Buzz: Transfer to editor

ESG reporting has never been more detailed — yet one simple question is often surprisingly hard to answer: did sustainable products and services actually sell, gain market share and improve profitability?

In a new article, I explore how sustainability disclosure may have drifted into an “indicator arms race”, where investors can easily find hundreds of pages of carbon metrics and governance data, but struggle to identify whether companies are genuinely winning commercially through cleaner products and services.

The piece also examines whether parts of the ESG market have become overly focused on low-carbon portfolio construction rather than identifying the businesses truly driving the transition economy.

Published: 2026 reporting cycle

Summary: Covers engagement activity, stewardship priorities, proxy voting and ESG integration across equities and fixed income portfolios. Includes reporting aligned with UK Stewardship Code expectations.

Full report suite here

Published: March 2026

Summary: LGIM’s stewardship report details shareholder voting, climate engagement, executive pay interventions and nature-risk priorities. Strong focus on real-world outcomes and transition alignment across listed holdings.

Published: April 2026

Summary: Schroders’ annual stewardship report covers voting, company engagement, climate transition dialogue and biodiversity-related escalation activity across global portfolios. Includes detailed case studies on governance and decarbonisation engagement.

Published: 19 February 2026

What’s included:

• Sustainability Fact Book 2025
• Updated Scope 1–3 emissions disclosures
• Climate, water, tailings and biodiversity reporting
• Community and Indigenous engagement disclosures
• Critical minerals / decarbonisation strategy updates

Report links:

• Rio Tinto Reports Hub
• Rio Tinto Sustainability Reporting

Published: 27 April 2026

Summary: Covers decarbonisation strategy, SAF adoption, fleet efficiency and employee/social initiatives across Air China’s operations. Includes governance and climate-risk disclosures aligned with broader aviation transition trends.

Published: 19 March 2026

Summary: Integrated report detailing operational emissions, supply-chain sustainability, circularity initiatives and workforce metrics. Includes CSRD-style sustainability disclosures and climate transition progress.

Published: 23 April 2026

Summary: Ivanhoe’s ninth annual sustainability report covers emissions reduction, community engagement, biodiversity and critical minerals production across its African mining operations. Strong focus on copper’s role in electrification and energy transition supply chains.

Investor presentation here

Impact bonds support a wide range of outcomes, from financing climate solutions to supporting social programmes and sustainable development. These bonds, which encompass labelled green, social and sustainability (GSS) bonds[note1], have become an increasingly important mechanism for enabling investors to direct capital towards their environmental and social objectives. 

By the end of 2025, the total outstanding global GSS bond market had reached $5.32trn, comprising $3.3trn in green bonds, $827bn in social bonds and $1.2trn in sustainability bonds. For many investors, impact bonds are now a core component of global fixed income portfolios.

As impact bond issuance accelerates, investors face growing challenges around transparency and comparability across this rapidly expanding market. In this FTSE Russell Insight, we examine key market trends and how the FTSE Impact Bond Index Series provides comprehensive, standards-aligned coverage of this important fixed income market segment.

Key takeaways:

• The current energy shock makes energy transition an energy security and economic competitiveness priority.
• Whilst the short-term response to the energy shock may be more fossil fuels, the medium to longer term response is likely to be more energy transition. We’ve seen similar in the past, in the 1970s energy shocks, and it’s already happening in numerous countries.
• The infrastructure to enable an acceleration in the energy transition has evolved significantly, even compared to 2022. The maturity, capacity and economics of renewable energy, energy efficiency and electrification technologies is now highly advanced.

A guide to interpreting and using financed emissions in a data sparse environment

Financial institutions are exposed to climate risk indirectly through the companies and projects they finance, linking their portfolios to real‑economy emissions.

Financed emissions, classified as part of Scope 3, account on average for 97% of a financial institution’s total greenhouse gas emissions, yet in practice remain difficult to interpret due to limited and uneven data.

Although still developing as a metric, financed emissions serve as a useful lens for understanding historical emissions and climate-related risk, particularly when combined with complementary datasets.

This report explores how financed emissions data can be made more useful in practice. We find that, when treated as a structured analytical framework rather than a single headline figure, financed emissions can provide genuinely valuable insight into how capital interacts with the low‑carbon transition.

Biodiversity loss as a source of financial risk and dependency

Biodiversity—the variability among living organisms, including between and within species and ecosystems—is increasingly recognised as financially material, yet it remains difficult to assess in investment portfolios.

Biodiversity matters for investors because it underpins economic activity and affects corporate cash flows. Firms depend on living systems for inputs, production stability and the provision of ecosystem services such as water regulation, soil fertility and climate buffering. If those systems degrade, financial risks emerge through higher operating costs, supply chain disruptions, asset impairments, regulatory exposure and shifts in consumer and investor sentiment.

A new wave of consolidation is sweeping through the mining industry. Multi-billion-dollar proposals, from Anglo American’s approach to Teck Resources to the mooted tie-up between Rio Tinto and Glencore, reflect a sector once again turning to dealmaking. At first glance, this may appear familiar. Mining has long moved in cycles, with mergers typically following commodity booms. However, this cycle looks different.

The current surge in M&A is being driven less by short-term price dynamics than by deeper structural forces. The energy transition is accelerating demand for critical minerals. At the same time, mineral deposits are becoming harder to exploit and environmental constraints are tightening. Together, these pressures are reshaping the economics of extraction and in turn, the logic of consolidation.

In this changing landscape, scale alone is no longer sufficient. Increasingly, the decisive factor is how efficiently resources can be produced.

For too long, we’ve treated economic forces as enemies of the environment. I get it; climate change is a consequence of economic activity. But economic growth also alleviates poverty, improves health and longevity, and inspires innovation. There’s no reason why we can’t harness economic incentives as a driver for climate action, too.  To do that effectively and responsibly, we need to “Money Ball” climate change. That means analyzing what works and what doesn’t and accelerating the solutions that deliver. I believe that, at its heart, climate change is a math problem: a 53 gigaton (GT) math problem.  

'Disaster insurance is breaking at a moment of crucial need. As climate change intensifies extreme weather, we’re seeing big shifts in the cost and availability of property insurance.

From soaring premiums to fewer options for homeowners, here are a few ways we’re feeling the impact across the United States.'