Tag: 3BL

Over the past decade, employees at MilliporeSigma, the U.S. and Canada Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, have transformed a global employee volunteer program into a true movement. As SPARK™ celebrates its 10th anniversary, the “10 Years, 10 Stories” series reflects on a decade of impact and highlights the employees, students, and organizations at the heart of the program.

In the second article in this series, MilliporeSigma’s nonprofit partners are in the spotlight. Over the past decade, SPARK™ has helped build and strengthen partnerships with organizations around the world that share a commitment to expanding access to science education and supporting communities where the company operates.

From equipping universities and research institutions in developing countries, to creating hands-on learning experiences in science centers and classrooms, these collaborations act as a catalyst and multiplier for impact. These partners help inspire curiosity, create opportunity, and empower the next generation of innovators.

Seeding Labs

MilliporeSigma has partnered with Seeding Labs since 2013 to strengthen scientific capacity and expand global access in developing countries. Since beginning their relationship, the organizations have worked together to equip universities and research institutions with the laboratory resources needed to train future scientists and advance locally driven research. Through equipment donations, scientific expertise, funding, and the co-creation of TeleScience in 2018, the partnership has helped create access to laboratory equipment and skills for more than 270,000 post-secondary students and nearly 4,000 researchers across 43 countries. By supporting scientists where resources are often limited, the collaboration is helping build a stronger global scientific community and empowering local innovators to address challenges in their own communities.

Swiss Science Center Technorama

Since 2014, MilliporeSigma has partnered with Swiss Science Center Technorama to inspire curiosity and make science more accessible through hands-on learning. Together, the organizations have created opportunities for visitors to explore scientific concepts through interactive experiments while connecting directly with employees during volunteer-led SPARK™ events, including the company’s Curiosity Labs™ and Curiosity Cube™ programs. These events combine the scientific expertise of employees with Technorama’s educational approach, creating engaging experiences that encourage discovery and exploration. Through more than a decade of collaboration, the partnership has helped foster enthusiasm for science and equip learners with the confidence to better understand the world around them.

Chemistry on the Go

Since first partnering in 2016, MilliporeSigma and Chemistry On the Go have worked together to bring the wonder of chemistry to students and communities across Taiwan. Employee volunteers help make science more engaging and accessible through hands-on learning experiences that connect chemistry to everyday life. Supported by the expertise and enthusiasm of employee volunteers, the program encourages students to look beyond textbooks, ask questions, and explore new possibilities. By combining scientific discovery with mentorship and real-world perspectives, the partnership continues to inspire curiosity and a lifelong love of learning in students across Taiwan.

Learn more about SPARK™ and the company’s Curiosity Programs by visiting its Employee and Community Engagement website.

Originally published on CVS Health Company Newsroom

For many students, success in the classroom starts with having their basic needs met. That’s why a new food pantry at Woonsocket High School represents so much more than access to food. It represents support, opportunity, and a stronger community for local families.

Representatives from CVS Health, the Rhode Island Department of Education, and FeedRI, along with students, teachers and community members, celebrated the opening of the new school-based pantry. The high school is in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, not far from CVS Health’s corporate headquarters.

The pantry, funded by CVS Health, will serve more than two dozen families each month by providing nutritious food in a place families already know and trust.

“Today’s food pantry opening demonstrates what’s possible when the state, community organizations and corporate partners come together to support students and families,” said Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green. “Through these collaborations, we can remove barriers for families and create stronger opportunities for students to learn, grow and thrive.”

Meeting families where they are

Food insecurity continues to affect thousands of families across Rhode Island. According to the Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Factbook, more than 41,000 children were enrolled in SNAP in 2025, highlighting the ongoing need for community-based solutions that make healthy food more accessible.

“Food access is an important part of helping children and families succeed,” said Rhonda Lapham, executive director of FeedRI. “By bringing nutritious food directly into schools, we are making it easier for Rhode Island families to access the resources they need while creating a stronger support system around students.”

“Every student deserves the opportunity to come to school ready to learn, and access to nutritious food is an important part of that equation,” said Faith Weiner, Executive Director of Corporate Social Responsibility and Philanthropy at CVS Health. “CVS Health is proud to support the opening of this new food pantry at Woonsocket High School and help create healthier communities across Rhode Island.”

Building healthier communities together

The Woonsocket pantry builds on an ongoing collaboration among RIDE, FeedRI and CVS Health to expand school-based food access across the state, including recent pantry openings at Nathan Bishop Middle School and Roger Williams Middle School in Providence.

For the families who use the pantry, the impact is simple but meaningful: one less worry at home and more opportunity for students to focus on learning, growing and pursuing their goals.

 

Nokia
by Subho Mukherjee

When extreme weather strikes, digital networks quickly become lifelines. They carry emergency communications, support essential services and help societies continue functioning when conditions are at their most challenging. We tend not to notice them when they work — but their importance becomes clear the moment they don’t.

That is why this year’s World Telecommunication and Information Society Day theme, “Digital lifelines – Strengthening resilience in a connected world”, feels especially timely. Climate change is no longer a distant environmental concern. It is a direct and growing operational risk for society and organizations that depend on digital and physical infrastructure.

Extreme weather is testing our connected world

The impacts of climate change are most dramatically felt through extreme weather events such as storms, floods, extreme temperatures and wildfires. These events are increasing in both frequency and severity, placing immediate stress on energy systems, connectivity infrastructure and critical services.

Nokia and CGI is conducting a joint risk assessment on the impact of extreme weather on connectivity infrastructure across the United States and India, using multiple datasets including World Bank projections, EM-DAT disaster data and other primary surveys.

Initial baseline research from the analysis shows that extreme weather events are not only increasing in intensity, but are also becoming more clustered and prolonged — creating compounded stress on infrastructure systems.

In the United States, the research highlights a clear upward trend in extreme storm activity, with peak years recording as many as 23 major storm events, alongside more intense and concentrated rainfall events. In India, it points to increasing flood risk driven by heavier precipitation, with the number of days exceeding 50 mm of rainfall projected to rise significantly — up to seven times higher over the long term compared to shorter-term baselines — alongside rising pre-monsoon heat that is becoming more persistent and severe.

Across both geographies, these trends are further amplified under higher-emission scenarios, reinforcing the fact that extreme weather is evolving from isolated disruptions into systemic stress events for critical infrastructure.

In this context, climate adaptation is the journey. Climate resilience is the end goal — ensuring systems can anticipate, withstand, recover from and adapt to shocks, while continuing to function under environmental, economic and geopolitical uncertainty. Technology plays a decisive role in making this possible.

How Nokia views climate resilience

At Nokia, we see resilience as the ability of critical systems — across connectivity, energy and public services — to continue functioning under extreme environmental stress, as interconnected systems rather than isolated components.

Our approach focuses on three areas: 

1. Direct control: Strengthening our own operations and technologies.
2. Shared control: Enabling customers to build resilience in their networks and services.
3. Indirect influence: contributing to resilience together with our ecosystem partners at a broader societal and community level.

Across all three, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a critical enabling role — helping systems anticipate disruptions, adapt in real time and recover more quickly. At the same time, resilience must be built responsibly: energy efficiency, circularity and responsible resource use remain non-negotiable, ensuring that resilience and sustainability advance together.

Enabling resilient digital lifelines

The Nokia–CGI assessment shows that extreme weather impacts connectivity infrastructure in several ways. 

Rising temperatures and environmental stress degrade communication equipment performance, while storms and floods directly damage physical assets and disrupt networks. At the same time, dependencies on power grids can turn localized failures into widespread outages, and extreme conditions can delay recovery efforts due to safety and access constraints.

Much of Nokia’s contribution sits in enabling our customers. Our technologies help organizations anticipate, withstand and recover from extreme weather impacts — translating resilience into business continuity, reduced risk and long-term economic value. This includes: 

• Next generation mobile networks including satellite-integrated connectivity that complements terrestrial networks, ensuring continuity during disasters and extending coverage to remote and hard-to-reach areas.
• High-capacity Fiber networks enabling stable, low-latency and energy-efficient data transmission across regions.
• AI-native operations and predictive network hardware maintenance, reducing the need for human visits to sites during disasters.
• Resilience for distributed cloud architectures with dynamic traffic steering and workload distribution across regions to maintain service continuity under disruption, including at data centers.
• Automated LTE/5G-connected drone platform providing real-time situational awareness, infrastructure inspection, damage assessment and emergency response for utilities, transport, public safety and industrial operations.
• Environmental sensing through existing fiber infrastructure and situational awareness technologies support better decision-making and faster response during disruption.
• Mission critical and private wireless networks, enabling secure, high reliability communications for public safety agencies, utilities and other critical sectors.

Stability in moments of uncertainty

Ultimately, resilience is not just about infrastructure — it is about people. When networks stay up, emergency calls go through, hospitals remain connected, families can reach each other, and communities can respond and recover faster. The impact of resilient connectivity ripples far beyond technology, helping societies remain stable in moments of uncertainty.

No single company can deliver this alone though. Building true resilience requires strong collaboration across operators, governments, humanitarian organizations and ecosystem partners — working together to ensure solutions reach the places they are needed most. To learn more about our approach to some of these important sustainability topics visit our website.

Originally published on Aflac Newsroom

ST. LOUIS, September 30, 2026 /3BL/ — Brian Jordan, former Major League Baseball, NFL football star and Chairman and CEO of the Brian Jordan Foundation, joined Aflac Incorporated and Aflac U.S. President Virgil Miller, at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis recently to help provide joy and inspiration for patients and families. Jordan, who spent seven baseball seasons in the Gateway City, retired from both baseball and football, trading in his cleats for a pen, authoring six inspirational children’s books. He read his first book, “I Told You I Can Play” to kids and families at the hospital.

 

^{Brian Jordan, former Major League Baseball, NFL football star and Chairman and CEO of the Brian Jordan Foundation, reads a children’s book he wrote to patients at SSM Health Cardinal Glenn Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, where he played for 7 years during his baseball career.}

“I Told You I Can Play” tells the story of a 6-year-old boy overcoming adversity. Inspired by his own childhood experiences, the boy, also named Brian, loves football but must overcome being told he’s too small and too young to play with the older kids. Each child at the event was given a copy of “I Told You I Can Play.”

“The children at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital and those across the nation go through so much more than any child should have to deal with,” Jordan said. “And as St. Louis has always been a second home to me, having given me my chance to be a big-league baseball player, coming back here and spending time with the kids and families is something I cherish. And I am thrilled to be here with Aflac to deliver their special duck as they are a company that truly cares about families and giving back.”

In addition to the book-reading session, children with cancer and sickle cell disease were provided with a My Special Aflac Duck, a robotic companion specially designed to help children with cancer and sickle cell cope with their diagnosis and treatments. Since 2018, Aflac has distributed nearly 50,000 of these robotic companions, complimentary, to children aged 3 and older diagnosed with pediatric cancer and sickle cell disease across the U.S., Japan and Northern Ireland. My Special Aflac Duck can offer a sense of comfort, joy and control to children through medical play, soundscapes and RFID emoji cards that help kids express their emotions through their duck. A  three-year clinical study conducted with 160 patients at 8 hospitals across the U.S. and released in 2024, showed that My Special Aflac Duck helps reduce the stress and anxiety felt by patients and caregivers related to their treatments.¹ 

“Visiting the children, families and staff at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital today was inspiring on so many levels, not the least of which was seeing how they care for each other during challenging times,” said Virgil Miller. “Brian and My Special Aflac Duck not only brought smiles and laughter to kids who could use some additional attention today, but we know through research that the ducks will help each child and their caregivers now, tomorrow and long into the future, providing comfort and relief when they need it most.” 

The My Special Aflac Duck delivery event builds on Aflac’s 31-year and more than $200 million commitment to further pediatric cancer and blood disorders research and treatment. The work is also a natural extension of SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s commitment to continually improving upon the three elements of exceptional care: high-quality outcomes, excellent patient experience and a safe environment.

“We see every day what is possible when people choose to give back and rally around children and families who need them,” said Sandy Koller, President of SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Foundation. “Aflac and Brian Jordan are wonderful examples of using their resources, their platform and their generosity to make a meaningful difference. We are incredibly grateful for their commitment to our patients and for bringing not only joy today, but comfort that will stay with these children throughout their care.” 

My Special Aflac Duck was named one of Time Magazine’s 50 Best Inventions and named Best in Show at CES and South by Southwest in 2018. 

Health care providers, support organizations and families can order a My Special Aflac Duck free of charge for children 3 years or older who have been diagnosed with cancer or sickle cell disease at Aflacchildhoodcancer.org. 

Frequently asked questions
Why is Aflac collaborating with Brian Jordan for this event?
Brian Jordan’s message of perseverance and overcoming adversity aligns with Aflac’s commitment to supporting children facing serious health challenges. Through a reading of his children’s book “I Told You I Can Play” and the delivery of My Special Aflac Duck companions, Jordan and Aflac aimed to provide encouragement, comfort and inspiration to patients and families at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital.

How can families receive a My Special Aflac Duck?
Eligible children ages 3 and older who have been diagnosed with cancer or sickle cell disease can receive a My Special Aflac Duck free of charge. Families, healthcare providers and support organizations can request a duck by visiting AflacChildhoodCancer.org.

What is My Special Aflac Duck?
My Special Aflac Duck is a robotic companion designed to help children ages 3 and older who have been diagnosed with cancer or sickle cell disease cope. Through medical play, soundscapes and interchangeable emoji cards, the My Special Aflac Duck can help children express emotions, reduce stress and feel a greater sense of comfort and control during their healthcare journey.

ABOUT AFLAC INCORPORATED
Aflac Incorporated (NYSE: AFL), a Fortune 500 company, has helped provide financial protection and peace of mind for more than seven decades to millions of policyholders and customers through its subsidiaries in the U.S. and Japan. In the U.S., Aflac is the No. 1 provider of supplemental health insurance products.² In Japan, Aflac Life Insurance Japan is the leading provider of cancer and medical insurance in terms of policies in force³. The company takes pride in being there for its policyholders when they need us most, as well as being included in the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere for 20 consecutive years (2026) and Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies for 25 years (2026). In addition, the company became a signatory of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2021. To find out how to get help with expenses health insurance doesn’t cover, get to know us at aflac.com or aflac.com/español.

Investors may learn more about Aflac Incorporated and its commitment to corporate social responsibility and sustainability at investors.aflac.com under “Sustainability.”

¹ CHOA.org. “Reduction in Anxiety in Cancer Patients Using the My Special Aflac Duck.” Published April 8, 2024. https://www.choa.org/about-us/newsroom/reduction-in-anxiety-in-cancer-patients-using-the-my-special-aflac-duck, accessed on September 18, 2026.

² LIMRA 2025 U.S. Supplemental Health Insurance Total Market Report  

³ As of March 31, 2025, Aflac estimates based on company data

Media contact: Jon A. Sullivan, 706-573-7610 or jsullivan@aflac.com 

Analyst and investor contact: David A. Young, 706-596-3264, 800-235-2667 or dyoung@aflac.com 

 Aflac | Aflac New York | WWHQ | 1932 Wynnton Road | Columbus, GA 31999 

SOURCE Aflac

Previously published by the World Economic Forum

Sophia Mendelsohn, Chief Sustainability and Commercial Officer, SAP

• While the once-popular environmental, social and governance metrics of 2021 have gone out of favour and been deprioritised, sustainability is set to gain vigour with the rise of AI.
• Sustainability will be repositioned as a lever of competitiveness, with investment in renewable energy sources and an expanded calculation of climate risk exposure that includes physical assets as well as emissions.
• AI can assess the credibility of sustainability reporting with greater accuracy through better-performing models and expanded assessment capabilities.

The enthusiasm for environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics that flowed through capital markets in 2021 has faded.

What pushed it out of favour and, for some, down the list of strategic priorities, is familiar by now: political resistance, regulatory uncertainty, greenwashing crackdowns and geopolitical conflicts. What’s pulling it back is newer – artificial intelligence (AI).

Now, sustainability’s standing is a pendulum: a combination of forces swung it out into unpopular territory but it is about to swing back. However, pendulums never swing back to exactly where they were originally.

I have argued before that AI needs sustainability more than sustainability needs AI. That’s because a technology built on land, water, and power is only permitted to scale where it is trusted and that trust rests on the discipline sustainability leaders have spent two decades building.

The pendulum’s return is that dependence is becoming visible on three fronts: competitiveness, risk exposure, and energy security.

What sustainability looks like in the age of AI

Here are the three places I expect the pendulum to settle.

1. Competitiveness is the new net zero

Energy has become the input cost of intelligence. Access to cheap, clean, consistent power now shapes who wins the AI race and when grid capacity bottlenecks the decade’s biggest growth story, renewable energy requires no moral argument.

The International Energy Agency projects that electricity demand from data centres will roughly double to around 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030 (slightly more than Japan’s entire consumption today), with AI as the most important driver of that growth.

The infrastructure buildout behind those numbers is enormous; big-tech AI infrastructure spending is approaching the scale of global upstream oil-and-gas investment. Securing energy has moved from a net-zero objective to a matter of industrial strategy.

Investors increasingly describe the energy transition in the language of security, resilience, independence and competitiveness rather than carbon reduction. On the demand side, the same AI that strains the grid can optimize energy, materials and logistics in ways that feed directly into margin.

Scaled responsibly, AI is a source of competitiveness and resilience rather than a system stressor.

2. Reporting will reward trajectory, not snapshots

Current mandatory reporting remains material for the largest companies, even as the European Union has delayed and narrowed parts of its reporting and due-diligence regime.

However, its growing complexity will matter less than the compliance industry fears because AI is making disclosure cheap and routine. Once that happens, disclosure is no longer a barrier to smaller companies. A report any company can generate is a report no company can win with. Attention needs to shift from what your emissions are to where your capital is going.

The debate about transition portfolios has moved from excluding high emitters to asking whether a company is deploying serious capital into decarbonization, even while its current emissions remain high.

Investors are judging transitioners on trajectory and not just their current carbon intensity.

Investment theses for companies such as German energy firm RWE, which allocated most of its 2024 cash CapEx (capital expenditure) to offshore wind and onshore wind and solar, or Porsche, whose battery-electric vehicle share reached 22.2% in 2025, are increasingly tied to portfolio transformation rather than the legacy on the books.

Trajectory claims, though, invite a question which snapshots never faced: how do we know you’ll actually do it? This is where AI cuts both ways. The same tools that write the reports can check them against CapEx plans, supply chain data and even satellite imagery.

One recent study ran large language models across satellite images and the environmental claims of 214 European companies. Only 26% of the claims could be positively confirmed; 7.5% were flatly contradicted by what the satellites showed; the rest sat in a grey zone the models could not yet resolve.

The bar is therefore moving from disclosure to verifiable reduction, tied to your business model. As autonomous systems begin to act rather than advise, emissions adjustments and supplier decisions will need to be recorded and traceable in the financial ledger like any other transaction.

3. Physical climate risk will finally be priced

AI keeps lifting the ceiling on what climate models can compute and better models mean insurers, lenders and investors can quantify physical climate risk at the level of individual assets.

Underwriters are already using forward-looking climate outputs to differentiate between locations and assets that once looked identical on paper. My expectation is straightforward: physical climate risk will soon receive the analytical attention that carbon emissions receive now: priced and moved onto the balance sheet.

The irony is that the industry building the risk models is also their most motivated customer. AI infrastructure is a rapidly growing pool of physically exposed capital. A data centre is not a metaphor; it is a very large building that runs hot, drinks water and pulls power, often in places already under climate stress.

Industry analysis suggests that climate-related insurance costs for data centres could triple or quadruple by 2050 without decisive mitigation and adaptation. This means the data foundation behind a company’s climate-risk decisions is becoming one of its more valuable assets.

How to prepare for the return swing of sustainability

The pendulum will come to rest wherever claims can be verified. Companies whose sustainability data can survive an auditor, an insurer and an AI reading satellite imagery will find the swing at their backs. Everyone else will be explaining themselves to the machines that performed the checks.

The corporate world has spent the past few years speaking less loudly about sustainability. That period is ending because AI has reattached sustainability to the things companies cannot ignore: energy costs, insurable risk and the credibility of their own claims.

The transition opportunity now runs well beyond pure-play renewables into grids, electrification equipment, industrial transformation and adaptation. Companies still treating sustainability as a narrow compliance exercise will miss the industrial realignment underway.

Preparing for the swing means more than getting your claims in order. Your stakeholders (investors, non-government organisations, community activists, your own business-to-business client accounts) no longer count on your PDF as the single source of truth.

They will arrive with more information about your sustainability trajectory than ever before and with the scenario-planning power to use it.

Continue reading here.

Previously published by the World Economic Forum

Sophia Mendelsohn, Chief Sustainability and Commercial Officer, SAP

• While the once-popular environmental, social and governance metrics of 2021 have gone out of favour and been deprioritised, sustainability is set to gain vigour with the rise of AI.
• Sustainability will be repositioned as a lever of competitiveness, with investment in renewable energy sources and an expanded calculation of climate risk exposure that includes physical assets as well as emissions.
• AI can assess the credibility of sustainability reporting with greater accuracy through better-performing models and expanded assessment capabilities.

The enthusiasm for environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics that flowed through capital markets in 2021 has faded.

What pushed it out of favour and, for some, down the list of strategic priorities, is familiar by now: political resistance, regulatory uncertainty, greenwashing crackdowns and geopolitical conflicts. What’s pulling it back is newer – artificial intelligence (AI).

Now, sustainability’s standing is a pendulum: a combination of forces swung it out into unpopular territory but it is about to swing back. However, pendulums never swing back to exactly where they were originally.

I have argued before that AI needs sustainability more than sustainability needs AI. That’s because a technology built on land, water, and power is only permitted to scale where it is trusted and that trust rests on the discipline sustainability leaders have spent two decades building.

The pendulum’s return is that dependence is becoming visible on three fronts: competitiveness, risk exposure, and energy security.

What sustainability looks like in the age of AI

Here are the three places I expect the pendulum to settle.

1. Competitiveness is the new net zero

Energy has become the input cost of intelligence. Access to cheap, clean, consistent power now shapes who wins the AI race and when grid capacity bottlenecks the decade’s biggest growth story, renewable energy requires no moral argument.

The International Energy Agency projects that electricity demand from data centres will roughly double to around 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030 (slightly more than Japan’s entire consumption today), with AI as the most important driver of that growth.

The infrastructure buildout behind those numbers is enormous; big-tech AI infrastructure spending is approaching the scale of global upstream oil-and-gas investment. Securing energy has moved from a net-zero objective to a matter of industrial strategy.

Investors increasingly describe the energy transition in the language of security, resilience, independence and competitiveness rather than carbon reduction. On the demand side, the same AI that strains the grid can optimize energy, materials and logistics in ways that feed directly into margin.

Scaled responsibly, AI is a source of competitiveness and resilience rather than a system stressor.

2. Reporting will reward trajectory, not snapshots

Current mandatory reporting remains material for the largest companies, even as the European Union has delayed and narrowed parts of its reporting and due-diligence regime.

However, its growing complexity will matter less than the compliance industry fears because AI is making disclosure cheap and routine. Once that happens, disclosure is no longer a barrier to smaller companies. A report any company can generate is a report no company can win with. Attention needs to shift from what your emissions are to where your capital is going.

The debate about transition portfolios has moved from excluding high emitters to asking whether a company is deploying serious capital into decarbonization, even while its current emissions remain high.

Investors are judging transitioners on trajectory and not just their current carbon intensity.

Investment theses for companies such as German energy firm RWE, which allocated most of its 2024 cash CapEx (capital expenditure) to offshore wind and onshore wind and solar, or Porsche, whose battery-electric vehicle share reached 22.2% in 2025, are increasingly tied to portfolio transformation rather than the legacy on the books.

Trajectory claims, though, invite a question which snapshots never faced: how do we know you’ll actually do it? This is where AI cuts both ways. The same tools that write the reports can check them against CapEx plans, supply chain data and even satellite imagery.

One recent study ran large language models across satellite images and the environmental claims of 214 European companies. Only 26% of the claims could be positively confirmed; 7.5% were flatly contradicted by what the satellites showed; the rest sat in a grey zone the models could not yet resolve.

The bar is therefore moving from disclosure to verifiable reduction, tied to your business model. As autonomous systems begin to act rather than advise, emissions adjustments and supplier decisions will need to be recorded and traceable in the financial ledger like any other transaction.

3. Physical climate risk will finally be priced

AI keeps lifting the ceiling on what climate models can compute and better models mean insurers, lenders and investors can quantify physical climate risk at the level of individual assets.

Underwriters are already using forward-looking climate outputs to differentiate between locations and assets that once looked identical on paper. My expectation is straightforward: physical climate risk will soon receive the analytical attention that carbon emissions receive now: priced and moved onto the balance sheet.

The irony is that the industry building the risk models is also their most motivated customer. AI infrastructure is a rapidly growing pool of physically exposed capital. A data centre is not a metaphor; it is a very large building that runs hot, drinks water and pulls power, often in places already under climate stress.

Industry analysis suggests that climate-related insurance costs for data centres could triple or quadruple by 2050 without decisive mitigation and adaptation. This means the data foundation behind a company’s climate-risk decisions is becoming one of its more valuable assets.

How to prepare for the return swing of sustainability

The pendulum will come to rest wherever claims can be verified. Companies whose sustainability data can survive an auditor, an insurer and an AI reading satellite imagery will find the swing at their backs. Everyone else will be explaining themselves to the machines that performed the checks.

The corporate world has spent the past few years speaking less loudly about sustainability. That period is ending because AI has reattached sustainability to the things companies cannot ignore: energy costs, insurable risk and the credibility of their own claims.

The transition opportunity now runs well beyond pure-play renewables into grids, electrification equipment, industrial transformation and adaptation. Companies still treating sustainability as a narrow compliance exercise will miss the industrial realignment underway.

Preparing for the swing means more than getting your claims in order. Your stakeholders (investors, non-government organisations, community activists, your own business-to-business client accounts) no longer count on your PDF as the single source of truth.

They will arrive with more information about your sustainability trajectory than ever before and with the scenario-planning power to use it.

Continue reading here.

Previously published by the World Economic Forum

Sophia Mendelsohn, Chief Sustainability and Commercial Officer, SAP

• While the once-popular environmental, social and governance metrics of 2021 have gone out of favour and been deprioritised, sustainability is set to gain vigour with the rise of AI.
• Sustainability will be repositioned as a lever of competitiveness, with investment in renewable energy sources and an expanded calculation of climate risk exposure that includes physical assets as well as emissions.
• AI can assess the credibility of sustainability reporting with greater accuracy through better-performing models and expanded assessment capabilities.

The enthusiasm for environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics that flowed through capital markets in 2021 has faded.

What pushed it out of favour and, for some, down the list of strategic priorities, is familiar by now: political resistance, regulatory uncertainty, greenwashing crackdowns and geopolitical conflicts. What’s pulling it back is newer – artificial intelligence (AI).

Now, sustainability’s standing is a pendulum: a combination of forces swung it out into unpopular territory but it is about to swing back. However, pendulums never swing back to exactly where they were originally.

I have argued before that AI needs sustainability more than sustainability needs AI. That’s because a technology built on land, water, and power is only permitted to scale where it is trusted and that trust rests on the discipline sustainability leaders have spent two decades building.

The pendulum’s return is that dependence is becoming visible on three fronts: competitiveness, risk exposure, and energy security.

What sustainability looks like in the age of AI

Here are the three places I expect the pendulum to settle.

1. Competitiveness is the new net zero

Energy has become the input cost of intelligence. Access to cheap, clean, consistent power now shapes who wins the AI race and when grid capacity bottlenecks the decade’s biggest growth story, renewable energy requires no moral argument.

The International Energy Agency projects that electricity demand from data centres will roughly double to around 945 terawatt-hours (TWh) by 2030 (slightly more than Japan’s entire consumption today), with AI as the most important driver of that growth.

The infrastructure buildout behind those numbers is enormous; big-tech AI infrastructure spending is approaching the scale of global upstream oil-and-gas investment. Securing energy has moved from a net-zero objective to a matter of industrial strategy.

Investors increasingly describe the energy transition in the language of security, resilience, independence and competitiveness rather than carbon reduction. On the demand side, the same AI that strains the grid can optimize energy, materials and logistics in ways that feed directly into margin.

Scaled responsibly, AI is a source of competitiveness and resilience rather than a system stressor.

2. Reporting will reward trajectory, not snapshots

Current mandatory reporting remains material for the largest companies, even as the European Union has delayed and narrowed parts of its reporting and due-diligence regime.

However, its growing complexity will matter less than the compliance industry fears because AI is making disclosure cheap and routine. Once that happens, disclosure is no longer a barrier to smaller companies. A report any company can generate is a report no company can win with. Attention needs to shift from what your emissions are to where your capital is going.

The debate about transition portfolios has moved from excluding high emitters to asking whether a company is deploying serious capital into decarbonization, even while its current emissions remain high.

Investors are judging transitioners on trajectory and not just their current carbon intensity.

Investment theses for companies such as German energy firm RWE, which allocated most of its 2024 cash CapEx (capital expenditure) to offshore wind and onshore wind and solar, or Porsche, whose battery-electric vehicle share reached 22.2% in 2025, are increasingly tied to portfolio transformation rather than the legacy on the books.

Trajectory claims, though, invite a question which snapshots never faced: how do we know you’ll actually do it? This is where AI cuts both ways. The same tools that write the reports can check them against CapEx plans, supply chain data and even satellite imagery.

One recent study ran large language models across satellite images and the environmental claims of 214 European companies. Only 26% of the claims could be positively confirmed; 7.5% were flatly contradicted by what the satellites showed; the rest sat in a grey zone the models could not yet resolve.

The bar is therefore moving from disclosure to verifiable reduction, tied to your business model. As autonomous systems begin to act rather than advise, emissions adjustments and supplier decisions will need to be recorded and traceable in the financial ledger like any other transaction.

3. Physical climate risk will finally be priced

AI keeps lifting the ceiling on what climate models can compute and better models mean insurers, lenders and investors can quantify physical climate risk at the level of individual assets.

Underwriters are already using forward-looking climate outputs to differentiate between locations and assets that once looked identical on paper. My expectation is straightforward: physical climate risk will soon receive the analytical attention that carbon emissions receive now: priced and moved onto the balance sheet.

The irony is that the industry building the risk models is also their most motivated customer. AI infrastructure is a rapidly growing pool of physically exposed capital. A data centre is not a metaphor; it is a very large building that runs hot, drinks water and pulls power, often in places already under climate stress.

Industry analysis suggests that climate-related insurance costs for data centres could triple or quadruple by 2050 without decisive mitigation and adaptation. This means the data foundation behind a company’s climate-risk decisions is becoming one of its more valuable assets.

How to prepare for the return swing of sustainability

The pendulum will come to rest wherever claims can be verified. Companies whose sustainability data can survive an auditor, an insurer and an AI reading satellite imagery will find the swing at their backs. Everyone else will be explaining themselves to the machines that performed the checks.

The corporate world has spent the past few years speaking less loudly about sustainability. That period is ending because AI has reattached sustainability to the things companies cannot ignore: energy costs, insurable risk and the credibility of their own claims.

The transition opportunity now runs well beyond pure-play renewables into grids, electrification equipment, industrial transformation and adaptation. Companies still treating sustainability as a narrow compliance exercise will miss the industrial realignment underway.

Preparing for the swing means more than getting your claims in order. Your stakeholders (investors, non-government organisations, community activists, your own business-to-business client accounts) no longer count on your PDF as the single source of truth.

They will arrive with more information about your sustainability trajectory than ever before and with the scenario-planning power to use it.

Continue reading here.

LONDON, September 30, 2026 /3BL/ – Antea Group UK is pleased to announce the launch of its dedicated Arboricultural Consultancy and Tree Survey Services, further expanding the firm’s environmental planning offering.

The blossoming service line is supported by the recent appointments of Iain Waddell as Service Line Director and Tiara Wijaya as Senior Arboricultural Consultant. They join our highly established Principal Consultant, Peter Morrell. This offering helps clients navigate planning requirements, environmental constraints, and responsible development across projects throughout the UK.

Antea Group UK’s arboricultural team provides specialist support throughout the project lifecycle, from early feasibility and planning through construction and ongoing tree management. The team delivers arboricultural advice, surveys, assessments, and risk management services that help clients balance development objectives with tree protection.

Leading the service line is Iain, bringing more than 16 years of experience delivering arboricultural advice for planning, infrastructure, utility, and development projects across the UK. He has extensive expertise in BS5837 surveys, arboricultural impact assessments, tree risk management, and arboricultural support for major development and infrastructure projects.

“Trees are increasingly important considerations in planning, development, infrastructure delivery, and long-term asset management,” said Iain. “Our goal is to provide practical, commercially focused arboricultural advice that helps clients understand constraints early, manage risk effectively, and make informed decisions while protecting valuable tree assets. By combining arboricultural expertise with Antea Group UK’s broader environmental capabilities, we can support clients in addressing tree-related challenges within the wider context of project delivery and environmental stewardship.”

Within the wider team, Peter brings complementary arboricultural and ecological expertise that supports an integrated approach throughout the planning and development process. With over 30 years’ experience in the environmental sector, including over 25 years as an ecologist, Peter provides a valuable link between the ecology and arboriculture disciplines through his role planning and undertaking surveys in both fields. Peter also volunteers for the British Trust for Ornithology, undertaking breeding bird surveys as part of the BTO’s annual Breeding Bird Survey. 

Tiara brings expertise in BS5837 tree surveying, arboricultural assessments, tree protection planning, tree risk management and technical report writing, with experience across development, utility and infrastructure projects.

Their combined experience complements the team’s broader capabilities and supports effective liaison with clients, contractors, local authorities, multidisciplinary teams, and statutory and non-statutory bodies.

“The strengthening of our arboricultural consultancy services into its own service line is a natural extension of our environmental offering and further increases our ability to support clients across the full project lifecycle,” said Dr. Paul Dowson, Practice Director, Environmental Planning. “Iain, Peter, and Tiara bring a wealth of technical expertise and practical experience to the team. Their insight will strengthen our ability to help clients navigate complex planning and development challenges.”

This service line complements Antea Group UK’s wider Environmental Planning capabilities, enabling clients to address arboricultural requirements alongside ecology and other environmental considerations through a single multidisciplinary team.

Learn more about our Arboricultural Services here.

About Antea Group UK 

Antea® Group is an environment, health, safety and sustainability consultancy. By combining strategic thinking with technical expertise, we do more than effectively solve client challenges; we deliver sustainable results for a better future. We work in partnership with and advise many of the world’s most sustainable companies to address ESG business challenges in a way that fits their pace and unique objectives. Our consultants equip organisations to better understand threats, capture opportunities and find their position of strength. We maintain a global perspective on ESG issues through not only our work with multinational clients, but also through our sister organisations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America and as a founding member of the Inogen Alliance. 

LONDON, September 30, 2026 /3BL/ – Antea Group UK is pleased to announce the launch of its dedicated Arboricultural Consultancy and Tree Survey Services, further expanding the firm’s environmental planning offering.

The blossoming service line is supported by the recent appointments of Iain Waddell as Service Line Director and Tiara Wijaya as Senior Arboricultural Consultant. They join our highly established Principal Consultant, Peter Morrell. This offering helps clients navigate planning requirements, environmental constraints, and responsible development across projects throughout the UK.

Antea Group UK’s arboricultural team provides specialist support throughout the project lifecycle, from early feasibility and planning through construction and ongoing tree management. The team delivers arboricultural advice, surveys, assessments, and risk management services that help clients balance development objectives with tree protection.

Leading the service line is Iain, bringing more than 16 years of experience delivering arboricultural advice for planning, infrastructure, utility, and development projects across the UK. He has extensive expertise in BS5837 surveys, arboricultural impact assessments, tree risk management, and arboricultural support for major development and infrastructure projects.

“Trees are increasingly important considerations in planning, development, infrastructure delivery, and long-term asset management,” said Iain. “Our goal is to provide practical, commercially focused arboricultural advice that helps clients understand constraints early, manage risk effectively, and make informed decisions while protecting valuable tree assets. By combining arboricultural expertise with Antea Group UK’s broader environmental capabilities, we can support clients in addressing tree-related challenges within the wider context of project delivery and environmental stewardship.”

Within the wider team, Peter brings complementary arboricultural and ecological expertise that supports an integrated approach throughout the planning and development process. With over 30 years’ experience in the environmental sector, including over 25 years as an ecologist, Peter provides a valuable link between the ecology and arboriculture disciplines through his role planning and undertaking surveys in both fields. Peter also volunteers for the British Trust for Ornithology, undertaking breeding bird surveys as part of the BTO’s annual Breeding Bird Survey. 

Tiara brings expertise in BS5837 tree surveying, arboricultural assessments, tree protection planning, tree risk management and technical report writing, with experience across development, utility and infrastructure projects.

Their combined experience complements the team’s broader capabilities and supports effective liaison with clients, contractors, local authorities, multidisciplinary teams, and statutory and non-statutory bodies.

“The strengthening of our arboricultural consultancy services into its own service line is a natural extension of our environmental offering and further increases our ability to support clients across the full project lifecycle,” said Dr. Paul Dowson, Practice Director, Environmental Planning. “Iain, Peter, and Tiara bring a wealth of technical expertise and practical experience to the team. Their insight will strengthen our ability to help clients navigate complex planning and development challenges.”

This service line complements Antea Group UK’s wider Environmental Planning capabilities, enabling clients to address arboricultural requirements alongside ecology and other environmental considerations through a single multidisciplinary team.

Learn more about our Arboricultural Services here.

About Antea Group UK 

Antea® Group is an environment, health, safety and sustainability consultancy. By combining strategic thinking with technical expertise, we do more than effectively solve client challenges; we deliver sustainable results for a better future. We work in partnership with and advise many of the world’s most sustainable companies to address ESG business challenges in a way that fits their pace and unique objectives. Our consultants equip organisations to better understand threats, capture opportunities and find their position of strength. We maintain a global perspective on ESG issues through not only our work with multinational clients, but also through our sister organisations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America and as a founding member of the Inogen Alliance. 

LONDON, September 30, 2026 /3BL/ – Antea Group UK is pleased to announce the launch of its dedicated Arboricultural Consultancy and Tree Survey Services, further expanding the firm’s environmental planning offering.

The blossoming service line is supported by the recent appointments of Iain Waddell as Service Line Director and Tiara Wijaya as Senior Arboricultural Consultant. They join our highly established Principal Consultant, Peter Morrell. This offering helps clients navigate planning requirements, environmental constraints, and responsible development across projects throughout the UK.

Antea Group UK’s arboricultural team provides specialist support throughout the project lifecycle, from early feasibility and planning through construction and ongoing tree management. The team delivers arboricultural advice, surveys, assessments, and risk management services that help clients balance development objectives with tree protection.

Leading the service line is Iain, bringing more than 16 years of experience delivering arboricultural advice for planning, infrastructure, utility, and development projects across the UK. He has extensive expertise in BS5837 surveys, arboricultural impact assessments, tree risk management, and arboricultural support for major development and infrastructure projects.

“Trees are increasingly important considerations in planning, development, infrastructure delivery, and long-term asset management,” said Iain. “Our goal is to provide practical, commercially focused arboricultural advice that helps clients understand constraints early, manage risk effectively, and make informed decisions while protecting valuable tree assets. By combining arboricultural expertise with Antea Group UK’s broader environmental capabilities, we can support clients in addressing tree-related challenges within the wider context of project delivery and environmental stewardship.”

Within the wider team, Peter brings complementary arboricultural and ecological expertise that supports an integrated approach throughout the planning and development process. With over 30 years’ experience in the environmental sector, including over 25 years as an ecologist, Peter provides a valuable link between the ecology and arboriculture disciplines through his role planning and undertaking surveys in both fields. Peter also volunteers for the British Trust for Ornithology, undertaking breeding bird surveys as part of the BTO’s annual Breeding Bird Survey. 

Tiara brings expertise in BS5837 tree surveying, arboricultural assessments, tree protection planning, tree risk management and technical report writing, with experience across development, utility and infrastructure projects.

Their combined experience complements the team’s broader capabilities and supports effective liaison with clients, contractors, local authorities, multidisciplinary teams, and statutory and non-statutory bodies.

“The strengthening of our arboricultural consultancy services into its own service line is a natural extension of our environmental offering and further increases our ability to support clients across the full project lifecycle,” said Dr. Paul Dowson, Practice Director, Environmental Planning. “Iain, Peter, and Tiara bring a wealth of technical expertise and practical experience to the team. Their insight will strengthen our ability to help clients navigate complex planning and development challenges.”

This service line complements Antea Group UK’s wider Environmental Planning capabilities, enabling clients to address arboricultural requirements alongside ecology and other environmental considerations through a single multidisciplinary team.

Learn more about our Arboricultural Services here.

About Antea Group UK 

Antea® Group is an environment, health, safety and sustainability consultancy. By combining strategic thinking with technical expertise, we do more than effectively solve client challenges; we deliver sustainable results for a better future. We work in partnership with and advise many of the world’s most sustainable companies to address ESG business challenges in a way that fits their pace and unique objectives. Our consultants equip organisations to better understand threats, capture opportunities and find their position of strength. We maintain a global perspective on ESG issues through not only our work with multinational clients, but also through our sister organisations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America and as a founding member of the Inogen Alliance.