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Daily Update — Decemeber 04, 2025

ESG Regulatory Tracker; AI’s Global Resource Race; and North America Credit Conditions

Today is Thursday, December 4, 2025, and here’s your curated selection of Essential Intelligence on global markets from S&P Global. Subscribe to be notified of each new Daily Update.

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Energy Transition & Sustainability

ESG Regulatory Tracker — October 2025

 

Regulation is shaping the sustainability agenda and changing the way companies do business in different jurisdictions. However, keeping pace with constant regulatory updates has become an increasingly difficult task for businesses and investors. In this series, S&P Global Sustainable1 presents key environmental, social and governance regulatory developments and disclosure standards from around the world.

 

This month's update looks at proposals by the European Commission to simplify the EU deforestation rule, California’s publication of a draft template for reporting Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and the Philippines’ proposed sustainability reporting standards.

Artificial Intelligence

AI’s global resource race: Challenges and opportunities

 

Data centers are becoming the defining infrastructure of the 21st century, underpinning an AI-driven digital transformation. Yet their expansion faces headwinds, including challenges around power availability, critical material costs and supply, environmental resource constraints and financial risks. Players that can innovate across design, location, energy sources, financing and supply chains will control the digital infrastructure, enabling a modern industrial revolution.

 

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, cloud hyperscalers and leading generative AI firms have been in a heated AI race. Tech companies have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to train large language models to gain a first-mover advantage, garner recognition for the "best model” and, in the long run, be the first to achieve artificial general intelligence — an AI system that understands, learns and applies knowledge to a wide range of tasks beyond a human level of intelligence.

Economy

Credit Conditions North America Q1 2026: Favorable Yet Fragile

 

Credit conditions for borrowers in North America look set to remain favorable in the near term, with corporate spreads near historic lows and policy interest rates falling. Defaults will likely remain contained, especially as speculative-grade borrowers have pushed out maturities.

 

Cracks in the consumer sector — especially at the lower end of the income scale — and the prospect of increased investor risk aversion could cause a sharp turnaround. US consumer purchasing power continues to erode, with wage gains lagging an inflation rate that continues to run above the Federal Reserve’s target and unemployment creeping higher. S&P Global Ratings believes that the US economy will avoid a downturn, but that there is a 30% chance of a recession. At the same time, legal challenges to the Trump administration’s authority to apply tariffs have fueled uncertainty about how tariffs will play out.

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