PwC on Whether Climate Ambition Peaked

Thanks for having me.

Great.

So maybe to get us started, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the sustainability landscape at large, the key trends that you're watching, and ultimately how you see the space evolving over the next several months.

Yeah.

So there's been a lot of pressure that companies are facing right now where we are seeing, you know, the tax credits and incentives landscape continue to evolve.

Fortunately, not go away.

Just changes in the types of incentives that are available that are supporting sustainability and decarbonization and climate efforts.

But we are also seeing challenges in some cases where there's lawsuits related to greenwashing.

There's more pressure to demonstrate results.

And some of that pressure can actually be a good thing.

It's motivating a sharper level of focus on outcomes, on business results.

Very interesting.

And earlier this year,

PwC published its third annual state of decarbonization report.

Can you tell us a little bit about the design of the report, your motivation for writing it, and some of the key takeaways?

Yeah.

So as you mentioned, this is the third year that we're doing this.

And, you know, we've seen a lot of sensational headlines in the news, headlines about companies backtracking on climate or ditching targets or abandoning climate pledges.

And it can create this belief that there's a mass exodus away from climate and sustainability at the corporate level.

Our research has been a pretty critical fact base for helping our clients, helping media and nonprofits and other groups go beyond the headlines and understand what is truly happening globally.

We've been studying climate ambitions.

We've been studying the progress against those ambitions.

And we've also identified the differentiators in terms of what's separating those companies that are on track against their ambitions compared to those that are not on track.

Given the onslaught of negative headlines that we've been reading, especially this year, We were bracing ourselves.

We expected to see a pretty dramatic pullback this year.

Thanks for having me.

Great.

So maybe to get us started, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the sustainability landscape at large, the key trends that you're watching, and ultimately how you see the space evolving over the next several months.

Yeah.

So there's been a lot of pressure that companies are facing right now where we are seeing, you know, the tax credits and incentives landscape continue to evolve.

Fortunately, not go away.

Just changes in the types of incentives that are available that are supporting sustainability and decarbonization and climate efforts.

But we are also seeing challenges in some cases where there's lawsuits related to greenwashing.

There's more pressure to demonstrate results.

And some of that pressure can actually be a good thing.

It's motivating a sharper level of focus on outcomes, on business results.

Very interesting.

And earlier this year,

PwC published its third annual state of decarbonization report.

Can you tell us a little bit about the design of the report, your motivation for writing it, and some of the key takeaways?

Yeah.

So as you mentioned, this is the third year that we're doing this.

And, you know, we've seen a lot of sensational headlines in the news, headlines about companies backtracking on climate or ditching targets or abandoning climate pledges.

And it can create this belief that there's a mass exodus away from climate and sustainability at the corporate level.

Our research has been a pretty critical fact base for helping our clients, helping media and nonprofits and other groups go beyond the headlines and understand what is truly happening globally.

We've been studying climate ambitions.

We've been studying the progress against those ambitions.

And we've also identified the differentiators in terms of what's separating those companies that are on track against their ambitions compared to those that are not on track.

Given the onslaught of negative headlines that we've been reading, especially this year, We were bracing ourselves.

We expected to see a pretty dramatic pullback this year.