| By Aaron Clark and David Stringer Countries that fall short in efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C face growing legal risks that could push them to accelerate climate adaptation efforts. The threat of lawsuits now looms over companies and governments that don’t take aggressive climate action, following an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, said Winston Chow, a professor of urban climate at Singapore Management University. “This acceleration of the momentum from the legal side would help with the business impetus toward climate adaptation and mitigation,” he said at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in Singapore on Wednesday.  Click here to watch Winston Chow, professor, urban climate, Singapore Management University and Christina Ng, managing director, Energy Shift Institute discuss the future of climate goal setting in business and finance with Bloomberg’s David Stringer at the 2025 Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in Singapore. The ICJ said in a legally non-binding opinion last week that countries have a responsibility to do what they can to limit global warming to the critical threshold of 1.5C, adding that failure to do so may violate international law. The opinion was grounded in science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations scientific body. Around the world, many of the most climate-vulnerable citizens, communities and nations are suing countries and corporations over what they see as a lack of climate action. They want to force polluters and governments to pay for past harms and to avert future threats, and they’re using the law to assign blame for the damages. “The game is changed with this ruling,” said Chow. “You can expect potential litigation.” He underscored that the world should stick to the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the world’s temperature rise to below 2C degrees, rather than pursuing a new approach to measuring progress. Read and share this story on Bloomberg.com. What else we learned from the summit | US President Donald Trump’s tariffs are creating climate concerns. The impact on trade is adding to uncertainty over investments and hampering efforts on climate action, according to Deborah Elms, head of trade policy of the Hinrich Foundation. Already global investments into climate technology firms by venture capitalists and private equity firms declined 10% in the first quarter from a year ago, data from market intelligence firm PitchBook show. Talking less about climate action isn’t helping either. This may stall efforts to cut the cost of emissions reductions, according to the head of carbon exchange Climate Impact X. “The problem with greenhushing or transition-hushing is that it doesn’t help the financial system mobilize capital,” said Oi-Yee Choo, the exchange’s chief executive officer. Malaysia’s bourse sees an IPO boost from Asia’s energy transition plan. Its pipeline of initial public offerings is expected to get a boost from firms seeking capital for energy transition projects as Asia weans itself off fossil fuels, according to Fad’l Mohamed, chief executive officer of Bursa Malaysia Bhd. Google says Asia is a “challenging” region to decarbonize. Giorgio Fortunato, head of clean energy and power for the Asia Pacific at Google, said places like Taiwan for example, are especially tough for the tech giant to secure enough renewable electricity due to a lack of supply. Japan, meanwhile, doesn’t have a lot of space for utility scale solar, he added. | 
