Today’s newsletter looks at how Coca-Cola, BP, HSBC and countless other companies are dropping environmental goals. The full version of the story is part of Bloomberg Businessweek’s July 2025 edition, which further examines where climate stands on the corporate agenda now. The issue also features today’s story on Europe’s role as the world’s ESG sheriff. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe. 

A different kind of corporate retreat 

By Ben Elgin

Peter Ford has seen the promise—and the pitfalls—of corporate climate pledges up close. The 40-year-old Briton recently spent five years at Hennes & Mauritz AB trying to cut emissions from the Swedish fashion giant’s vast supply chain, from Cambodian sewing lines to Vietnamese dye houses. He met with hundreds of suppliers, pushed for energy efficiency upgrades and urged the elimination of coal boilers. And to its credit, H&M invested about $200 million a year in these efforts and recently reported a 24% cut in its supply chain emissions.

But Ford isn’t celebrating. “As an industry, it’s not working out yet,” he says bluntly. Apparel emissions are still growing—and could expand an additional 30% this decade, according to McKinsey & Co. While a few brands are doing a lot of work, Ford says, most of the industry “would much rather sit there and wait for things to happen.” That mismatch isn’t unique to fashion. From airlines to banks to retailers, the story is the same: Over the past few decades, more than 4,000 companies have made big climate pledges, but results are scant, and emissions continue to rise.

Worse, we’re now seeing a retreat. In the past year companies around the world have been canceling their climate commitments, some only a few years old. BP Plc is pulling back on renewables and drilling more oil. Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. abandoned or weakened promises they made in 2021 to slash their use of new plastics. Big banks such as Wells Fargo & Co. and HSBC Holdings Plc walked back various plans to reduce their emissions. Walmart Inc. admits it’s behind on its climate targets, while FedEx Corp. says it will likely miss its goal to go electric on half of its delivery truck purchases by 2025. This corporate retrenchment has been particularly acute in the US, where the Trump administration has been busy rolling back climate regulations and withdrawing from international treaties such as the Paris Agreement.

Ford at Olympic Market in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Photographer: Thomas Cristofoletti for Bloomberg Businessweek

For years companies have suggested their pursuit of sustainability would naturally follow their quest for profits. 

There’s an element of truth to this: Some climate-friendly endeavors, including swapping out lightbulbs and putting up solar panels, quickly pay for themselves and enhance the bottom line. But most projects required to achieve deep decarbonization, such as decommissioning coal boilers or using cleaner fuels, cost gobs of money, and no one knows when or if they’ll ever be cheaper than their dirtier alternatives. As long as these measures remain voluntary, they won’t happen at anywhere near the scale or pace that’s needed. And companies will be free to renege on their promises.

Illustration: Cameron Galley for Bloomberg Businessweek

Most companies have talked a big game on climate while working to block or water down the very policies that could drive real progress. 

When asked about these glaring misalignments, companies frequently argue that they rely on trade groups to advocate on a wide range of issues, such as taxation and trade, and that they don’t always agree on every position. This claim doesn’t pass muster with Bill Weihl, who says he used to make the same argument back when he ran sustainability efforts for Facebook. “It’s a weak excuse,” says Weihl, who has since launched ClimateVoice, a nonprofit that pushes companies to support climate policies. “They’re choosing to kick the can down the road so they can get lower taxes and deregulation.”

When it comes to policy positions, who’s putting their money where their mouth is? Advocates point to packaged-goods maker Unilever Plc as one of the rare companies moving in the right direction by regularly examining the climate work of trade groups to which it belongs. In its most recent review, from April, Unilever found that eight of 26 groups were misaligned with its views on climate policy—including the Confederation of Indian Industry, which has pushed for lower petrol taxes and more energy from gasified coal. Importantly, the report also spells out the steps Unilever plans to take to address this misalignment, including potentially leaving groups that continue to obstruct climate action. Any company claiming to be serious about climate should follow Unilever’s lead with this kind of rigorous examination and public reporting.

The reality, though, is that most companies are busy grappling with an entirely different set of pressures. As former Unilever CEO Paul Polman put it in a book he co-authored in 2021: “The single biggest hurdle to building a long-term company that serves the world is the relentless pressure for quarterly performance.”

FedEx says it will likely miss its goal to go electric on half of its delivery truck purchases by 2025. Photo: Getty Images

Clearly regulations are the most effective way to shift mindsets and force companies to pour money into much-needed climate projects. Businesses, however, have gone mute as President Donald Trump wades into their industries to annihilate various climate rules, which will pour billions of extra tons of planet-warming gases into the atmosphere. But there are other ways to pressure a company into speaking up and doing the right thing, including rallying its often large numbers of employees who feel strongly about leaving a livable planet for their children.

That’s a key strategy of ClimateVoice, which seeks out and trains workers to push for change inside their respective companies. This includes speaking up at town hall meetings, posting on internal message boards, booking an outside speaker to discuss sustainability or starting a group with concerned co-workers. “Being silent on the sidelines at a time like this is not acceptable,” says ClimateVoice’s Weihl. “Courage is required, and we need to see more of it from business leaders.”

The full version of this story, as it appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, is available on Bloomberg.com. 

Far off the mark

Just not enough

Europe steps up as the world’s ESG sheriff

By Olivia Rudgard and Olivia Raimonde

In June 2024, the fashion company Shein Group Ltd. began its second attempt to go public. An earlier effort to float on the New York Stock Exchange had failed after US politicians scrutinized the company’s links to China. Now Shein was looking for a £50 billion ($67.4 billion) valuation on the UK stock exchange, but there, too, it faced obstacles. Investors, lawmakers and nongovernmental organizations argued that the company had violated financial disclosure rules and greenwashing provisions through its alleged use of forced labor and its high-emissions fast-fashion model.

In response to the critique, Shein implemented a charm offensive by taking a cue from European climate regulations. For years, officials in both the UK and the European Union had been working on rules requiring companies to fund the disposal of clothing waste and disclose environmental and human rights risks in their supply chains. As Shein fought for its initial public offering, the company said it would invest in technologies to make fabrics more recyclable and would use more recycled polyester in its clothes. Polishing up its green credentials may have helped: UK regulators finally approved the listing earlier this year (though the company now appears to be reconsidering its plan partly because of the effects of President Donald Trump’s trade war).

The episode showed how the UK and the EU—which have similar rules when it comes to climate disclosure, waste management and investor protections from climate and ethical risks—are playing outsize roles as the world’s top sustainability regulators. It’s a leadership position Europe has assumed before with the tech industry: After writing the global rulebook on data privacy in the 2010s, the EU is attempting to do the same with artificial intelligence.

Illustration: Cameron Galley for Bloomberg Businessweek

Now, as the Trump administration cancels plans for the US to require companies to disclose climate risk and emissions, lawyers, consultants and investors say European countries have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to set environmental standards for the world. As of this year, the EU is phasing in rules requiring companies to file thick reports setting out the risks they face from climate change and their impact on the environment. Those mandates will eventually cover thousands of non-EU companies that operate within the bloc, which means some US businesses that operate, sell products and generate a profit in Europe will have to follow those environmental rules.

“Maybe in their local regions the regulations are being pulled back, [but] they’re still affected by these regulations that are happening in Europe, and it’s still affecting how they act,” says Veronika Thieme, associate director for Europe at the Carbon Trust, an environmental consulting firm.

EU sustainability regulations cover products as diverse as steak and liquefied natural gas. They aim to block the sale of food products grown in razed forest areas and the import of fossil fuels extracted by companies that leak too much methane. Some investors who are considering putting funds into non-EU companies use EU definitions of what’s sustainable and what isn’t. Companies in supply chains that make products that eventually end up in the EU are required to prove that their products are energy-efficient or deforestation-free.

Even as a small business with no direct connection to the EU, “you may find yourself the recipient of some due-diligence questionnaire that you’re expected to fill out, that may or may not include reference to ideas and concepts that you have no familiarity with, including references to EU law,” says James Marlow, a managing associate in ESG at the law firm Linklaters. “It is broad enough to capture a significant proportion of the business world either directly or indirectly.”

Read the full story about how more global companies are modeling themselves after EU standards on Bloomberg.com.

Tom Steyer’s multi-strategy asset management firm has completed its biggest real estate deal to date, as the billionaire investor pursues a strategy of improving the energy efficiency of buildings in order to resell them at a premium.

The latest deal brings Galvanize Climate Solutions LLC roughly 20% of the way toward its total commercial real estate investment target of $1.85 billion, according to Joe Sumberg, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who runs Steyer’s CRE unit. He declined to identify the seller or provide financial details about the latest deal. 

The portfolio comprises five properties in Maryland, covering 680,000 square feet (63,174 square meters), representing the largest space purchased by Galvanize to date, according to information shared with Bloomberg. 

Maryland is “an ideal place” for such transactions because it has “steady real estate fundamentals,” Sumberg said in an interview. It also has “a strong labor pool” that’s able to work on the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s properties that are ripe for renovation, he said.

Tom Steyer Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg

The asset management industry is continuing to invest in a way that will drive up emissions and temperatures, according to a new study by BloombergNEF. The BNEF analysis, which looked at almost 70,000 investment funds across the globe, found that fund bosses — on average — are still allocating money to energy companies whose capital expenditure favors high-carbon activities.

An Amazon.com Inc.-backed startup has successfully tested methane-eating microbes that can reduce dairy farm emissions. Windfall Bio has completed a pilot with Straus Family Creamery and California-based Correia Family Dairy where its microbes — known as mems — removed more than 85% of the potent greenhouse gas from the farm’s manure lagoon. 

Indonesia will begin the construction of a giant sea wall that will stretch hundreds of kilometers along the nation’s main Java island to prevent flooding and coastal erosion, President Prabowo Subianto said. Flood control is one of the nation’s strategic priorities, along with providing livable and resilient cities, with more than 70% of Indonesians expected to live in urban areas by 2045.

High-voltage electricity cables are in huge demand around the world, so much so that a lack of cabling has become a bottleneck throttling the clean energy transition. So why are cable manufacturers so hesitant to expand? Also, how are these giant cables made? And is China about to eat everyone’s lunch? Claes Westerlind, chief executive officer of cable manufacturing company NKT, joins the latest episode of the Zero podcast to discuss. This is the third episode in Bottlenecks, a series exploring the lesser known obstacles standing in the way of our electrified future. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple,  Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday. 

Wind turbines and electricity towers during sunset. Photographer: Bloomberg Creative Photos/Bloomberg Creative Collection

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