This month’s sustainability roundup captures a shift from framework development to real-world application, where climate and nature risks are increasingly embedded across financial systems, legal accountability, and decision-making. It highlights how intensifying physical climate signals, evolving disclosures, and maturing litigation are converging with insights on sovereign risk, energy systems, and corporate strategy. Together, these developments show how sustainability is moving beyond principle—being tested, priced, and enforced across markets, regulation, and the real economy.

Report presents UK qualitative research on centre-right attitudes to energy efficiency and renewables, finding trust deficits and scepticism. Messaging aligned with values—avoiding waste, local control, and authenticity—resonates best, while economic or corporate framing underperforms. Emphasises credible messengers and community-based approaches.

Assesses Australian financial institutions’ views on climate and clean energy investment in South and Southeast Asia, highlighting growth potential, limited current exposure, key risks, and barriers. It emphasises blended finance, policy support, and government intervention to mobilise private capital and scale regional investment.

Colorado School of Mines is a public research university in Golden, Colorado specialising in engineering, applied science and technology. Founded in 1874, it delivers undergraduate and graduate programmes focused on energy, earth sciences and sustainability, and conducts industry-connected research addressing global challenges in resources, environment and advanced engineering fields worldwide.

This study models the financial system’s role in climate transition using participatory system dynamics with Dutch financial actors. It identifies reinforcing feedbacks like learning, technological lock-in, finance culture and passive investment and proposes seventeen policy and institutional interventions to redirect capital towards sustainable assets and align finance with Paris Agreement goals.

This month’s sustainability roundup traces a rapidly evolving landscape in climate governance and industrial transition, highlighting the convergence of ISSB-aligned disclosure standards and emerging carbon trade measures alongside shifting cost curves in transport and critical minerals. It underscores how tighter emissions accounting and border policies are embedding carbon competitiveness into capital allocation, while advances in electrification, AI-driven power demand and expanding legal accountability are integrating climate and nature risk into mainstream financial decision-making.

Future Energy Scenarios 2025 provides independent pathways for Great Britain’s energy system to reach net zero by 2050. It models demand, supply, flexibility and emissions across electricity, gas and hydrogen, assessing costs, infrastructure needs, carbon budgets and policy choices under varying levels of electrification, hydrogen deployment and consumer engagement.

This report analyses global coal supply, demand, trade and prices to 2030. It assesses regional consumption trends across power and industry, production outlooks for major exporters, policy and decarbonisation impacts, and market risks. Forecasts highlight shifting Asian demand, plateauing global use, and implications for investment and energy security.

The IEA’s Energy and AI report examines AI’s rising electricity demand and its capacity to improve energy efficiency, security and innovation. It assesses data centres, grids and end-uses, highlighting skills, infrastructure and policy needs to manage costs, emissions and resilience globally.

This month’s sustainable finance article roundup examines a landscape increasingly shaped by geopolitics and climate risk, as near-term fragmentation, energy security, and affordability pressures collide with intensifying long-term threats from climate change, biodiversity loss, and water stress. The works featured analyse how these dynamics are reshaping capital allocation, disclosure, and resilience planning, demonstrating the growing need for sustainable finance to integrate geopolitical risk with real-economy transition.

The Banking on Climate Chaos is a multi-year research series assessing how major global banks finance fossil fuel activities. It provides a consistent framework to review lending and underwriting linked to fossil fuels and expansion, supporting year-on-year comparison and broader analysis of banking practices.

RETScreen is a clean energy management software developed by Natural Resources Canada to assess renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. It supports feasibility analysis, financial evaluation, energy performance tracking and greenhouse gas emissions analysis using integrated global climate, cost and benchmark datasets.

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) is a federal department advancing sustainable development of Canada’s energy, minerals, forests and earth sciences. It delivers research, data, policy and tools on climate change, clean energy, critical minerals and resource efficiency, supporting evidence-based decision-making by governments, industry and the public across domestic and international contexts.

Global Renewables Watch Atlas is an open, interactive database mapping utility-scale solar and wind projects worldwide. It provides project-level data on location, capacity, and development status to support analysis of renewable energy deployment, infrastructure planning, and investment-related research.

Global Renewables Watch is a project/initiative of Global Energy Monitor, which acts as the organisational author and is responsible for governance, data production, and oversight.

Global Energy Monitor is an open-access research database that compiles and analyses global energy infrastructure data, including fossil fuel and renewable projects, via interactive tools, maps and downloadable datasets to support informed analysis of energy trends and ownership structures.

The Global Energy and Climate Model is an integrated analytical tool developed by the International Energy Agency to assess long-term global energy systems. It supports scenario analysis of energy demand, supply, investment and emissions under different policy and technology pathways.