S&P Global Sustainability Quarterly Fourth-Quarter 2025 Edition

Welcome to the Fourth-Quarter 2025 S&P Global Sustainability Quarterly, the flagship sustainability research journal from S&P Global. In this edition, we explore sustainability topics that present dual risks and opportunities for business strategies in 2026.

We explore how companies depend on natural capital even as corporate pledges to protect nature remain rare — and how nature loss could become a major obstacle to economic growth. Nature was a focus during COP30, the UN climate change conference that Brazil hosted in November, and the intersection of nature loss and climate change will continue to be in the spotlight in the run-up to the UN’s COP17 biodiversity conference in October 2026 and climate-focused COP31 in November 2026.

The potential impacts of carbon policies on international trade also emerged as a key point of debate at COP30, particularly for emerging markets with the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) due to enter its definitive phase in January 2026. CBAM will place new costs on EU-based importers of certain goods, and S&P Global scenario analysis indicates CBAM could add $15 billion-$25 billion annually to these goods' import values over the next decade.

While COP30 did not reach consensus on the energy transition, negotiators did establish a just transition mechanism, and a coalition of more than 80 countries endorsed a road map to transition away from fossil fuels. To understand the pace of the energy transition in the private sector, research in this edition delves into decarbonization progress in one high-emitting sector: automakers.

The transportation sector contributes approximately 15% to global greenhouse gas emissions, and road transport accounts for most of that figure.  Our research indicates that over the next five years, automobile manufacturers will make moderate to significant progress toward a low-carbon, climate-resilient future.

Many companies see AI as a transformative tool to help drive progress on these big sustainability challenges. Research in this edition finds that companies are using AI to help improve areas such as energy efficiency, resource management and product quality. At the same time, only 36% of companies in our analysis have a policy governing AI use. Even fewer quantify the impact of their AI initiatives on sustainability goals — suggesting that AI presents both opportunities and risks for companies’ sustainability strategies.

This will be a growing area of focus in 2026 as the AI boom leads to more data centers and more power demand. Our research examines the shifting approach to power procurement in the US market, where hyperscalers face a balancing act of securing the energy their data centers need and achieving their sustainability goals.

We hope the data and research that follow will spark constructive conversations about key sustainability topics that will drive corporate decision-making in 2026.