GreenBiz 2025:
13 Takeaways for Business Leaders
In the fast-moving sustainability-in-business field, it’s important to keep abreast of the latest trends. This is especially true when political change shocks the landscape. Last week, I attended Trellis’ GreenBiz conference to do just that. Takeaways from the conference:
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It’s all about the business case.
In every session I attended, one or more of the speakers said that corporate action for sustainability is all about the business case (and some added, “as it always should have been”). Disclaimer: I struggle with this one. When will it be okay to actually care about saving humanity? Yet, political change was much more salient than climate change in most of the talks I attended, and current US politics are decidedly unfriendly to sustainability. The good news: the business case for sustainable business has never been easier to make. Renewable energy is often cheaper than fossil fuels, conservation and waste reduction save operating costs, sustainable practices reduce risks, and there are considerable market opportunities in sustainability…
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Sustainability is a new growth engine for companies.
In any time of change, innovators that can meet the moment faster can generate substantial value.
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Decarbonization is a competitive advantage.
As more and more large companies are setting decarbonization targets and reporting emissions throughout the firm’s supply chain, decarbonization is becoming a competitive advantage for market access, even for very small suppliers. And while some customers are creating sustainability boot camps to equip their suppliers with new capabilities, not all suppliers are enthusiastic about it. Those that become sustainability-savvy have found some advantages in winning new business and keeping the business they have.
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Performance Contracting.
Even when investments in operational efficiency have a clear business case, it can be difficult to attract capital for them in internal processes – they may not be seen as sexy or strategic enough. Ford’s sustainability team addressed this issue internally by financing projects like LED lighting with payback coming from operational savings. This turns these improvements into operational, not capital, expenses for factories. Third party companies also do the same: providing energy generation or HVAC systems as a service, for example, requiring no capital outlays for the customer.
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Apolitical Reframing.
Multiple speakers highlighted that we need to find new labels for the critical issues we are acting on in order to make sure they have bipartisan support. We should speak about “supply chain security” instead of climate mitigation through the supply chain, and “saving operating costs” instead of decarbonization. Waste is hated by everyone, so waste reduction can cover circular economy issues. And speaking of waste…
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We need to get more sophisticated with the REs.
Instead of just reduce, reuse, recycle, companies are repacking when only packaging is damaged, refurbishing goods to be as new, recycling not only materials but also parts and subassemblies, and remanufacturing products made of those parts. We have to get better at this. In the words of Jonathon Foley of Project Drawdown, 1/3 of solving climate change is “stop doing stupid things”, like throwing good stuff away and wasting precious resources.
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Partnership is the new leadership.
This is a stark reminder that wicked problems cannot be solved by one organization acting alone. One of the most interesting partnership examples was the Circular Supply Chain Coalition, an organization which features public, private, and non-profit partners with diverse circular economy expertise. Noting that 95% of US critical minerals are imported, often from conflict-torn areas with rampant human rights abuses, CSCC focuses on building and scaling the infrastructure for “urban mining”, i.e., material recovery from waste. The benefits include reducing supply chain risks and costs, protecting human health, reducing waste (80% fewer emissions are produced when materials are recycled), and creating economic benefits for communities.
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Internal partnerships are also important.
Company sustainability functions are charged with decarbonizing supply chains but they lack direct relationships with suppliers and the ability to set procurement criteria. Leaders in this space prioritized supplier targets by spend and climate maturity, then worked with their procurement departments to set goals, provided them with templates to send to suppliers, and then offered language to go into contracts, then RFPs, and then KPIs. Transparent vendor scorecards were developed to enable suppliers to assess their own performance and share the data. A third-party accelerator program helped small suppliers to develop their own improvement playbooks, leveling up their sustainability skills. More third-party cloud-based systems are also becoming available to make the assessment process easier.
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Climate risks are growing fast.
Investors and insurers are paying attention, as this Aon report on Climate and Catastrophe reveals. Capital and insurance will be less available for climate-risky projects and it will be expensive when it is available. There has also been a 200% increase in companies’ 10k filings referring to climate risks since 2022, despite polarization.
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Access to power is becoming more important than clean power.
While companies are trying to decarbonize their operations through electrification and renewables, they are struggling with 3-7 year queues for grid connection. We need 3000 miles of new transmission lines in the US, and only 33 miles were built last year. Those that need to move faster are putting natural gas plants onsite, either on an interim or permanent basis.
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Advice for building new data centers.
a) Don’t overbuild your MW capacity; b) carefully consider back up power needs. While many firms ask for 72 hours of dirty generator power, could they cut their needs to 4 hours with redundant data center locations and use batteries? c) Design for conservation: the cleanest electron is the one you don’t use. Cheap sensors can help you identify power losses in operations, and exhaust heat from on-site generation can be used for more power.
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Consider embodied carbon when building
30 to 50% of a building’s carbon footprint is based on the materials used to build it. Materials that are less carbon intensive (or that sequester carbon) are becoming more available. Demand aggregators like the Center for Green Market Activation have “book and claim” services to signal demand for new materials, helping to ensure investment and get to scale.
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Adaptation vs. mitigation.
More companies are focusing on adaptation to the inevitability of climate change. For example, one construction company studied how to prevent the risks of extreme heat for its workers. Architects and developers are also on notice: simply complying with building codes will not prevent them from being sued if potential climate change effects are known and yet ignored.
These are just some of the takeaways that kept my mind racing during the three-day GreenBiz conference. The field is changing quickly and it is exciting to see how companies are continuing on their sustainability trajectories despite political headwinds.