big emissions intensity reduction

Walmart logged a 1.1 percent year-over-year increase in 2024 for its Scope 1 and 2 emissions to 15.7 million metric tons of greenhouse gases. On the bright side, the Bentonville, Arkansas, company has reduced that footprint cumulatively by 18.1 percent since 2015 — short of where it should be, but a significant cut from where it started. 

“Progress isn’t always linear, especially for some of the longer-term goals that require partnerships across sectors, industries, communities and among different groups that have very different views about how to achieve outcomes,” said Kathleen McLaughlin, executive vice president and chief sustainability officer at Walmart.

That’s why another data point, emissions intensity, is an important “companion metric,” she said. It measures the ratio of operational emissions per million dollars of revenue, offering a different context for investors. Walmart has cut its emissions intensity by 47.4 percent over the past 10 years, while growing revenue roughly 40 percent to $684 billion. Emissions intensity decreased 3.7 percent for 2024

It’s easier for a company losing market share to cut its footprint than for one meeting its business growth objectives to do the same. “I think it’s important to consider that every banana we ship, every toaster that you buy from Walmart, the emissions footprint at that level is coming down,” McLaughlin said.

Walmart also studies this metric for its much larger Scope 3 footprint, which reached an estimated 636.6 million metric tons in 2024. For that emissions category, intensity has been reduced 6.2 percent since 2022.

A clear rationale for short-term increases

Walmart’s decision to in-source more of its fleet operations two years ago resulted in a 19.6 percent increase in transportation-related emissions. That strategic shift was necessary to support growth in Walmart’s e-commerce business and will yield more efficiencies over time; in effect, those emissions were transferred from Scope 3, so that Walmart can influence them more directly. 

For the next few years, that number is likely to keep increasing, as Walmart navigates investments for both last-mile and long-haul delivery methods. The three biggest contributors to address: Class 8 tractor trailers, refrigerated trucks and warehouse vehicles.

Walmart is piloting alternative technologies, including heavy-duty electric vehicles and forklifts that run on hydrogen fuel cells, and it opened a renewable hydrogen fuel plant in Latin America.

A strong link to stakeholder value

The Sustainability section of Walmart’s 113-page report, which starts on page 25, deliberately links its climate goals — including those for water stewardship, sourcing and energy — to business value creation.  

“Talk about your strategies in a way that helps people understand why you’re pursuing topics, why you’re pursuing strategies, why it’s good for your business, as well as for stakeholders,” McLaughlin said. “As you know, sometimes different stakeholders will have different views about issues or different language that they use, take time to understand that.”  

One example is how Walmart is handling the overhaul of the refrigerants used to keep its products and buildings cool, which accounted for 57 percent of its Scope 1 footprint in 2024. That was a 2.4 percent decrease over the previous year, due to ongoing investments that were built into the company’s financial models and capital allocations.

All Walmart stores in the U.S., for example, undergo preventive maintenance and the company has hired more than 600 refrigeration technicians. When stores are updated or new locations built, Walmart requires the installation of cooling systems with lower global warming potential where commercially possible. So far, about 410 U.S facilities have been updated; as of August, Walmart had slightly less than 4,600 locations.

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

Corporate profiles in Trellis’ Chasing Net Zero series are raising useful questions about the strengths and gaps of corporate net-zero progress — questions that advocates must continue to wrestle with during this “period of reckoning” for climate action. As the series continues, it’s important for the analysis to highlight a critical question too often overlooked by similar efforts: are companies actually ready to pay for the transition to net zero? 

If we want to accelerate progress over the next five years to reach the 45 percent reduction goal, now is the time to seek crucial data about corporate funding for the climate transition. Without this data, climate ambitions will continue to masquerade as real action and we can give up our hopes of 1.5 degree Celsius-aligned decarbonization.

The persistent blind spot in net-zero accountability

For more than a quarter century, voluntary and compliance reporting frameworks have urged companies to provide information about their sustainability actions, environmental risks and GHG emissions. The Global Reporting Initiative and Carbon Disclosure Project launched with a focus on current performance and future exposure of the world’s biggest companies. Under the Science-Based Targets framework, thousands of companies have declared their forward-looking climate intentions. The EU recently adopted the CSRD rules to mandate more thorough sustainability reporting. (The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission attempted to follow suit, but failed.)

All the while, global GHG emissions remain stubbornly high, telling us that it’s not enough to hold a mirror to a company’s actions. Disclosure efforts have been good at pushing for the now and what could be, but far less effective at pushing for the how of the net-zero transition.

Seeking to rectify this, several years ago a group called the Transition Plan Taskforce took up the challenge of defining clearer expectations for climate reporting. The taskforce’s work echoed principles that NGOs and government bodies have said is fundamental to climate action.

These various transparency movements improve accountability (and keep sustainability people very busy). But they don’t do enough, because there remains an urgent need to close the climate mitigation finance gap, a point noted by multiple global advocates. Data sharing, targets and pledges cannot be the highest-ranking mark of ambition because promises and pledges don’t signal concrete progress. These days, real climate leadership involves budgets.

Actions without budget details

It’s time to reckon with the climate finance gap by directly asking what role companies will play in closing it. In 2024, The Change Climate Project worked with stakeholders to improve our climate certification so that it would address the question of funding. We decided to make a “climate transition budget” the central accountability threshold. The budget is determined by annual emissions and a per-tonne carbon price.

This is not common practice. We recently reviewed the sustainability reports of 30 companies with strong reputations for sustainability – including the likes of Microsoft, L’Oreal, Crocs, Chobani and Navitas Organics. Of those, only eight reports offered enough information to weigh transition funding against annual emissions. “Enough” information included — at a minimum — summary-level disclosure of investment amounts, along with a comprehensive GHG inventory, including Scope 3 emissions.

On the whole, most companies in our sample did a good job of describing their top sustainability actions, which included shifting to renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, adopting sustainable materials and redesigning packaging.

But lists alone aren’t enough to gauge whether the company is good at decarbonization or marketing. In 22 of the reports, either the money or the tonnes were missing. Or both. Without this data, it’s impossible to tell if a company’s investments are proportionate to their emissions.

For the eight companies, transition funding amounts ranged from 10 cents to $53 per tonne of emissions. One company, IKEA, reported funding of $33 per tonne. Their $9 billion — $5 billion spent, with $4 billion more to follow — was also covered by the Trellis analysis, and is the kind of funding that has the potential to move the needle. Conversely, the Trellis analysis of Nestlé gave a different take: the company “did not share the amount it expects to invest in order to hit its 2030 target.”

Recognizing the hurdles

As the vast majority of companies globally continue to fall significantly short of their net-zero targets, it’s time for clearly-revealed transition funding to be added as the third leg of the net-zero stool — right alongside targets and plans.

To get there, we should ask why, in a majority of cases, companies don’t make it easy to parse their climate transition investments. Is it too hard to categorize investments? Perhaps, but businesses do a fine job of communicating complex financial information to shareholders on their earnings calls. 

Are transparency advocates afraid to put the emphasis on funding, because it acknowledges that the climate transition isn’t free? Perhaps, but there is also plenty of money to be made and saved from climate initiatives.

Or are we scared to push too hard? Advocates work tirelessly to squeeze incremental progress from companies, so maybe there’s a fear of losing our fragile hold on corporate attention if the push for climate transition funding data turns out to be a bridge too far.

Sustainability practitioners now face existential questions and the need to become smarter and more effective. Better practices around documenting and disclosing climate transition funding could help. The process of detailing climate projects allows companies, often for the first time, to view transition funding through an “all of the above” lens.

Many companies now are deciding whether and how to include market instruments in their strategies. As noted by MSCI, carbon trading is expected to play an “increasingly pivotal role in transition finance.” A transition funding approach gives companies a way to see beyond rigid “mitigation hierarchies” to focus on the important thing: getting climate finance flowing. The practice also complements the use of internal carbon fees by creating a dollar-per-tonne through-line that starts with residual emissions and extends through to all mitigation projects.

A new chapter for accountability

There’s much room for net-zero accountability evaluation efforts by analysts, standards bodies and corporate buyers to improve by adding transition funding to their criteria. This would raise the quality of insights from efforts ranging from the Net Zero Tracker to Amazon’s Climate Pledge Friendly program. To decide what to include in the assessment, there’s plenty of good guidance to pull from in the pages of lesser-known mitigation finance tracking initiatives, existing CSRD rules and The Climate Label’s Standard.

In this period of reckoning we must make clear that ultimately, companies need to focus on closing the climate finance gap. The best way to tell how seriously a company is pursuing its climate initiatives is to look at transition funding data in simple, understandable terms that enable quick analysis. After all, money often talks louder. 

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The demand is straightforward, if not simple: To slow climate change, stop funding fossil fuels now, not decades from now.

That’s what the International Energy Agency said in May 2021, only a month after 43 banks launched the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). To some, the group’s formation, amid a flurry of related new alliances, offered hope that big banks were throwing their weight behind decarbonization in line with the Paris Agreement.

After all, the financial sector is arguably the root of all climate change. Businesses, which pollute at scale, can’t operate without institutional shareholders and financiers.

Yet four years and five months after its inception, the NZBA has frozen its activities and banks are keeping more fossil fuels in their portfolios than they did in each of the previous two years. Nevertheless, financial institutions continue to share their net zero-aligned intentions.

Where does this leave the movement to shift to a low-carbon global economy?

“What worries me is that I think there is a higher probability of zombie targets,” said Todd Cort, a senior lecturer in sustainability at the Yale School of Management. “They’re not living, because banks are not actively trying to push progress in the absence of outside pressure. But they’re not dead, because they still sit on the books. The downside is that we cannot afford to slow progress on climate. If there’s any upside, it’s that re-engaging with net zero will be easier if the target was never officially dismissed.”

The timeline

On August 27, the United Nations-backed NZBA announced that it was pausing its operations, with members voting by the end of September on whether to become a guidance-only initiative. Whatever the result, critics argue that the NZBA had already slipped into irrelevance.

Twenty banks have fled the NZBA since December, kicked off by the U.S. “big six:” Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase.

This past April, most remaining NZBA members voted to remove its Paris Agreement alignment. Only Triodos Bank left in protest over the thinned-out goals. 

At the same time, however, all NZBA banks have kept their net zero targets. Just this week, Deutsche Bank issued its latest net zero transition plan. Even all of the exiting member banks, except Wells Fargo, appear to be maintaining net zero pledges, albeit with little in common. (That was partly the result of a March 2024 guideline favoring independent targets.)

Political pressures

Environmentalists have blasted banks for bowing to right-wing political pressure as they fled the NZBA.

In June 2024, for example, U.S. House Republicans railed against a “decarbonization collusion in ESG investing.” By the end of the year, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America announced their NZBA exits. 

This past January, as President Donald Trump brought an anti-ESG rampage with his return to the White House, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton cited U.S. banks’ NZBA departures when he threatened them over their ESG commitments. 

More recently, on July 22 the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) said that it would no longer validate the emissions targets of financial companies that fund new oil, gas or coal projects. On Aug. 8, an unusual letter followed by the attorneys general of 23 states, who charged the SBTi with violating antitrust laws.

However, there’s no consensus that political threats caused banks to change their minds about advancing climate plans, at least on paper.

Fossil fuel financing by the 65 largest banks ticked upward to $868.8 billion after declining for two years following the NZBA’s formation, according to the Banking on Climate Chaos Report. The total was $922 billion in 2021, with a low of $706.9 billion in 2023.

Political cover for low ambitions?

“In our view, the political context in the U.S. was only a pretense that banks used to leave the NZBA,” said Quentin Aubineau, policy analyst on the banks and climate campaign at BankTrack, a Netherlands nonprofit that contributed to the “climate chaos” report. After all, the first banks to check out of the NZBA were also among the biggest fossil fuel financiers since 2021, he added.

“Banks want the best of both worlds,” said Abineau. “On one side, they want to be seen as climate leaders that are aligned with international climate goals. On the other side, they do not want to give up on short-term benefits and cut ties with their carbon-intensive clients, even if these clients are developing new fossil fuel projects that are incompatible with long-term climate goals.”

Barclays, the latest NZBA exile on Aug. 1, boasted that it generated roughly $675 million “in revenues from sustainable and transition-related activity” in 2024. Yet it also invested $35 billion in fossil fuels, a four-year high.

For Saskia Straub, climate policy analyst at the New Climate Institute of Cologne, Germany, political headwinds catalyzed NZBA departures but also exposed the low integrity of many bank targets. They have been “plagued by loopholes,” she said.

“This raises questions about whether the initial commitments were driven more by a desire to follow trends and manage public relations than by a genuine intent to decarbonize” Straub added.

What should banks do?

“Our research suggests that instead of focusing on long-term targets, financial institutions can have an impact by dedicating their resources to engaging their investees and directing finance to achieve real-world decarbonization in the short term,” Straub said, citing her organization’s Aug. 26 report, “Fixing the Broken Governance Chain.”

It encourages banks to set consequences for their funding recipients’ high-emissions actions. Banks can also channel capital into activities that support a low-carbon economy, Straub added.

NGOs including BankTrack, ShareAction and the Sierra Club call for regulators to step in to cement climate progress where optional collaborations are failing. 

“Voluntary commitment frameworks like NZBA can be effective, but they only work if backed by enforceable rules,” said the Sierra Club’s Sustainable Finance Campaign Advisor Jessye Waxman.

Most of all, banks need to own their culpability for fueling emissions, whether by directly financing fossil fuel projects or by including oil, gas and coal in their investment portfolios, according to Aubineau.

Investor pressures

Beyond threats by politicians, activists have mounted hundreds of protests against banks propping up fossil fuels over the past year. Wells Fargo, the only NZBA bank to ditch its net zero pretenses entirely, has taken much of the ire in multiple U.S. cities this summer.

From London, Louise Marfany, director of financial sector standards at NGO ShareAction, warned that many investors will not tolerate backsliding from banks on their commitments to reduce their financing of high-emitting activities.

Case in point: PFZW, one of Europe’s largest pension funds said on Sept. 3 that it was yanking nearly $7 billion in holdings from BlackRock due to its lack of support for climate action.

“Banks that attempt to roll back on the vital commitments they have made to safeguard people and planet should expect significant pushback,” Marfany said.

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