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Why space is becoming an ESG story for public markets

As NASA’s Artemis II mission swings around the Moon and puts space back on front pages, it is worth asking a very Earth-bound question: what does the new space race look like through an ESG lens? Artemis II launched on April 1, 2026, marking the first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years, and this week’s flyby has revived the sense that space is back as a serious industrial theme, not just a science project.

Numerous listed players

That matters because this is no longer only a private-markets story. Even before any potential SpaceX IPO, public markets already offer meaningful exposure to space: Rocket Lab spans launch, spacecraft and satellite components; Redwire is building space infrastructure; Planet and BlackSky sell Earth-observation data and analytics; Iridium, Viasat and Globalstar are satellite communications plays; and AST SpaceMobile is trying to build direct-to-device connectivity from orbit. This is not yet a huge sector, but it is large enough for equity investors to care about the externalities as well as the growth narrative.

The sunny side

The bull case, from an ESG perspective, is real. Satellites can help monitor deforestation, track methane leaks, improve disaster response and extend connectivity to remote areas where terrestrial networks are weak or uneconomic. OECD notes that satellite networks are an important broadband option for rural and remote communities, while Planet explicitly positions itself around daily Earth data and insights. In the best version of the story, space is not an escape from Earth’s problems. It is a tool for measuring and managing them.

And the economic backdrop is only getting bigger. McKinsey estimates the global space economy could grow from about $630 billion in 2023 to $1.8 trillion by 2035. That kind of expansion is exactly when ESG questions stop being optional. Once an industry is scaling fast enough to attract mainstream equity capital, investors have to ask not just whether it can grow, but what costs it creates on the way.

The darker side

Those costs are increasingly hard to ignore. NASA’s own 2024 technical memorandum says rocket launches and re-entering satellites and upper stages emit gases and aerosols into every layer of the atmosphere, with potential effects on climate and ozone. NOAA-linked research similarly finds that black carbon from rockets can accumulate in the stratosphere, absorb solar radiation and warm the surrounding air. Space may still be a small emitter compared with aviation or heavy industry, but that is not the right benchmark. The more relevant point is that launch activity is rising, and so are the associated atmospheric impacts.

Then there is orbital congestion — the environmental issue space enthusiasts too often treat as somebody else’s problem. ESA’s 2025 Space Environment Report says about 40,000 objects are now tracked in orbit, including roughly 11,000 active payloads, while the estimated population of debris fragments larger than 1 cm exceeds 1.2 million. ESA’s conclusion is blunt: active debris removal is now required to stop the situation deteriorating further. In other words, the industry is not just using space. It is polluting it.

The social case is more awkward than the marketing usually suggests. Yes, there are obvious benefits in connectivity, climate monitoring and emergency response. But there is also a fair question about social utility. Not every mission that is technologically impressive is socially valuable. Investors should be able to distinguish between companies that help solve terrestrial problems and those whose business models depend on ever more launches, ever larger constellations, or vanity-driven demand with unclear public benefit. “Because it is cool” is not an ESG framework.

Conclusions

That pushes governance to the centre of the story. For space companies, ESG is not just about carbon disclosures. It is about whether management teams can show credible stewardship of launch intensity, fuel mix, debris mitigation, collision avoidance, end-of-life disposal and the real-world usefulness of their services. The investable question is not whether space is good or bad. It is whether a company’s revenues are tied to measurable benefits on Earth — or to externalities that regulation has not yet fully priced.

So perhaps the dark side of the Moon is not a lunar metaphor at all. It is the risk that public markets fall in love with the romance of space before they do the harder ESG accounting. Artemis makes the theme feel heroic again. But for equity markets, the more interesting question is less “can we go?” than “what are we bringing back — value, damage, or both?”

Monthly sustainable bond market commentary and analysis (professional investors)

Focal points

•       MySustainableCorner is Ostrum Asset Management's monthly analytical newsletter dedicated to developments in the sustainable bond market, applying Ostrum's proprietary Sustainable Bond Rating methodology which evaluates instruments on quality and value at both issuer and project level.

•       The March 2026 edition covers sustainable bond market conditions, new issuance trends, regulatory developments and pricing dynamics relevant to ESG-oriented fixed income investors.

•       The newsletter is part of Ostrum's broader sustainable fixed income capabilities, which include dedicated Just Transition bond strategies and an Article 9 SFDR-classified global sustainable transition bond fund.

•       Note: Full content is accessible to professional investors only via profile registration on the Ostrum website.

Mixed transition read-through from Eni's 2026 Capital Markets Day

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•       In the first major oil sector update since the latest Middle East price shock, Eni directed upside cash flows toward higher shareholder distributions and upgraded oil and gas growth guidance, reinforcing hydrocarbons as the engine of the 2030 plan.

•       Low-carbon investment held up better than the headline group capex cut implies: Plenitude was modestly upgraded and Enilive maintained; a EUR 1.5bn Plenitude capital raising signals residual market appetite for renewables growth in a sector broadly pulling back.

•       A key concern is that Eni no longer highlights its absolute lifecycle Scope 1, 2 and 3 target — previously the last comprehensive sector-level target addressing portfolio Scope 3 emissions — representing a material step back in transition ambition.

•       Eni attributed group capex cuts to FX effects, efficiency gains and deconsolidation rather than weaker underlying activity, but Accela finds the net transition read-through is negative given the prioritisation of hydrocarbon growth over low-carbon scaling.

•       The CMD update is directly relevant to shareholders monitoring Eni's transition commitments and to investors assessing whether the company's 2030 strategy is converging or diverging from a Paris-aligned pathway.

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•       A survey of more than 500 C-suite executives across banks, asset managers, asset owners and other financial institutions, conducted by RepRisk and Oxford Economics in January 2026, finds that business conduct risk incidents are becoming more frequent, more complex, and more costly — with the average incident carrying a multi-million dollar cost.

•       81% of executives agree that business conduct risk data will be more valuable in the next three years due to increasingly complex risks; 58% report they have increased spend following a major incident.

•       AI-related conduct risks show a sharp step-change in perceived materiality: only 16% of executives identified AI-related risks as a top concern over the past three years, but this figure rises to 56% for the next three years, driven by concerns around data privacy, cybersecurity and misleading communications.

•       Two-thirds of respondents express confidence in conduct risk data that combines advanced AI with expert human input, versus just over one-third who are confident in fully automated approaches — a finding relevant to ESG data providers and due diligence models.

•       The report underlines the growing intersection between traditional ESG governance risk and emerging AI conduct risk as a single, expanding category of material financial risk for financial institutions.

Shell's new LNG disclosures improve cost visibility but reveal deeper transition risk than the 'resilience' narrative implies

Focal points

•       Shell's new LNG disclosures — produced in response to a shareholder resolution — materially improve visibility on cost competitiveness and NPV sensitivities across its LNG portfolio.

•       Despite improved cost curve transparency, Accela concludes Shell's LNG portfolio is less resilient to transition risk than the company's headline narrative implies, even under relatively moderate transition scenarios.

•       The improved disclosure highlights a persistent internal contradiction: the prices required to justify new LNG supply are higher than those needed to unlock demand in core Asia-Pacific growth markets — a fundamental tension Shell's 'resilience' framing does not resolve.

•       Accela finds that the new disclosures are not sufficient to fully assess long-term value resilience under low-demand or accelerated-transition scenarios, limiting the utility of the disclosure improvement for transition risk assessment.

•       The analysis is directly relevant to shareholders considering further resolutions and to investors evaluating whether Shell's LNG strategy is appropriately pricing long-term transition and stranded asset risk.

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•       Over $34 billion of private capital flowed into robotics-related companies in 2025 — more than 2.5x the 2024 level — yet many of the best-funded companies remain in early commercialisation, with scaled deployments years away.

•       Physical world foundation models — combining vision language action (VLA) models and world models — are emerging as the next frontier of AI, but data scarcity remains a critical bottleneck as embodied robotics data simply does not exist at scale.

•       Generation identifies three investment thesis buckets for growth-stage companies: those with a data advantage, those creating repeatable customer value, and those becoming essential software infrastructure for the robotics industry.

•       Sustainability applications of physical AI include last-mile medical drone delivery, robotic weeders that eliminate herbicide use, and autonomous construction equipment — though Generation flags the dual risk of prolonging fossil fuel extraction and enabling autonomous weapons systems.

•       The 'picks and shovels' opportunity — software infrastructure for testing, simulation and observability — is highlighted as a key near-term investment category, analogous to platforms like Grafana and Datadog in the software era.

Contents

… includes …

•       Why Generation is focusing on physical world AI

•       Breakthroughs in computational power and spatial reasoning

•       Physical world foundation models: world models and VLAs

•       Three ways growth-stage companies can win

•       The data advantage

•       The infrastructure opportunity

•       Sustainability applications and risks

Anglo American's inaugural climate transition plan: portfolio transformation reduces exposure but long-term credibility depends on near-term delivery

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•       Anglo American's portfolio simplification — exiting steelmaking coal, nickel and PGMs to focus on copper and iron ore — materially reduces emissions exposure and lowers transition risk, making the path to its 30% Scope 1 and 2 reduction target structurally easier.

•       The switch to a 2020 baseline for its Scope 1 and 2 targets, alongside a now less emissions-intensive portfolio, materially eases the delivery task; Accela notes this creates a risk of apparent progress without genuine ambition uplift.

•       Anglo's new Scope 3 steel intensity target — addressing the emissions profile of its premium iron ore — is notable in a mining sector where Scope 3 ambition remains limited.

•       Long-term credibility will depend on demonstrated near-term progress, including clearer milestones on Scope 3 and a credible plan for the longer-dated challenge of diesel abatement.

•       A proposed merger with Teck introduces uncertainty over the durability of the plan: if completed, targets and governance may be revisited, with greater scrutiny likely needed on Scope 1 and 3 alignment under the combined entity.

Focal points

•       Air Liquide is expected to remain aligned with a 2°C pathway by 2030; operational emissions (Scope 1 and 2, market-based) have declined 11.1% since 2020, supporting its 33% reduction target by 2035.

•       Total emissions fell only 2.7% between 2020 and 2024 as a 67% rise in upstream Scope 3 emissions — which account for approximately 40% of the total footprint — offset operational reductions elsewhere.

•       Air Liquide has no quantified medium-term reduction target for Scope 3, creating a persistent gap between operational progress and total footprint trajectory.

•       The company is investing heavily in the energy transition, allocating 50% of its planned EUR 16 billion capex by 2025 toward decarbonisation projects; positive steps also include exiting the AFPM industry association and linking climate targets to executive compensation.

•       Planet Tracker notes progress on supplier and customer climate engagement but flags that the Scope 3 gap represents the key credibility risk for investors assessing Air Liquide's Paris alignment.

The AMOC, one of the planet's key climate engines, is showing signs of slowing. Even without a full collapse, a shift could mean sharper storms, rising seas and sudden changes to the systems we depend on for food, water and energy.

Focal points

•       Rathbones Greenbank introduces a new whitepaper, 'Climate Tipping Points and Investor Implications: The AMOC Tipping Point', examining how changes to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could reshape economies, supply chains and asset valuations.

•       The AMOC regulates European temperatures, global monsoon systems and carbon absorption; early warning indicators suggest it may be approaching thresholds where change could occur far more abruptly than previously assumed.

•       Even without full AMOC collapse — a low probability but high impact event — partial weakening could within five to fifteen years intensify storms in Northern Europe, disrupt rainfall across Africa and Asia, accelerate Atlantic sea level rise, and destabilise global food and water systems.

•       Tipping points do not occur in isolation: a weakening AMOC could activate cascading feedback loops involving the Amazon rainforest, Arctic sea ice and El Niño patterns — risks that traditional financial models fail to capture and that create portfolio blind spots.

•       Greenbank calls on investors to integrate tipping point risk into forward-looking analysis today: the whitepaper sets out evidence, early warning signs and practical steps — and is the first in a planned series on non-linear climate dynamics for investors.

Contents

… includes …

•       Why the AMOC matters for investors

•       Early warning indicators and current status

•       Potential impacts on food, water, energy and coastal systems

•       Tipping points and cascading risks

•       Blind spots in financial models

•       Practical steps for investor integration

The future of the UK food system is at a pivotal moment. Shifting consumer needs, environmental pressures, and evolving policy expectations are creating a landscape where change is not just imminent, but unavoidable.

Focal points

•       A Laudes Foundation workshop bringing together food businesses, civil society, unions, NGOs and investors found that structural change in the UK food system is already underway, and without coordinated planning the costs will fall disproportionately on those with least supply chain influence — particularly farmers.

•       Food systems account for approximately one-third of global emissions, and moves towards plant-based consumption and regenerative production will disrupt long-established sectors — primarily meat and dairy — where margins are already thin and transition income risks are poorly understood.

•       A persistent lack of comparable, reliable data on labour conditions, environmental performance and transition readiness is a structural barrier to investment: investors cannot engage, monitor progress, or assess risk exposure without it.

•       Fragmented policy across health, climate and finance creates 'policy drag' for private capital; the UK's Food Strategy review represents a critical window for joined-up action, but without it contradictory regulation will undermine investor confidence.

•       Workers and trade unions must have a meaningful voice in transition planning — a transition that excludes workers risks social legitimacy, increasing reputational and regulatory risks for companies and investors along the supply chain.

Contents

… includes …

•       Emerging concerns across the value chain

•       Transition risk at farm and primary processing stages

•       The case for improved data and disclosure

•       Implications for investors in a changing food system

•       The role of workers and coordinated stakeholder action

Focal points

•       In January 2026, ESG leader equity strategies performed close to the broader market, while thematic indices — including alternative energy and water — outperformed, continuing a trend of thematic outperformance across calendar 2025.

•       Diversifying across ESG Leaders, Thematic and Improver equity strategies has supported portfolios during periods of market volatility, according to UBS CIO analysis.

•       In fixed income, green bonds benefited from tightening credit spreads in the period, while multilateral development bank bonds continued to enjoy their liquidity premium.

•       The report provides the UBS CIO's monthly update on the transition to a low-carbon economy, covering policy headwinds, extreme weather events, corporate commitments and renewables expansion.

Transition risks and investor priorities for the rapidly expanding data centre sector

Focal points

•       Accela reviews the climate strategies of 10 major data centre companies — including global tech giants, listed operators and private providers — and finds most have weak or early-stage decarbonisation plans despite rapid expansion and soaring electricity demand.

•       Many operators claim to run on 100% renewable electricity via power purchase agreements or renewable certificates, but these claims rarely match the electricity actually powering facilities in real time; Alphabet's Scope 1 and 2 emissions rose 66% in four years (FY21–FY24) despite procuring '100% renewable power'.

•       Two of the biggest drivers of energy use — capacity and utilisation — are rarely addressed in climate strategies: servers on average run at only 20–80% of their potential, and idle servers still consume 20–60% of peak power, making overbuilding a direct source of waste emissions.

•       In the two years to March 2025, $18bn of data centre projects in the US were blocked and a further $46bn delayed due to community and activist opposition, highlighting the social licence risks of underperforming on sustainability commitments.

•       The sector lags other high-emissions industries on climate governance, disclosure and transition planning: the absence of a widely accepted net-zero benchmark limits comparability and weakens confidence in decarbonisation pathway credibility.

Contents

… includes …

•       The current state of climate strategies in the sector

•       Capacity, utilisation and electricity procurement

•       Systems-wide externalities: value chain, water use, just transition

•       Climate governance, disclosure and transition planning

•       Key takeaways for investors

Focal points

•       SABIC maintains its 2050 carbon neutrality goal and targets a 20% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 2030 from a 2018 baseline; Planet Tracker's analysis places it on a 2°C pathway by 2030.

•       SABIC has achieved a 13.95% reduction since its 2018 baseline, but progress has stalled more recently — absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions declined just 3% since 2021 and increased marginally (0.4%) year-over-year in 2024.

•       SABIC has no Scope 3 emissions target, despite Scope 3 accounting for approximately 70% of its total footprint — a critical gap that prevents alignment with the Paris Agreement's latest ambition.

•       As a chemicals and petrochemicals major operating under Saudi Aramco majority ownership, SABIC's transition strategy faces structural constraints around upstream value chain emissions and production growth.

Climate risks and occupier demand shifts pose the biggest threats to asset values

Focal points

•       66% of nearly 200 surveyed real estate professionals say sustainability is still core to their investment or operational strategy, with 44% planning to do more in 2026 and only 4% expecting to do less.

•       While 29% of firms have changed how they communicate about sustainability and 14% now avoid the term 'ESG' altogether, investor and lender requirements remain the strongest driver of sustainability action, cited by 49% of respondents.

•       Physical climate impacts — flooding, heatwaves and wildfires — and occupier demand shifts are both cited by approximately 40% of respondents as the biggest threats to asset values in 2026.

•       Capital and ROI concerns are the primary barrier to improving climate resilience (64%), far ahead of lack of urgency (30%), underscoring the financial case gap that constrains decarbonisation investment.

•       The survey challenges the narrative that sustainability is losing ground in real estate: the findings, to be discussed at MIPIM 2026, suggest that investor requirements — not ESG labels — are what matter to the sector.

Focal points

•       Publicis holds SBTi-validated targets to reduce Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 and 90% by 2040 against a 2019 base year, alongside a goal of 100% renewable energy use by 2030.

•       Between 2019 and 2024 total GHG emissions fell by just 5%: Scope 1 emissions fell 38% and Scope 2 fell 64%, but Scope 3 rose 12%, driven by business growth, representing the dominant remaining challenge.

•       Absent a significant change in the Scope 3 trajectory, Planet Tracker's modelling places Publicis on a 2°C warming pathway by 2030, short of its stated Paris-aligned ambition.

•       The analysis is part of Planet Tracker's broader series examining climate transition alignment across the advertising sector, published alongside comparable analyses for Dentsu, WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic and Havas.