US business leaders eye new sustainability, AI, supply chain risk strategies

Green financing has strengthened since early 2025, and sustainability policies are being implemented in US corporations without much ado, investors said at a prominent climate event.

At the five-day Climate Week 2026 conference held across New York City, attendees said corporate policies favoring clean energy and emission reductions are being applied in new ways.

"It's not sustainability off to the side; it's being integrated across everything," Sarah Kapnick, global head of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s climate advisory, said during a Sept. 22 panel discussion.

As companies look for cost savings and synergies, they find that supply chain resilience and sustainability can go hand in hand, Kapnick said. Likewise, on the investment side, people are looking more holistically at factors that cause volatility in today's market, she said.

"They're putting it together — policies with sustainability, with climate, with AI — and building their strategies around all of that now," Kapnick said.

Jens Nielsen — founder and CEO of the World Climate Foundation, which has more than $130 billion in mobilized finance — agreed that investor approaches are evolving.

"It doesn't matter whether you call it climate or sustainability or just good proper business," Nielsen said at the conference. "You need to frame it in terms of the risk, the returns, and now also the resilience."

Over the past 18 months, some investors have faced new restrictions that limit overt environmental and governance sustainability policies. At the same time, investments continue to flow to clean energy projects in the US and abroad, speakers said.

"It took us 70 years to build the first terawatt of solar. It took us three years to build the second. It took us 18 months to build the third," said Sage Lenier, founder of an environmental think tank called Project Northstar. "That's a growth curve."

Globally, the green economy was the third-largest sector in 2025, surpassing health care if considered a stand-alone industry, the London Stock Exchange Group reported in June. Total market capitalization from investments in renewables, energy efficiency, electric vehicles and other technology surpassed $10 trillion in revenue, the financial market infrastructure provider found.

"It is an incredible business case," Jesper Brodin, former CEO of Ingka Holding BV and its subsidiary, furniture maker IKEA AB, said on the Climate Week panel. "So I think the problem if we speak about the energy today is not so much to attract capital, but it's the supply chain of getting it done in an AI boom."

Investors are also looking for new growth areas. "Traditionally, it was all in mitigation," Kapnick said. "Now it's expanding rapidly towards also adaptation and resilience, and capital is flowing into those areas as long as they have a return on investment. There are bankable projects for what is needed."

What coming months will hold remains an open question. The latest S&P Global Investor Management Index, released Sept. 15, showed that US equity investors are increasingly worried about overseas wars and other geopolitical disturbances. US fiscal policies are also contributing to a drag on investments.

The survey of 300 institutional investors showed that energy stocks are again a top investor preference amid surging oil prices.