Buzz: Transfer to editor

Key takeaways

"Through the 1,000 SPOs we've published since 2008, we see financing frameworks becoming more transparent as scientific data and investor expectations evolve, with more quantitative eligibility thresholds, clearer exclusion criteria, stronger disclosures, and a gradual shift toward verifiable implementation.

We also see taxonomies and thematic sublabels shaping sustainable finance definitions, with taxonomies often used as benchmarks rather than solely an alignment tool and sublabels supporting targeted, outcome-oriented capital allocation.

Although post-issuance transparency is improving, with issuers increasingly aligning with common guidelines and disclosing clearer allocation data, impact metrics remain sensitive to the methodology and assumptions behind them."

2008. Lehman Brothers has collapsed. And I’m managing an environmental technology fund.

Fully invested, small-cap bias baked in by a strict 70% revenue requirement, the portfolio isn’t about to be spared. In the panic of a recently appointed portfolio manager, I unearth a water utility in the midst of a takeover. A (partial) safe haven, it is entirely aligned with what that fund is trying to do. In other words, the intent of that position is clear to me.

But I can’t buy it. The governance and construction framework behind the portfolio will not allow it.

The intent is clear; the evidencing architecture is not.

...

A few highlights include:

• 44.8% reduction in operational CO₂ emissions versus the 2015 baseline.
• Continued investment in renewable electricity across its own operations and strategic suppliers.
• 100% supplier compliance with ASICS' standards.
• Establishment of the ASICS Foundation to support community health initiatives.
• A biodiversity assessment alongside its more established climate reporting.

Published: 2026

PUMA’s combined annual report includes a Sustainability Statement covering environmental and social impacts across products, materials, sourcing and the value chain.

Published: 4 March 2026

The combined report integrates financial and sustainability reporting and contains an ESRS-aligned Sustainability Statement covering climate, circularity, workforce and supply-chain matters.

Date & Time

Jul 28, 2026 02:00 PM in London

Description

Governments worldwide are implementing stronger food environment policies to address the rising burden of diet-related non-communicable diseases. As more countries have, or are considering, implementing policies to improve the healthiness of the food environment, including mandatory front-of-package labelling and reformulation targets, courts are becoming an increasingly important arena in which food-policy debates are contested.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management has published "Evolving Thematic Landscapes and Megatrends in 2026", part of its Investment Outlook series, setting out the themes it expects to shape public and private markets. It argues that sustainable investing is maturing rather than retreating — "fewer labels, more performance" — favouring mature energy-transition sub-themes such as renewables, grids and storage and "pick-and-shovel" companies over subsidy-reliant growth, while economic security, reindustrialisation and resource and energy security for AI take centre stage.

The piece flags power demand, physical risk and adaptation, the circular economy and water stress as areas of overlooked opportunity, noting that data centres consume around 3% of US power today and could reach 8% by 2030, that over 90% of new US power capacity in early 2025 came from renewables, and that two-thirds of new data centres sit in high water-stress regions. The article is available to read in full via the link.

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Opus 4.8 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

A thematic article (drawing on research from BNP Paribas Equity Research and BNPP's Quantitative Investment Strategies team) argues that nuclear power is emerging as a cornerstone of the sustainable energy transition.

It points to soaring electricity demand — the IEA projects an extra 3,500 TWh over three years, equivalent to Japan's annual use — driven by electrification, urbanisation and AI/data-centre load that intermittent renewables alone cannot meet, alongside a COP-30 pledge by 33 nations to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050. 

The piece projects nuclear's share of the global energy mix rising from around 4.7% today to 7–14% by 2050 and cites specific momentum including reactor build-out in China, new agreements in France and South Korea, and growing interest in small modular reactors. The article is available to read via the link.

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Opus 4.8 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

ISS Governance has published its analysis of the 2026 US proxy season, reporting that overall shareholder-proposal volume fell to a five-year low even as governance-related proposals rose and were the only category to win majority support.

It attributes the reshaped landscape largely to the SEC's 2025 Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14M, which gave issuers more room to secure no-action relief and drove up omissions, while the Division of Corporation Finance stepped back from opining on most exclusion requests. 

Environmental and social proposals continued their multi-year decline in both submissions and votes.

Contains

• Shareholder Proposal Volume Falls to a Five-Year Low
• How SEC No-Action Changes Reshaped Proposal Exclusions
• Governance Proposals Earn the Strongest Investor Support
• Independent Board Chair Proposals Rebound in 2026
• Shareholder Rights Proposals Continue to Win Investor Backing
• ISS-Corporate’s Approach to Proxy Season Insight

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Opus 4.8 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

Morgan Stanley has published an analysis arguing that the energy transition is entering a new phase — no longer a simple substitution toward lower-carbon power but a race to build secure, scalable and resilient systems.

Drawing on Morgan Stanley Research, it projects annual net additions to global power capacity over the next five years running around four times the 2000–2020 average, as electrification, AI and data centres accelerate consumption across the US, Europe and Asia. Energy-security exposures are reframing electrification, renewables and nuclear as a resilience strategy as much as a climate one, with financing shifting toward contracted, cash-generative assets. Read the article via the link.

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Opus 4.8 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

Chatham House has published a research paper by Katja Bego, 'How a Surge in Defence and Dual-Use Technology Investment Could Reconfigure the Global AI Race', challenging the assumption that AI leadership is a fixed two-horse race between the US and China.

It argues that high defence spending and a boom in dual-use AI investment give smaller and middle powers an opening to build their own capabilities and 'chokepoints', potentially producing a more multipolar but also more securitised and fragmented AI landscape.

The paper analyses four trends from 2025 and early 2026:

• accelerating dual-use defence AI,
• the rise of 'patriotic tech',
• growing pushes for AI and defence sovereignty, and
• concerns over an AI valuation bubble

... and sets out how the private sector can prepare.

S&P Global Sustainable1 has published the second-quarter 2026 edition of its Sustainability Quarterly research journal, "The long and short of it", examining how stakeholders are managing near-term disruption with a long-term lens at the halfway point of the year.

The edition finds that conflict in the Middle East and AI-driven power demand are reshaping the energy calculus – with wind and solar featuring more prominently in Big Tech's roadmap for energy autonomy – while research into transportation weighs decarbonisation against practical barriers to EV adoption such as cost and charging infrastructure.

It also explores how river flooding and forest degradation translate into financial risk, how governance data helps investors navigate corporate controversies, and reports that sustainable debt financing continues to favour mature transition technologies, with S&P Global passing 1,000 Second Party Opinions analysed during the quarter. Read the journal for S&P Global's full second-quarter research.

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Opus 4.8 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

Ceres has published "The Future of American Steel", arguing that the US steel industry is undergoing a technology transition that can make it simultaneously more competitive, more productive and lower-emitting. It finds the shift is being propelled by market forces — notably demand from major customers such as automakers — and by trade policy, with large US steelmakers investing in a new generation of mills designed to supply the high-quality iron feedstock needed for advanced, lower-polluting steel.

The report maps the forces reshaping US steel production and sets out recommendations for how investors, policymakers and automobile manufacturers can accelerate and capitalise on the transition, framing decarbonisation as a competitiveness and investment opportunity rather than only a compliance cost. The full report is available to download via the link.

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Opus 4.8 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

Amundi Investment Institute's working paper (by Francesca Luciani and Thierry Roncalli) argues that physical climate risk must now receive the same analytical attention that transition risk has enjoyed.

It observes that responsible investment has moved from broad ESG scores to granular climate-risk management, with portfolio decarbonisation now well anchored in standardised carbon-intensity and green-intensity metrics and mature integration frameworks, whereas physical-risk-aware portfolio construction remains in its infancy for want of an equivalent standardised anchor metric.

The paper reviews transition and physical risk modelling, discusses how to build physical-risk scores and integrate them into portfolio optimisation and strategic asset allocation, and concludes that meaningfully reducing both exposure and vulnerability is highly challenging, with a high "shadow price" of mitigation implying substantial costs and trade-offs.

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Opus 4.8 | Human-directed; AI-powered]

UBS's Chief Investment Office has published the May 2026 edition of its Strategic: Go sustainable note, reiterating the case for a diversified sustainable-investing portfolio across equities, bonds, hedge funds and private markets on the argument that long-run returns are driven more by fundamentals than politics.

Its distinctive angle this edition is the energy transition's importance for both security of supply and affordability, highlighting grid expansion and modernisation, high-voltage cables, transformers, switchgear and grid-optimisation software as beneficiaries of accelerating electrification. It notes global energy-transition investment reached a record USD 2.1 trillion in 2024 against the roughly USD 4.5 trillion a year the IEA estimates is needed by 2030 for net zero. Read the article via the link  (note published in May 26 but expired).

[Selected by Mike (54) | Summarised by Opus 4.8 | Human-directed; AI-powered]