Episode 38: Rupture point - Sustainability trends shaping 2026

Transcript

Mark Lee

Welcome to this next episode of the Sustainable Connections Podcast. This episode is a bit of a special edition, often we're focused on a single issue. It's someone from ERM talking with a partner or a client that we work with somewhere in the world. Today, it's an all ERM panel. I'm here with a group of colleagues who I'll introduce in just a moment, and we're here to talk about our 2026 Annual Trends report. The trends process is something we launch every year in January. We work on it all 12 months. It is a look back at what has shaped the past year, but it's mostly meant to be a predictor or a look forward at which sustainability trends we think will have the most impact, particularly in the corporate space in the 12 months to come. To go through the range of things that we'll cover, we've got a group of folks from different places in ERM, all in this case, based in North America and Europe.

First, I have Andrew Angle with me. Andy is the Research and Networks Manager in the ERM Sustainability Institute. Andy is the project manager for the Annual Trends Report, and he's done a tremendous amount of the work that was necessary to produce what's being published now. Andy, welcome, it's great to have you with us today.

Next, Alaric Marsden is a Consulting Partner in Europe, very focused on decarbonization. He's based in London. We're going to tap that decarbonization, energy, climate knowledge as we go. Welcome, Alaric, as well.

Further, Nikki Payne is here. Like me, Nikki's sitting in California. Nikki is all over the renewable energy space from concept through to design, build, and switch it on. And we're going to tap into that as we look at the energy climate landscape as well.

Nicolas Heath is the next person in the group. Nic is a sustainability strategy and disclosure Partner based in London, and really knows, understands, and is continuously swimming in that transparency disclosure reporting data element of our field.

And finally, we have Laurent Beuselinck, who is a Partner based in EMEA, also focused on corporate sustainability and climate change, based in Brussels.

I'm going to start with you Andy. I'd love to hear about the differences in this year's report, how it's shaped and how this whole thing comes together. Please set the set the stage for us.

Andrew Angle

Great to be here and always fun to talk trends. As you mentioned, the trends report is truly a yearly process starting each January and continuing through December. We produce our annual report, which we published in January that's more analysis focused and followed it up with three short quarterly reports, that are focused more on developments. Really the core of this report is research. Throughout the course of the year, we're tracking corporate and non-corporate developments as they're happening and also speaking to ERM experts to get a sense of the trends that they're seeing in their work, and also to validate our own research.

In terms of format change, this year we've reorganized the report around four trends rather than 10, as we've done in past years. Three of these are familiar to those that have read the report in previous editions. They include sustainability, energy, and digital - all topics covered previously. The fourth is a bit new for us, of course not new for ERM, but the focus on environmental health and safety and environmental remediation is new and reflects the ongoing operationalization of sustainability and the need to do this safely and responsibly. And so, we've aligned this report now with these four themes. Also, I think it does a good job at aligning the Trends Report with ERM's core areas of work. We've always focused on sustainability, but now I think we have a broader look at the areas that all of our consulting teams are working in. So, it was a bit of a learning process this year, but one that I think worked out well in the end.

Why does sustainability matter now?

Mark Lee

Thanks, Andy. As I reflect on 2025, and of course, we've been part of this process with you year over year for a good while, we ran in that prior format for more than a half decade since the last major redesign. We couldn't have predicted what would happen in January of 2026. But of course, Mark Carney just gave a very well-circulated speech at Davos in the course of the month. And my early vote for word of the year is rupture. I think that applies to the geopolitical space, but also to the sustainability space. Our work is different this year than it was a year ago. I felt through 2025 that our organization and the people we worked with, we were kind of navigating the volatility. It was how do we move through all of the headwinds and everything that folks were facing. Rupture implies at least something different, right? Rupture is a whole break with past and almost a restart and a redesign. So I'll be curious to hear whether that plays through. Andy, I think that the fact that we redesigned the whole way we present and think about our trends is all the more appropriate given the way that came through.

Alaric, I think one of the things we did see in 2025 is that sustainability was increasingly framed as a commercial driver. It was all a question about where's the value in this? When and how does the investment pay off? So what forces are influencing companies to double down on sustainability as a source of value creation? What does that actually look like in practice in your experience?

Alaric Marsden

Thanks, Mark. Actually, rupture I think, is a very apt word. I think just maybe three themes. The increasing trade friction, right? That was a big, big rupture. A lot of reactions from corporates and investors around the world, but ultimately competitiveness became a real challenge. So we saw clients pull levers like energy efficiency to drive down costs. There's a big, big push to use some of the sustainability drivers to cut operating costs super quick to remain competitive. I guess that was the first one, and that was a big rupture.

I think secondly, regionalization. So there's a lot of push for security, security of supply chains, security of energy, security of water. So that regionalization really got our clients talking to us about how they can bring security to a whole range of resources and supply chains.

Thirdly, competition for capital. Particularly as we saw, and again, this is probably a rupture driven by science, right? We saw many, many more wildfire events, floods, increasing strength of storms, and our investors counting the cost of climate asset risk. And as there's that competition for capital, increasingly our clients are saying, hey, look, if I haven't got a proper weapons grade climate risk strategy to protect and it's fully quantified, I can't get finance, I can't get bank finance or it's more expensive. So, trade friction, regionalization and the fight for capital.

Mark Lee

Yeah, seeing all those in play, that regionalization of our agenda, I think it's been demanded almost. It's partly cultural. People are saying sustainability is different here. We've got a Latin American or an Asian way of doing this. You've got to learn the rules in our country. And then on the costs, I see insurability is one of the big factors there too, right? The accessing capital, but also is this asset still insurable?

Nikki, I mentioned volatility in 2025, and I think you'd swam in that lane all year. So, whether it was permitting delays, whether it was the geopolitics, social and environmental challenges of conceiving and then delivering big energy projects, it's fair to say that energy project development has been reshaped. I'm curious whether during that, has sustainability been a bigger, smaller, constant issue? How's it played out through the course of the year and what does it look like as we start at 26?

Nikki Payne

Yes, so very interesting. This is mostly from the US perspective, where we've seen the most political shifts, that's for sure. With the anti-renewable policies that have rolled out, as well as the sunsetting of the Inflation Reduction Act, it has really been survival mode for our clients. So, these independent power producers are just trying to pencil these projects and make them work. And so, as a result, sustainability, sustainable waste practices, sustainable supply chain, that all has dropped to the bottom of the list of priorities. What has risen to the top is, is the project financially viable? Can they secure financing? And can they shift the supply chain to the U.S. or away from Foreign Entities of Concern (FEOC) countries, which will enable them to continue to receive the tax credit? So that has significantly shifted for our clients that are independent power producers.

Now, within that group, there's a subset of those that do have backing from private equity. Building on what Alaric was saying about investor pressures, there are still many private equity firms that have a stronghold on sustainability and ESG and are expecting their portfolio companies to maintain that. So, in those instances, we will see sustainability as a continued part of the conversation and those clients willing to engage.

Mark Lee

Nikki, you mentioned FEOC countries, and I don't know that all of our listeners will know what that means. Can you just explain?

Nikki Payne

Sure. So those are Foreign Entities of Concern. The U.S. has defined these countries, primarily China, as FEOC countries. And so, there's a requirement in order to receive the tax credit that a certain percentage of materials are sourced from non-FEOC countries. As you know, the renewable energy industry is heavily reliant on materials from China in particular. So, there's been a lot of effort made to shift the supply chain.

I think for certain where we're seeing the involvement of private equity investors, we're seeing a continuity of the sustainability conversation, so long as the project is still financially viable, and is able to connect to the grid. That is first and foremost. The other piece I was going to mention is that for projects being financed that involve banks with a tie to the European Union. In those cases, international standards are brought into the conversation, EU taxonomy. So, we're seeing certain projects have to meet a minimum set of standards in order to receive financing. That has been a driver as well for improving programs around sustainability, which also is integrated with stakeholder engagement as well as biodiversity.

Mark Lee

The sustainability factors in play, but maybe it's something of an ebb compared to prior years. And just so many other factors from the political to the supply chain to others shaping and reshaping the area where you work.

Nic, I'm going to jump somewhere different again. Reporting transparency, disclosure, it now seems forever ago that Omnibus came into our lives. Not quite as long ago, the changes to what was happening with climate regulation or climate mandatory disclosure in places like California. Australia has new rules. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) standards are kind of roaring across APAC. How does a company assess this landscape? How do you assess this landscape when it's truly been running in opposite directions, depending on the region you're in? And it's just hard to know what a company is to do.

Nicolas Heath

We definitely had the feeling last year that sustainability was in retreat. It's true to say that reporting has absolutely become less of a regulatory focus in some parts of the world. This was particularly true in the U.S., where some of the budding climate disclosure rules that we were seeing have been eliminated completely against the context of much broader rollbacks of environmental regulations. Slightly different situation in Europe. I think in Europe, it's easier to talk about simplification rather than setbacks. There's still very much a continued focus in the EU on material sustainability, so we're seeing some of that ambition. But reporting has been scaled back and 80 per cent of the companies that were previously in scope of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) are no longer required to report under this regulation. Ultimately, this was because that level of disclosure was not seen as supporting this concept of competitivity. But we're still seeing significant interest in reporting across the world, particularly where that reporting is helping to understand exposure to different systemic risks and opportunities that companies face in an increasingly uncertain world. So that expectation for investor grade sustainability information is really growing. We can see that with the ISSB standards and the way that they're beginning to embed themselves across different jurisdictions. We are at nearly 36 jurisdictions now that have begun to fully adopt these standards. So companies still have a lot to grapple with when it comes to the reporting space.

Where do companies start? I think it all comes down to strategy. You need to focus on what you're doing first before you can really think about what you're saying. All of the reporting standards, whether they're ones that are coming from Europe or elsewhere, are ultimately asking for companies to set up clear systems to govern, assess, and mitigate their different impacts, risks and opportunities, then to be able to disclose how they're progressing against these. So starting at that place, really understanding your exposure to some of these risks, and making sure you have the right governance and strategies to address them is how you'll really withstand some of the shifts that we're seeing in the reporting space at the moment.

From intent to execution

Mark Lee

Laurent, Nic said sustainability and retreat. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but I've tried to think about it more as sustainability on pause or sustainability on a plateau, and sustainability trying to figure out how to continue to move forward, because certainly the issues that we're trying to solve for, be they climate, be they nature, be they equity, they haven't gone anywhere. But I do think that there's obviously less that is mandatory. The disclosure rules rollout has at least slowed. And as it relates to CSRD, it just doesn't cover as many companies as it was intended to. At the same time, we still see companies reporting. So which stakeholders are they delivering to and how, with less mandatory reporting, how are they deciding what's decision useful and what they should continue to put out into the public space?

Laurent Beuselinck

Thanks, Mark and fully aligned with what Nic just mentioned. I think what we see is an evolution towards those investor grade sustainability data. So, thinking wisely about what is reported and how it is reported. There are a number of evolutions that we see, companies are getting more selective on the topics and the KPIs that they are reporting on, and then really focus on those that are real priority for their business and which they can really drive action with and really embed them within their business processes. So, a much more integrated way over different functions, rather than a standalone element. The changes that we have seen in Europe with the Omnibus also helps in being more selective and setting more priority in that way.

We see several companies now revisiting their materiality assessment in order to bring more focus in there and then increasingly including quantification as part of the decision making. So as well the link with the value creation. Other actions that we see is more attention to building a strong data architecture that also allows them to respond to multiple disclosures and demands and then putting the right digital strategy in place. And then the two other ones that I would mention is increased capability building and training people within their organization on identifying which are the right data, collecting, and analyzing those data and putting the internal controls in place. The final one, clearly the further growth of assurance, getting more and more important. We see more companies also follow voluntary perspective to apply assurance, often limited, but we see more and more companies also going to reasonable assurance in order to strengthen the disclosures and getting closer to those investor grade data.

Mark Lee

Laurent, in the middle of that, you mentioned more companies trying to increase the amount of quantifiable or quantified data in their reporting. Alaric, I'm going to bring this back around to you. We've already mentioned value creation. I think quantification was one of the buzzwords of 2025, and it seems to be extending into 2026 as well. That sounds great, it also sounds really difficult. So how do we take our sustainability efforts and investments and translate them into measurable returns? Can you tell us what you're seeing happening inside companies as regards to that?

Alaric Marsden

Yeah, for sure, Mark. We've talked a lot about investment grade sustainability plans, and really what we're talking about that is, credible CFO, credible CapEx, OpEx, ROI calculations. And really, we've seen the rise of the finance team. So, back in the day, the sustainability team was really driving this. I think this has become much more of a team sport. So we're seeing the operation team, the engineering teams, procurement, finance, and sustainability all working together, using the same corporate finance disciplines that they would do for any other investment. I think that that's the first thing, it's that discipline of building those investment grade plans to sign off that the not insubstantial capital investment or change in operating procedures to fulfill what that value creation prize is.

I think secondly, there's a big push around execution. So many of our clients actually have a decarbonization plan. They've got the board approval. They've “wowed the hell” out of their CFO. He's got really excited. Often with decarbonization and technologies, you can drive out a two, three, four year payback. That's amazing in terms of cost reduction and ROI. But then the question is how to execute on the site. So there's much more collaboration going on with site level engineering teams. Hey, I need to arrange third party financing. I need to go buy a ton of heat pumps. I need renewables. How do I run procurement processes? How do I get the contracting? How do I buy renewable PPAs? So that execution capability, we've really built that out and our clients are building that out and we're partnering with them a lot.

I think the third piece around quantification is that our more sophisticated clients are going way beyond just operating cost reduction. They're looking at a lot of public health authorities that say, hey, big pharma client, I'm not going to buy your drug anymore unless you give me a really credible life cycle assessment (LCA) or product carbon footprint, or you give me real confidence on the supply chain. So there's a revenue at risk. And then some clients are seeing the revenue augmentation. If they can preempt some of those needs, and we're seeing a lot of that in their big tech as well. It's running down the supply chain into data centers, some of the Hyperscalers just will not procure certain services unless there's comfort that they meet their own sustainability procurement criteria. Finally, probably finding the ability to access low cost of debt. So telling a really good story to access, 20, 30, 40 basis point reduction in cost of debt. That's a big piece in the quantification.

So, it's an investment grade kind of team sport. It's that execution capability to really grab at that and deliver on the value prize. Finally, it's getting the other bits of the value creation prize that may have been forgotten. So it's the rise of the CFO and the operational team.

Mark Lee

Yep, I like that wowing the CFO element in there, but also can picture those teams, right? That they probably needed to learn to speak one another's languages, the sustainability team better at finance, the finance team better at sustainability in order to bring those integrated and quantified plans forward.

Nikki, I'd love to come back to you. You said in our first exchange that there was less emphasis on sustainability in the projects you've been working on. We do know folks are still trying to use successful community engagement, strong environmental planning as ways to get through their projects more smoothly, faster. Is it a competitive advantage? How do those approaches continue to help companies reduce risks and control costs and move forward? Can you give us a couple of examples?

Nikki Payne

Sure, absolutely. That is still paramount to what needs to happen for a successful renewable energy project. Many companies have learned the hard way. If you try to go around the local communities, around the environmental requirements and organizations, it will ultimately delay your project. And so early stakeholder identification and engagement at all levels, from the neighbors to the local politicians, to the environmental groups is really part of any successful project. And the reason for it is, if they move way far down the line, they've made all of these investments and haven't done that foundational work, then they would potentially not receive a favorable decision at a hearing or there's an uprising of opposition. And then essentially the project dies right there in the courtroom after having spent millions and millions of dollars on land interconnection and sorting out supply chain. So, these are elements that these developers, while they're being distracted with a lot of other higher-level issues and challenges, cannot overlook. And so that's definitely part of our role in engaging with them, is making sure that they are completing all of these, what I would consider foundational tasks and engagement requirements.

What’s next and what to watch

Mark Lee

I think our conversation has been so far more focused on what companies have been doing, and what they're doing right now. I want to start a series of questions that are more around what do we think they're going to do in the year ahead.

Nic, I want to come back to you in the disclosure space. I'm wondering what you think about which kind of disclosure related capabilities, capacity, skills will help sustainability leaders differentiate themselves. What’s it going to look like in 2026?

Nicolas Heath

It's a great question. Reporting doesn't make a leader but it can reveal them by seeing who's willing to communicate the depth of what they're doing and how bold they're really willing to be. I think there's two interesting things that we're going to see in the coming years. The first is companies who are really going to take seriously this idea of developing investor grade sustainability reporting. I think this is really where we'll see the increased focus on ISSB lead companies. So, we'll see a higher quality assured sustainability data. We are going to really see companies getting under the skin of quantification of their sustainability risks and opportunities and tying that back to their balance sheet in a meaningful way for investors. We'll see strategies that are really put through resilience testing under different scenarios and then tying those sustainability disclosures directly back into that financial reporting. I think we haven't seen much of this maturity within the market yet, but we'll see a lot of sustainability leaders starting to lean into this as more of this data is required.

But then on the other hand, we're still going to see companies need to focus on the impact reporting, especially when there's so much more focus on the communication of that financial information. I think leaders will be able to differentiate themselves by continuing to find meaningful ways to demonstrate how they're addressing those different impacts that they're having on the environment and society. We're seeing some great examples of that duality. We're seeing companies move towards reasonable assurance against some of their financial disclosures. If we look at Allianz, that's a great example. They've shifted in their CSRD disclosures from limited to reasonable assurance. So really upping that data quality. But then on the impact side, that other side of leadership, we're seeing other companies like Patagonia who frequently rank in the highest amongst the highest companies within our leadership surveys, who continued to set them apart this year by beginning to build in a lot more of that organizational honesty into their reporting by talking about some of the biggest challenges that they're having when facing their global impact. That's really the type of reporting that's going to build confidence.

Mark Lee

I liked where you started next saying that reporting disclosure doesn't make a leader, but it can reveal one. I was noting too some of the overlaps in what Alaric was saying, you've got a heavy emphasis also on data quality, robustness, reliability, is it assurable? It sounds like the field under pressure, if that's how we would define it, is also realizing that it needs to improve the quality of the work that it does across the board, so really interesting.

Laurent, I think we may have set a record for a conversation in 2026 and that we've gotten this far in and we haven't yet talked about AI, but now we're going to do it. I am really curious what you're seeing in terms of how technology is changing, shaping, affecting, hopefully improving reporting and disclosure and other sustainability activity. What can you say about that?

Laurent Beuselinck

On the one hand, there is a growing concern about environmental impacts of AI. On the other hand, there is increasing use cases of AI and clearly AI is becoming a competitive advantage, on condition of responsible adoption and with strong governance around it. And when not doing so, it can go totally wrong. I think we all have seen examples where it also went wrong. The same counts for the use of AI as part of sustainability disclosures. It has the potential to really help create efficiencies, strengthen the disclosures, improve the data quality, collect more insights, and really allows to focus again on driving actions and creating value.

The key factors for the successful application of AI are starting with a strong data and digital basis as a precondition, setting right boundary conditions aligned with the regulatory definitions, having that strong governance around it and maintaining traceability. So clearly avoiding the tools which are more black box situation, and then provide transparency of the methodologies being used, including the use of AI.

And then finally, the key one, strong quality control, both on input and on output. So clear recommendation to embrace the use of AI, considering the advantages, but doing it in the right way. A side note is that, of course, AI is also changing how disclosures are being evaluated in the market. So the different stakeholders, whether it are ESG raters, investors, NGOs, and others, also will be using AI in order to analyze and mine increasing amount of publicly available disclosures making benchmarks. I think that's an additional rationale to really focus on that investment grade sustainability data and think wisely about data that are being disclosed and the quality of those data.

Mark Lee

I think it's fair to say, Laurent, an affirmation of it's coming, that everyone's going to be using it as a question of how and making sure that the governance, the quality can be assured. But this is not a future thing. This is a today thing.

Nikki, I want to come back to you again as well. We've kind of been on both sides of the where sustainability is in energy projects development, and capital project delivery generally. Maybe in 2026, it's going to evolve again. Can you tell us how you think policy and stakeholder expectations will continue to shift and what that will mean for how companies think about sustainability factors in capital project delivery?

Nikki Payne

Sure, and continuing the theme with AI, because it is amazing, we haven't talked about data centers. I come at this conversation because I develop data centers in addition to energy projects. These days, they're hand in hand. As we know, the rise of AI is driving the energy industry in the U.S. all at a time when the political shifts are somehow making it more difficult to get energy projects on the grid. So in my mind, what's going to drive the conversation around sustainability, in addition to the private equity investors we talked about, it is going to be the position of the large hyperscaler tech companies because they are the ones that are procuring the energy. Almost 90 per cent of my clients are developing energy projects for data centers. So, if they maintain their sustainability programs and expectations, that then will carry through virtual power purchase agreements with these energy providers, then we'll see, some maintaining of sustainability elements. If they abandon those narratives, because of just the need to expand so quickly and rely on natural gas and other forms of energy, then I think we'll really see it drop out of the conversation. So, at this moment, it's a little bit TBD on how these tech companies are all falling in terms of their continued commitment to sustainability. But I think that that's really going to drive what happens in the energy space.

Mark Lee

Yeah, I think part of the way I've been seeing it, with much less exposure and expertise than you, Nikki, is that the AI race is existential, right? That these companies have to be in it and there's not enough energy of the most preferred type to go around. So it's all forms of energy as quickly as we can get it, greener would be welcome, but we'll take whatever we can get. And there's lots of promise in the technology, of course, and I think we're still waiting to see how it all plays out in terms of do all the potential benefits outweigh some of the impacts that are real and that, of course, communities and people in different places are experiencing.

Alaric, as we think through quantification, and as we talk about sustainability and value creation, that has to mean that we're trying to connect sustainability to growth. And do you see some particular areas where you think people will be experimenting, hopefully succeeding at that in the months ahead?

Alaric Marsden

Yeah, Mark. Just on the understanding that if I get the predictions right and you make some money, you share some of that with me. I'm going to give you a super six. We're seeing huge manufacturing bases in Asia and an enormous energy efficiency opportunity. So the ability to cut operating costs. And Nikki, to your point, a lot of the equipment, the servers, the GPUs that go into data centers are manufactured in Asia. So a big opportunity for operating cost production. I think secondly, winning that competition for lowest cost capital on infrastructure build out. We're seeing a heck of a lot of investment going into road, rail, ports, transmission assets, new runways. That all has to be financed and you have to win that competition for capital. And so much of that is about persuading investors that you are managing climate, water, nature risks in a sensible way, and proving it. So there's a big capital investment opportunity there. I think thirdly, data. So we talked quite a lot about data. Those that manage their data best, I think will be the winners. And we're seeing that a lot in managing scope 3 opportunities and kind of driving that, but also tracking the business case. We talked earlier about wowing the hell out of a CFO. That CFO then wants to see month by month proof that business case is being delivered. So that comes down to digital systems and trust in not just ESG data, but in financial data.

Fifthly, water. Water is coming up a heck of a lot with our clients, particularly in heat stress, but water is becoming the new gold, right? It's a strategic resource, including increasingly clients of ours are, trying to be very careful about and having, some very intelligent management strategies. The last of the Super Six is adaptation, there is a big, big investment opportunity around adaptation. And actually clients are figuring out that climate risk is not just a risk thing, but actually if you manage your risk better than a competitor, that's a competitive advantage. That's a value creation opportunity. So winning the risk management battle around adaptation, we're seeing clients getting much more savvy there.

Mark Lee

That's a great way to bring us towards a close. Andy, I'm going to come back around to you on that close as the main author of the trends report for this year. I wanted to give you a chance, Andy, to step back from the big themes we've covered today. We talked about value creation, capital projects, sustainability data and disclosure, this big cross section. What are you looking at as the signal for where corporate sustainability is going next? Which issues should companies have their eyes on as we start 2026 that are going to shape their success through the year ahead?

Andrew Angle

So, a few things, and Alaric touched on a lot of them, but I'll try to make some differentiation here. The first one, I think, is unavoidable. I think the value creation lens, which we talked a lot about today, is going to continue to be a major factor in terms of where corporate sustainability is heading next and where it currently is now. I think not only is it key to maintaining sustainability in the face of extreme external volatility that we're seeing, and then perhaps that rupture that you mentioned earlier, Mark, but also because it's a critical element just to long-term business performance and resilience regardless of what's happening in your external environment.

Second, we touched on this briefly throughout the conversation, but this is really a common theme across the report and some of the trends is the importance of stakeholder engagement and community involvement. A lot of these large infrastructure projects, data centers are a heavy focus of the digital trend of the report. There's a lot of talk there about how companies are looking to minimize some of the pain points that they're facing with local communities and stakeholders, whether that's energy or water concerns and whatnot, and all in an effort to kind of reduce local pushback, secure buy-in, and also save time and money in the long run. I think that's going to be continuing to be key, whether for data centers, power infrastructure, solar facilities, what have you.

And then lastly, Alaric mentioned this briefly, but we haven't talked about it a ton today. I think it's climate adaptation. This seems to be coming up increasingly, both in an external environment and in client conversations and how it can help kind of companies both increase their resilience, of course, to physical climate change impacts, but also drive investment returns in more productive operations as Alaric mentioned. I think that will continue to be a focus of companies, particularly as climate change continues to impact their physical operations. So overall, I think those are the three I would point to. It's been a busy year and shaping up to be another one. So excited to see where we'll go next with this conversation in the year ahead.

Mark Lee

Yeah, busy year to describe 2025 seems like a wild understatement and the sense of dynamism, change, energy of all types into 2026 feels like we can be certain there will be more change. I talked earlier, some of you picked up the themes about 2025, perhaps have been having been about managing volatility, figuring it out, charting new courses. And whether this year is a real rupture or not, I think we can see there's substantial further change coming for corporates as they manage their sustainability impacts, as they try to make sure that the way they manage those positions them to create commercial value and for competitive advantage.

I'd invite everybody who's taken time to listen to us today to visit ERM.com and to download the annual trends report. If you have a chance to read all or part of it and you have any feedback for us, we are all ears on how to continue to evolve that over time. And final thanks go to all of my colleagues - Andy, Laurent, Nikki, Nick, and Alaric, thanks so much for your time and especially for your insight today. Really appreciate you helping unpick the world that we're operating in and giving a sense to our listeners of what they might expect in the year ahead.

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