ReThink Hong Kong (HK) 2026 comes at a time when businesses across Asia are navigating a rapidly evolving landscape shaped by economic uncertainty, shifting regulations, energy transition and security pressures, and growing expectations from investors, customers, and society.

Across the region, tightening sustainability regulation and growing climate and nature risks are increasing the urgency for action, while Asia's dependence on fossil fuels and its significant renewable energy manufacturing capabilities create both challenges and opportunities for accelerating the transition. At the same time, rapid growth in digital infrastructure and data centers is increasing demand for energy and resources, highlighting the sustainability implications of AI's expansion.  

These developments are pushing businesses to view sustainability not as a standalone agenda, but as a core business transition consideration that can strengthen resilience, competitiveness, and long-term value creation.  

As Hong Kong’s leading sustainable business forum and solutions expo, ReThink HK brings together business leaders, investors, innovators, policymakers, and sustainability practitioners to explore practical pathways for advancing sustainable development. 

Against this backdrop, three themes will shape ERM’s discussions at ReThink HK:  

  • Evolving sustainability disclosure requirements and their implications for business value creation
  • Financing the fossil-fuel-to-renewables transition while strengthening competitiveness
  • Integrated transition planning and financial quantification 

Alongside these themes, we will also explore AI in Asia: a sustainable blessing or curse? - considering how the rapid expansion of AI and the infrastructure supporting it could shape sustainable business transformation.

Please click here to view the full program of ERM events and activities planned for ReThink HK. 

Theme 1: Evolving sustainability disclosure requirements and their implications for business value creation across Asia

Sustainability disclosure across Asia is entering a new phase. What began largely as voluntary impact-focused reporting is evolving into a more structured and increasingly mandatory environment focusing on disclosure of business impacts.  

As jurisdictions across Asia rapidly advance disclosure requirements, the region is emerging as a key driver of global financial and sustainability reporting convergence. While International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) S1 and S2 are becoming an important common reference point, countries are developing their own approaches and implementation timelines.  

Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea are among the countries advancing disclosure requirements, while expectations are also expanding beyond listed companies in some jurisdictions. China's Corporate Sustainability Disclosure Standards, for example, provide an International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)-aligned framework, while India's Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) demonstrates that regional convergence does not necessarily mean identical approaches.  

For companies, the implications extend beyond producing a storytelling sustainability report. ERM experts are observing increased stakeholder interest in the sustainability strategies, ESG key performance indicators (KPIs) and data quality, quantifiable targets, and integration of sustainability into business processes. Disclosure is therefore becoming increasingly connected to how companies manage sustainability and demonstrate credibility to investors and other stakeholders. 

Asia's growing sustainable finance ecosystem is reinforcing these changes. In 2025, Asia-Pacific (APAC) attracted $1.1 trillion in energy transition investment, nearly half of the global total. As sustainability information becomes increasingly relevant to investment and financing decisions, companies are facing greater expectations to demonstrate credible strategies, targets and progress. https://www.sustainability.com/globalassets/insights/documents/ermsi_quarterly_trends_july25.pdfAt ReThink HK, ERM experts will examine how evolving regulatory expectations are changing the baseline for corporate climate and nature action in the session, “Shifting Compliance Baselines: Climate and Nature Action in Hong Kong.” 

Theme 2: Financing the fossil-fuel-to-renewables transition while strengthening competitiveness

Energy transition in Asia is entering a new phase as the focus shifts to accelerate the implementation. Decarbonization, energy security, and competitiveness are becoming increasingly interconnected, with capital allocation playing a critical role in determining how quickly organizations can respond.  

Chinese enterprises are key players in the energy transition. The world needs, and China can provide, the equipment, infrastructure and construction capabilities. 

In recent investment trends, Chinese official institutions committed about $565 billion to energy projects in emerging and developing economies between 2015 and 2024, including roughly $230 billion for clean energy technologies and infrastructure. 

Many economies remain highly dependent on fossil fuels, including their imports, exposing them to price volatility and geopolitical disruptions. In Southeast Asia, around 60% of crude-oil imports and one-third of gas imports came from the Middle East, while the region’s energy-import bill could rise from over $80 billion in 2024 to around $245 billion by 2035.  

A key strength for the region lies in its leadership across global clean energy manufacturing supply chains. In the region, China leads clean-energy manufacturing, while Southeast Asia’s battery cell capacity is expected to rise from 26 GWh in 2024 to over 80 GWh by 2030. ERM experts observe that rising energy demand from sectors such as data centers, growing interest in carbon capture and storage across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, and renewed focus on energy efficiency are reshaping investment priorities across the region.  

In Southeast Asia energy transition is accelerating, with investment in renewable, grids, and end-use sectors expected to reach a record US$ 57 billion in 2026. Meanwhile, China remains the world’s largest energy investor, with spending expected to reach US$945 billion in 2026. 

At the same time, the energy transition is increasingly being viewed as a business transformation opportunity rather than solely a decarbonization challenge.  

This shift is creating a stronger focus on transition capital: how organizations can mobilize investment, manage risk and finance the technologies and infrastructure needed to support a more secure, competitive and lower-carbon energy system. 

Many companies are also moving beyond long-term climate commitments by reducing reliance on coal and other fossil fuels, investing in low-carbon businesses, and repositioning for future growth. One of ERM clients in Southeast Asia has made a huge leap and transformed its business from coal mining and coal-fired power generation into waste management, electric vehicles, and battery minerals in just a few years, helping attract international investors, lenders and strengthen its domestic market position, now looking into broader regional market opportunities.  

This theme will be explored further at Rethink HK 2026 through discussions on transport decarbonization, industrial and building energy sustainability, and the next phase of supply chain decarbonization, highlighting how organizations can balance climate ambitions with energy security and business resilience. 

Theme 3: Connecting climate, nature, and people through integrated transition planning and financial quantification

As Asia's transition agenda evolves, organizations are increasingly recognizing that climate, nature, and social priorities cannot be managed in isolation. With climate impacts becoming increasingly visible across the region from record hot days to severe flooding in places such as Hong Kong and China, alongside the influence of El Niño, communities and businesses are experiencing these risks first hand. In a region facing growing climate impacts on ecosystems and the communities that depend on them, the challenge is moving from separate sustainability initiatives toward integrated, investment-ready transition strategies that can strengthen resilience, manage trade-offs, and create long-term value. 

However, many organizations across Asia still manage climate, nature, and social priorities through separate teams and initiatives, making it difficult to identify synergies, manage trade-offs and translate sustainability ambitions into coordinated action. Building a compelling business case for bringing these agendas together remains a challenge, even for organizations that are relatively advanced in their sustainability journeys. 

Momentum is nevertheless building. ERM experts are seeing examples of organizations beginning to connect these agendas more systematically across Asia, including Thai conglomerates undertaking combined assessments of climate, water, and biodiversity, as well as energy companies in Indonesia and China seeking to better connect climate mitigation, adaptation, and nature-related priorities.  

As transition efforts accelerate across Asia, bringing climate, nature and social priorities together within business strategy is expected to become increasingly important for strengthening resilience and supporting more informed investment decisions. 

An integrated approach can also strengthen the business case for embedding these considerations into financial and strategic decision-making, as organizations can better identify where investments can deliver multiple benefits, where trade-offs need to be managed, and where resilience can be strengthened. 

At ReThink HK 2026, this theme will be explored further through the ERM-WBCSD Workshop, which will examine how organizations can connect climate, nature and people considerations within transition strategies that strengthen resilience, support investment decisions and create long-term value. ERM and WBCSD are finalizing development of the Integrated Transition Planning Tool which helps organizations translate climate and sustainability ambitions into practical, actionable transition plans that are aligned with business strategy, risk management, and financial decision-making. The tool provides a structured framework to conduct integrated assessments across key business functions, enabling organizations to evaluate transition readiness, identify gaps, understand interdependencies, and prioritize actions.

Theme 4: AI in Asia: a sustainable blessing or curse?

AI is rapidly becoming a defining force in Asia's economic and sustainability transition. The region is emerging as both a major adopter of AI and a global hub for the digital infrastructure that powers it, driven by investment in data centers, semiconductors and cloud computing. Yet AI's rise is also exposing a new sustainability challenge: the energy, water and resource demands required to support its growth. For more on the sustainability implications of AI and data center expansion in APAC, see ERM's recent data center blog. 

The opportunity is significant. AI can help organizations optimize energy use, improve grid management, strengthen climate-risk analysis, enhance resource efficiency and support more data-driven sustainability decision-making. Across APAC, businesses are increasingly exploring how AI can accelerate the shift from sustainability disclosure toward measurable performance. 

The sustainability costs are also significant. According to the International Energy Agency, electricity demand from data centers increased by 17% in 2025, significantly outpacing overall global electricity demand growth, and is projected to roughly double by 2030. In Asia, where several economies remain reliant on fossil fuels and coal-fired power, growing computing demand risks putting additional pressure on grids and decarbonization efforts. 

This creates a tension between digital transformation and the energy transition. Meeting growing AI-related electricity demand will require investment in reliable, affordable and lower-carbon power, alongside more efficient data centers and digital infrastructure. At the same time, businesses will need to move beyond AI experimentation and focus on applications that deliver measurable economic and sustainability value.  

The question is no longer whether AI will transform business, but whether Asia can align its digital ambitions with its sustainability goals. Success will depend not only on deploying AI effectively, but also on ensuring that the energy systems, infrastructure, and governance frameworks supporting it evolve just as quickly.

Conclusion

Connecting sustainability to business transformation strategy and turning ambition into credible, measurable action will be critical to staying ahead in a rapidly changing business environment. Across Asia, sustainability is shifting from ambition and impact reporting toward implementation, investment, and business transformation supported by investor-focused disclosures. Organizations that connect sustainability with business strategy across capital allocation and recycling, energy transition, integrated decision-making and AI will be better positioned to strengthen resilience, competitiveness and long-term value.