Climate Week 2025 recap: Key takeaways from the conversations happening on the ground

During Climate Week NYC, PwC presented a dynamic series of panels focused on how organizations can safeguard their value and discover new avenues for growth through sustainability. We unpacked major topics — from the mounting challenges facing global supply chains, to leveraging sustainability data with advanced technologies like AI, all the way to the latest updates on California’s climate reporting laws. Check out the recaps below to gain key insights on how to drive smarter, faster value creation in an evolving business landscape.

In today’s deal landscape, sustainability is rapidly shifting from a peripheral concern to both a powerful value creation driver and a critical business resilience lever. By embedding ESG considerations into the deal lifecycle — from due diligence to post-close integration and exit readiness — investors can uncover new sources of growth, improve operational performance and meet rising stakeholder expectations. At the same time, sustainability can enhance companies’ long-term resilience by helping leaders navigate regulatory shifts, supply chain volatility and climate and nature-related risks.

For parties on every side of a deal, then, leveraging sustainability is more than good practice — it’s a smart strategy for mitigating value at risk and building more adaptive, future-ready businesses.​ Unlocking value begins with identifying the topics that create real financial risks and opportunities — from carbon and waste to supply chain practices and physical climate risk resilience — and then prioritizing and acting on them.

Our session on using sustainability as a value lever in deals took a close look at issues that investors and companies should look to address, including pre-close considerations and post-close value creation. Surveys suggest that risk management is no longer investors’ foremost sustainability concern. Now they are emphasizing investments and innovation that promise to create ROI. It’s a shift that reflects how companies have come to embed sustainability as a value driver.

Some takeaways from our discussion included:

• While it’s increasingly important to quantify the financial impact of sustainability initiatives, three challenges can hinder the process: investors may have limited access to company management and performance metrics; it’s time-consuming to assess initiatives’ costs and benefits; and in-depth analysis for material sustainability topics can be overwhelming.
• In surveys, most investors want to see companies embed sustainability directly into their corporate strategy. While political shifts and mandates may be pressuring companies to change climate-linked terminology, leaders are looking to maintain strategies focused on ROI.
• Sustainability analysis can be embedded throughout the diligence process, from a thorough performance assessment and geospatial data analysis to quantifying initiatives’ financial impact and prioritizing high-impact action items.

Need more information on how to include sustainability matters in your deals assessments?

Read our research

With California’s climate disclosure deadlines fast approaching, representing the first such US regulatory mandates, many companies are still struggling to move from intent to execution. Sustainability reporting leaders should quickly mobilize data, systems and governance to get compliant.

Organizations can use California’s requirements as a jumping-off point to turn compliance readiness into a launchpad for smarter reporting, better risk planning and long-term value creation. The state’s new rules set the tone for a broader wave of transparency, one that could reshape how markets evaluate risk and resilience.

Our session on California’s laws offered attendees six separate booths addressing a range of issues facing organizations doing business in the state and beyond: global regulatory updates, sustainability assurance readiness, Scope 3 measurement strategies, finding financial benefit in sustainability reporting, geospatial climate intelligence and an AI-driven climate reporting tool demonstration. All areas highlighted how sustainability and decarbonization efforts can generate business value, in the form of revenue growth (price premiums, increased sales volume or market share and new revenue streams), cost reduction (lower energy use and less waste), and/or risk reduction (higher energy resilience, stronger brand recognition and longer long-term costs for climate mitigation).

These demonstrations show how leaders can help move organizations from compliance to competitive advantage. Climate-related data can drive decisions and create value across the organization: Tracking emissions can help identify energy savings and process improvements; collecting and presenting assurance-ready, auditable data enables informed decision-making and supports performance tracking; measuring climate-related risks can help embed those risks into ERM to anticipate and manage disruptions; and creating a forward-looking risk analysis can inform long-term planning, supply chain resilience and capital allocation.

Our panel discussion also covered:

• How designating and formalizing roles along the information chain can boost accountability and reduce disclosure risk, especially as requirements shift. A pyramid of disclosure roles can rise from a data steward (responsible for collecting, controlling and submitting data) and metric information owners (identify key process risks and implement controls) to an ESG center of excellence (reconciles ESG disclosures with supporting documentation) and disclosure owners (review all information prior to public release).
• How reporting Scope 3 remains a pain point since calculating external emissions requires making estimates, using processes, methodologies and even facts (e.g., product life) that may not hold up under future assurance requirements. Big companies may have enormous value chains, requiring engagement with a shifting array of suppliers, customers and other stakeholders.

More on California

For companies with wide networks of sites and facilities, or far-reaching supply chains, the risk of being hit by a violent storm, a flood, or a heat wave translates into financial risk. That’s because operational disruptions can and do result in lost revenues and added costs. Telecommunication operators, for example, often have service-level agreements with their customers that require them to refund a whole month’s worth of fees if a system outage lasts for more than a few minutes — and storm-related outages sometimes go on for days.

Preventing problems like this is a matter of managing climate risk as a strategic issue through systems and processes that a company already has in place, such as its enterprise risk management system. And when companies get this right, they can gain meaningful advantages over competitors that still treat climate risk as incidental.

Discussion at a PwC event during New York Climate Week touched on a few practices that executives can follow to make sure that climate risk gets the same management attention as other business-critical matters.

• Climate risk assessments should be site-specific, highlighting the particular climate hazards that threaten each and every location. Those hazards can differ greatly from one place to the next: coastal locations might be prone to storm surges, while others face wildfires or hailstorms. Assessments should also cover not only the company’s own locations, but also the operations of its Tier 1 suppliers and the major transportation hubs that it relies on.
• Quantifying risk in financial terms is an important next step in determining the extent of a company’s exposure to climate risk. Managers might readily determine which sites face serious climate risks risk of one kind or another. But until they know how critical each site is to the company’s financial performance, they might struggle to make judicious investments in business resilience.
• Integrating climate risks with the company’s enterprise risk management (ERM) system, business-continuity plans, and governance structure (with well-defined roles for functions such as risk, IT, operations, and finance) helps confirm that companies manage these risks on an ongoing basis, rather than in a one-time effort that quickly becomes obsolete as conditions change.

As extreme weather causes more frequent and more costly damage, insurance companies find themselves hard-pressed to maintain profitability while also providing coverage and pricing that customers and regulators expect. It’s a challenge that extends well beyond the insurance industry: real estate investors and lenders, for example, could see property values go down in areas which are prone to climate-driven weather perils.

In a Climate Week discussion convened by PwC, insurance professionals shared observations on these dynamics, along with ideas about how their industry can mitigate risk, promote resilience and deliver returns: 

• Emerging challenges for insurance companies operating in the US can be seen in the information they provide to state regulators. Recent filings have indicated higher loss ratios and rising rates in midwestern states, where losses caused by hailstorms have mounted over the past several years.
• Risk sharing arrangements are evolving as insurance premiums increase and coverage exclusions grow. In 2020-2024, the uninsured portion of the cost of natural catastrophes hovered around 60%. This protection gap highlights the risk that property owners can face, especially if their assets aren’t built to withstand challenging conditions.
• Financing resilience could increase if there were new models of distributing costs among property owners, insurers, lenders and other stakeholders. At the moment, all of those stakeholders stand to benefit from investments in resilience, but only the property owners are responsible for making those investments.
• Preventive action by insurance companies could help them maintain or improve their financial performance while narrowing the protection gap. New products and solutions could encourage preparedness for climate risk — for example, by giving property owners stronger incentives to invest in resilience. Insurers might also explore opportunities to offer products and services that support emissions reduction, thereby helping prevent climate risks from getting worse in the future.

Insurance insights

With consumer spending driving economic trends and many corporate sustainability decisions, it’s critical for retailers to stay abreast of current research on how people are shopping, both online and in person. Recent PwC surveys and research on consumer packaged goods (CPG) — The state of consumer packaged goods, Future of CPG, Holiday Outlook 2025 and Voice of the Consumer 2025 — show different perspectives on developments in retail and beyond. Results and analysis suggest ways that CPG decision-makers can think about how to move sustainability from a cost driver to a value driver, leveraging AI to look at an organization’s projects and how to effectively allocate capital.

Our session on “Driving growth and resilience in CPG” offered insights for retailers and others in the value chain. Holiday Outlook respondents expect holiday spending to decline 5% year over year, driven largely by generational shifts; most notably, Gen Z shoppers plan to pull back 23% from the 2024 season. Gift cards are now the top gift across all generations, with cash resurging even as consumer behavior goes increasingly digital. And companies are moving toward direct-to-consumer marketing and distribution, with a focus on targeted AI investments.

Our discussion covered:

• Retailers struggling to capture Gen Z wallets, which requires keeping up with social-media trends and acting more quickly than many supply chains can currently handle. Many Gen Z consumers make purchasing decisions based on social media and rapidly adopt brands and themes — or drop them.
• Consumers increasingly asking generative AI for help with planning gift-giving, and surveys converge on showing a growing intention to buy online with AI help. But there’s a gap between AI shopping capabilities and consumer trust, especially for older consumers. People demand 100% cash-back guarantees before giving smart technologies control over actual purchasing decisions.
• A growing number of US households include at least one member on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. The trend could well reprogram consumer desires and trends across categories and sectors, far beyond food and beverages. Companies might look to get ahead of the trend and view changing behaviors and patterns as an opportunity to become a trusted brand.

The climate transition and sustainability challenges are placing tremendous pressure on healthcare organizations, directly influencing patient care, health outcomes, operations and costs. Every participant in the healthcare value chain is already seeing impacts. With broad implications for providers, payers, pharma and patients, climate-related risks and sustainability practices are reshaping healthcare delivery, supply chains, infrastructure and community health strategies.

In many ways, the climate crisis is a healthcare crisis. Extreme weather disrupts logistics and medical supply chains, and while providers and researchers are still learning about climate-exacerbated illness, it’s clear that vulnerable populations feel the greatest impact from extreme weather. Heat waves and poor air quality can be far deadlier than natural disasters, creating an imperative for interventions from opening cooling centers to making available literature and information connecting environment and health.

Our roundtable on driving resiliency across the healthcare ecosystem surfaced strategies and challenges in safeguarding patient health and incorporating sustainability into business practice. Participants described their experiences working to expand the popular vision of sustainability within the field, moving from recycling and energy conservation to a more holistic view. Increasing impact means an effort to influence companies upstream in the healthcare value chain, with more sustainable practices for medical equipment and more attention to the social determinants of health. Increased collaboration can make a real difference.

The panel raised the following points:

• In healthcare, sustainability advocates have to be able to use a range of types of language to make a strong business case to decision-makers in different positions. Having a solid understanding of climate science can help make the case to stakeholders.
• Large healthcare organizations have generally incorporated sustainable practices, but most providers are much smaller, and they may need help to engage more deeply. Larger companies need to mentor and encourage smaller companies without the financial and/or staff resources to build resilience capabilities.
• Communicating on sustainability metrics remains a challenge: It’s not always clear how to frame resilience in positive terms rather than losses. Quantifying and discussing costs and bad outcomes avoided may be less effective than talking about positive outcomes, but that language is often harder to come up with.
• Health insurers, with voluminous data on weather and more, have a unique opportunity to drive changes in both corporate practices and people’s behavior.

As new AI capabilities further transform the business landscape, pioneering companies are becoming AI-native to help drive growth and business value. Organizations in every sector are working to navigate the complexities of energy demand management and supply chain resilience, with AI initiatives enabling enhanced efficiency and sustainability. Smart technology is powering carbon-aware operations and accelerating progress toward ambitious renewable energy goals.

If anything, forecasts of AI’s reach may be understated: no technology has evolved faster or been more profound since the advent of the internet era. For companies using GenAI applications, the price is falling exponentially as capabilities explode. As agentic AI enables new business workflows and systems incorporate quantum computing, organizations may see a massive impact.

Our session on AI’s macro view highlighted these developments and others such as autonomous agents, multimodal AI, small language models and embodied AI. While CEOs often cite cybersecurity and implementation costs as main technology concerns, data issues are becoming more significant since AI uses data differently than traditional systems. The most pressing challenge is that AI advances faster than organizations can keep up, even as companies rely on AI-powered tools and sensors to boost energy efficiency.

Other key takeaways from our discussion:

• AI use is driving unprecedented energy demand. To meet sustainability goals, companies need to begin by quantifying energy and resource use at the enterprise level. The good news: AI applications enable robust data collection and analysis of that resource use, identifying areas on which to focus.
• Quantum computing has the potential to have a real impact on climate science. In the near term, technology, operating on a compact scale, can reduce energy use. Longer term, it offers possibilities in climate modeling and solutions.
• GenAI can speed the sustainability reporting process, from gathering data to assessing gaps to publishing reports. The question is how most effectively to prompt GenAI to augment data gathering, gap assessment and disclosure preparation, either human-orchestrated or AI-orchestrated with humans in the loop for oversight.
• AI-based systems can help reduce energy demand in commercial buildings, as rising utility costs and wasted energy in buildings cut into profitability. Real estate is an overlooked driver of operational costs and emissions: real estate drives 40% of global emissions, and energy is a top three operating cost for most companies.

Read PwC’s Tech Effect for our AI predictions, views on responsible AI and other AI insights.

Tech Effect

Delivering capital projects and infrastructure programs on time and within budget is more challenging than ever, with unpredictable energy, economic and political trends keeping planners busy. Organizations are navigating persistent challenges: evolving regulations, accelerated tech disruption, extreme weather events and a shortage of skilled labor. Meanwhile, decarbonization imperatives are driving demand for resilient, clean-energy infrastructure. And everything is happening at once, with market forces often at odds with each other.

As demand for energy surges, companies and governments are racing to upgrade power grids and expand capacity across new value chains. Resilience, sustainability, workforce strategy and regulatory agility are emerging as shared priorities across nearly all types of capital projects.

Our “Navigating the future of large-scale capital projects” session brought together industry leaders to explore how organizations are working to overcome these hurdles and drive long-term project viability. The discussion surfaced insights about how leaders can help infrastructure programs adapt to a dynamic global environment and deliver sustainable impact under constraints of budget, materials and, most often, skilled labor.

• With energy demand skyrocketing, companies are looking first to speed and reliability of power supply, even if that means temporarily downplaying sustainability considerations. The infrastructure for nuclear, geothermal and hydrogen power projects remain at different levels of short- and long-term viability.
• Execution of large-scale capital projects, particularly sustainable and tech-based initiatives, is constrained by an aging workforce, material shortages and a lack of skilled workers; labor shortages are a far bigger constraint than available funding.
• AI-based technology, while driving the boost in energy demand, is helping companies move beyond traditional capex planning and manage projects in new ways.
• Extreme weather, uncertain energy production and other factors are raising the salience of risk management for capital projects, driving new calculations and innovative planning.

Need more information on managing capital projects and infrastructure? We have you covered.

Read more on CP&I

Can companies decarbonize their way to topline growth and healthier profit margins?

That’s a question that more boards and executives are asking, amid pressure to show that companies’ investments in sustainability lead to better financial performance. In response, managers are finding better ways not only to track the value that’s being created, but also to involve customers and suppliers in their efforts.

Discussion among industry specialists at our “Decarbonization Roadmap” panel highlighted the following considerations:

• Grounding sustainability in business logic: Participants observed that it used to be possible for corporate sustainability teams to secure internal support for their work just because their companies had set certain environmental goals. No more. Leaders from industries including construction, healthcare, manufacturing, private equity, and retail said it’s become necessary to advance their sustainability programs internally by proving those efforts can help each business function meet its core goals.
• Honoring customers’ needs: Customer expectations around sustainability differ significantly by industry, requiring tailored approaches. In consumer goods, for example, shoppers are concerned above all else with the core attributes of the products they buy, especially cost. But sustainability features can distinguish products that are known to meet customers’ basic requirements – enough, in some cases, to convince shoppers to pay a price premium. In B2B sectors, on the other hand, sustainability has become a basic expectation that customers require their vendors to meet.
• Engaging suppliers: Large companies may find it difficult to apply uniform sustainability standards throughout their supply chains, so targeting key suppliers with significant spending or emissions is often more practical. But even smaller suppliers often appreciate guidance from their large-company customers, because they know those customers might soon ask them to meet strict standards. Another key to effective supplier engagement: partnering with procurement teams, who care about cost, quality and timeliness.
• Measuring performance: Participants agreed that sustainability management becomes easier with appropriate information systems, whether using existing features or adding specialized tools. Managers should note that these systems may rely on varying assumptions and data, so it's important to track and reconcile any differences in sustainability estimates.

The search for ways that businesses can speed growth and lower costs never ends. It becomes even more pressing in uncertain times. Business leaders need ideas they can depend on and, increasingly, those ideas come from sustainability.

As Climate Week NYC gets underway, PwC has published new research that identifies five sustainability factors that are becoming powerful levers of financial performance. These value drivers can help executives unlock cost savings, capture new growth, manage risks and build resilience. CFOs, ESG controllers, COOs and sustainability leaders play a pivotal role in embedding these value drivers into strategic decision-making, using sharper data insights, stress-tested strategies and smarter tools to balance risk and opportunity.

The upside is clear. Leaders who act now can use sustainability to transform their organizations while competitors are left managing costs, disruption and missed opportunity.

5 value drivers

The climate transition is moving markets, reshaping supply chains and shifting regulations. PwC makes the case that this is not an issue that can wait for tomorrow.

Why? Some business leaders view sustainability as a purpose-led or long-term initiative. But that lens alone misses the hard commercial reality:

• Value is already flowing in new directions.
• Financial risk is quickly mounting.
• Opportunity is being left on the table.

Read our latest insights on the ways to approach the climate transition with a business-case mindset. Tapping into these insights can help you capture cost savings, accelerate innovation and drive value for your business.

Read more