As economic, regulatory, and technological changes continue to reshape industries, businesses must develop strategies that not only ensure compliance but also drive continued, long-term success.
At the recent Wolters Kluwer Enablon Sustainable Performance Forum (SPF) 2025 event in Chicago, Stuart Neumann, vice-president of Advisory Services at independent research and advisory firm Verdantix, outlined the most critical strategies for resilience and sustainable growth in an ever-changing world.
Neumann revealed there are four different factors shaping the sustainability strategies of companies and countries in 2025. The first is geopolitical instability, particularly triggered by geopolitical events including the war in Ukraine, which has pushed nations to a shift energy mixes and a focus on energy resilience and independence. Data from the International Energy Agency illustrates this clear intent, observing that two-thirds of the world’s $3-trillion investment in energy last year was dedicated to clean-energy technologies and infrastructure.
The second is carbon border taxes and trade policy shifts, which require nations to pay carbon emissions taxes on imported goods. Regions like the European Union (EU), Japan, and Australia are introducing mechanisms to tax the carbon emissions for import of goods, affecting global investment, production, and procurement decisions.
The third is digital and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven sustainability management, where AI is being implemented to, for example, integrate climate risk analytics with incident management data for better management of extreme weather events. Overall, AI and advanced analytics are being integrated into sustainability reporting, carbon footprint tracking, and supply chain optimization.
The fourth is corporate climate strategies and net zero targets. Many organizations are reassessing their net zero targets due to the challenges in achieving them, and balancing decarbonization with economic growth. There’s a shift from “net-zero at all costs” to “realistic transition plans,” with more emphasis on Scope 3 emissions reduction via supplier collaboration.
Neumann says approaches to sustainability are evolving differently in terms of governance and ambition. In the U.S., for instance, businesses are taking a “small” sustainability approach: essentially continuing with business as usual and not kicking off new sustainability projects since it appears compliance requirements in the U.S. won’t be as stringent as initially anticipated. Without a regulatory forcing factor, U.S.-headquartered firms likely won’t centralize governance of sustainability issues, with risk assessment and opportunity identification mostly fragmented across functions. Neumann expects the level of ambition will rarely go beyond stakeholder engagement.
European businesses, by contrast, have a “big” sustainability approach with more ambitions on climate, biodiversity, and nature, particularly as outlined in the disclosure recommendations from the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). European headquartered firms will move towards more centralized governance, especially as regulatory frameworks become clearer. Firms with more than €5 billion in revenue will start or continue their transformation strategies.
Neumann’s prediction for a game-changing ESG development on the horizon is the ability to successfully integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and sustainability risks and opportunities into risk and strategy frameworks. Doing so will allow firms to connect different data streams within their organization (e.g. financial data, HR data) to calculate, for example, the financial impact of avoiding an incident, the financial impact of improving climate performance, etc.
To find out more about our award-winning ESG solution, contact Wolters Kluwer Enablon today. And, to read more about other insightful sessions at SPF 2025, check out these other posts:
