Tom Raftery

Falling battery costs mean solar no longer trades price for reliability. That rewrites energy economics, industrial strategy, and emissions trajectories.

For more than a decade, solar energy has come with an asterisk.

Yes, it’s cheap.
Yes, it’s clean.
Yes, it’s fast to deploy.

But it’s intermittent.

That single word has done an extraordinary amount of work. It has justified gas as a “bridge fuel”, slowed grid reform, propped up fossil incumbents, and allowed policymakers to treat solar as a partial solution rather than a foundational one.

The latest analysis from Ember suggests that excuse has quietly expired.

Based on real-world auction data from Italy, Saudi Arabia, and India, Ember finds that long-duration utility-scale battery storage now costs around $125/kWh all-in, translating to a levelised cost of storage of roughly $65/MWh. Pair that with today’s already cheap solar, and you get dispatchable electricity for around $76/MWh .

Not in theory. In practice.

That changes the conversation.

The cost threshold that mattered more than people realised

Battery storage has been falling in price for years, but not all cost declines are equal. Some are incremental. Others cross thresholds that unlock new behaviour.

This one does the latter.

Ember’s analysis shows that outside the US and China, large, long-duration battery projects are now being built at around $125/kWh all-in. Roughly $75/kWh comes from core equipment, largely manufactured in China, with about $50/kWh for installation, grid connection, and EPC services that are mostly local.

Crucially, this isn’t driven by a single factor. Yes, battery cell prices have collapsed, with LFP cells now around $40/kWh in China. But the bigger story is system maturity.

Modern batteries last longer. Twenty years is now standard.
They’re more efficient. Around 90% round-trip AC-to-AC efficiency is normal.
They’re lower risk. Auctions and contracted revenues reduce financing costs.

Those improvements alone have cut the Levelised Cost of Storage (LCOS) by more than a third compared to earlier generations, even before accounting for falling equipment prices.

This is what “boring infrastructure” looks like. And boring infrastructure scales.

Dispatchable solar, not mythical baseload

It’s worth being precise about what this does and does not mean.

This is not about turning solar into perfect, year-round baseload power. That would require significant overbuild and far more storage to cover seasonal variability.

What it does mean is something far more useful.

Shifting roughly half of daily solar generation into evening and night-time hours aligns solar output much more closely with real demand. At an LCOS of $65/MWh, that adds about $33/MWh to the cost of electricity. With global average solar prices around $43/MWh in 2024, the result is dispatchable solar at roughly $76/MWh, and falling.

That is cheaper than new gas generation in most markets. It is dramatically quicker to deploy. And it avoids locking countries into volatile fuel imports.

The energy system doesn’t need ideological purity. It needs arithmetic that works.

Batteries are grid infrastructure, not just energy shifters

One of the most persistent analytical mistakes in energy modelling is treating batteries as single-purpose assets.

Energy shifting is only part of the value stack.

Grid-scale batteries also provide:

• Frequency response
• Voltage support
• Congestion management
• Capacity adequacy
• Black-start capability

Each of those services carries its own revenue stream. When stacked together, they materially improve project economics and reduce risk.

Ember’s LCOS calculation explicitly excludes these additional revenues. In the real world, they lower the effective cost of storage even further.

This matters because it reframes storage from a “cost add-on” for renewables into a core piece of grid infrastructure. Once batteries are treated like substations rather than accessories, planning assumptions change quickly.

Long-duration storage closes the remaining gaps

Short-duration batteries handle daily variability extremely well. Seasonal and multi-day challenges require additional tools.

Those tools are arriving.

Advanced compressed air energy storage, such as Hydrostor’s A-CAES systems (I will publish an interview with Hydrostor on my Climate Confident podcast early in the new year), is moving from demonstration to deployment. Pumped hydro is being repowered and modernised rather than newly built. Thermal storage, sodium-ion batteries, and iron-air chemistries are expanding the storage palette.

The key point isn’t that batteries solve everything. It’s that solar plus batteries now solve most of the problem, and long-duration storage cleans up the rest.

The system no longer hinges on speculative technologies. It hinges on deployment speed and market design.

When electricity stops being scarce

Most energy debates are still trapped in a scarcity mindset. How do we ration? How do we balance? How do we keep the lights on?

But the combination of ultra-cheap solar and increasingly cheap storage breaks that frame entirely.

When clean electricity becomes abundant, reliable, and locally produced, the question stops being how do we manage energy? and becomes what do we do with it?

Take water. Desalination has always been technically feasible and politically awkward, because burning fossil fuels to make drinking water during a climate crisis is a grim trade-off. Remove the energy cost, and that dilemma evaporates. Solar-powered desalination turns water security into an infrastructure problem rather than a moral one, particularly for sun-rich regions already facing chronic drought stress.

Then there’s heat. Roughly half of global final energy demand is heat, not electricity. Cheap, stable clean power makes high-temperature heat pumps, electric boilers, and industrial electrification economically obvious rather than heroic. Entire classes of “hard-to-abate” emissions quietly become “hard to justify continuing”.

Zoom out further and you hit industry. When energy is cheap and predictable, location decisions change. Manufacturing no longer needs to cluster around fuel supply or ports. It clusters around skills, logistics, and demand. Energy-intensive industries can co-locate with solar and storage, decoupling growth from fuel imports and price volatility.

Digital infrastructure shifts too. Data centres, AI workloads, and high-performance computing are currently framed as climate liabilities. In a world of abundant clean power, they become flexible demand. Compute follows the sun. Workloads move in time as well as space. Carbon intensity falls without throttling innovation.

Perhaps the most underestimated impact is social. Distributed solar paired with storage bypasses fragile grids entirely. Regions that never had reliable electricity leapfrog straight to firm clean power, with knock-on effects for healthcare, education, and local industry. Energy poverty doesn’t decline gradually. It collapses where deployment is allowed to scale.

And underneath all of this, something even less visible happens. Fuel logistics fade from relevance. No tankers. No pipelines. No strategic reserves. Once built, the marginal cost and marginal risk of producing energy approach zero. Energy security stops being about geopolitics and starts being about maintenance and software.

This is what the Ember numbers are really pointing to. Not a better grid. A different baseline.

What this means for grids, emissions, and industry

For power systems, dispatchable solar flattens price volatility, reduces the need for gas peakers, and simplifies long-term planning. It replaces fuel risk with capital planning.

For emissions, the impact is immediate. Solar plus storage displaces coal faster, avoids methane leakage from gas backup, and delivers lifecycle emissions that fossil alternatives cannot touch.

For industry, the implications are structural. Stable, cheap, clean electricity enables electrification, co-location, and long-term contracting without exposure to fuel shocks. Energy stops being a constraint and becomes an advantage.

The real bottleneck is no longer technology

None of this is waiting on breakthroughs.

The bottlenecks now are:

• Market design that undervalues flexibility
• Interconnection queues built for a different era
• Grid codes written around synchronous generation
• Political reluctance to confront incumbents

These are governance problems, not engineering ones.

Solar didn’t just get cheaper. It grew up.

Ember’s analysis makes one thing clear. Solar energy is no longer cheap electricity that happens to arrive at inconvenient times. Paired with storage, it is dispatchable, predictable, and economically compelling at scale .

That removes the asterisk.

From here on, the question isn’t whether solar plus storage can underpin modern power systems. It’s how quickly institutions adapt to a reality that has already arrived.

This article was originally published on TomRaftery.com
Photo credit Jonathan Cutrer on Flickr

In the summer of 1982, I spent my school holidays working on a construction site on Fota Island. Fourteen years old, sunburned, boots too big, and absolutely clueless about the scale of what I was helping build. Ireland’s first solar energy station - a 50 kWp array costing an eye-watering £750,000 Irish pounds. Fifteen pounds per watt. Utter madness by today’s standards, but visionary at the time.

I remember standing there, holding a cavity block for someone older, stronger, and far more qualified to actually do something with it, thinking: This is amazing. Solar panels felt like science fiction. A curiosity. A side bet on the future that almost no one expected to matter.

Fast forward to 2018: the solar array on my own roof — 5 kWp for €10,000 — worked out to just over €2 per watt installed. And today, in 2025, global module costs are down again, with some markets seeing 10–12 cents per watt at utility scale.

A drop from £15/W to €0.10/W in a lifetime.
If any other technology fell in price that fast, we’d be calling it a civilisational shift, not an energy option.

And yet the real story is not how far solar has come - it’s how far it’s about to go.

Because the next decade is shaping up to be the steepest climb in efficiency, scale, and systemic importance the energy system has ever seen. What we’ve witnessed so far is the prelude. The overture. Phase One. The solar century is now getting underway in earnest.

1. The Data Says… the Surge Is Already Astonishing

Let’s start with the numbers we cannot ignore.

According to IRENA’s Renewable Capacity Statistics 2025 update, the world added roughly 452 GW of new solar PV capacity in 2024 alone - more electricity generation than the entire continent of Africa consumes in a year. China accounted for over half, but Europe, India, Brazil, and the US all set national records.

Solar now represents:

7% of global electricity generation (IEA, 2025)

Over three-quarters of all new capacity additions in 2024 (IRENA, 2025)

The cheapest source of new electricity in history, with utility-scale costs averaging $0.043/kWh (IRENA, 2024)

The IEA estimates that global solar generation will surpass gas for annual electricity production before 2030, and coal not long after. On present trends, solar could become the world’s single largest source of electricity by the early 2030s.

But, and here is where it gets really interesting - current growth is built entirely on first-generation silicon technology whose efficiency has basically stalled. We’ve inched up from ~14% in the 1970s to ~25% today - impressive, but we’re near the theoretical ceiling.

And that’s exactly where the breakthroughs begin.

Perovskite-silicon tandems: the step-change

In my recent Climate Confident conversation with Caelux’s Aaron Thurlow, he laid out what many in the industry quietly acknowledge: silicon alone can’t take us much further. The physics simply won’t allow it.

But tandem cells can.

By layering a perovskite film over silicon, manufacturers can build a two-storey power generator in a single module. The lab records for this are already brushing 35% efficiency, with commercially manufacturable products expected to hit 28–30% within a few years.

For context:
A 20% performance uplift in solar is like discovering a new oil field every six months, except it never runs out, and it doesn’t fry the planet.

If global solar averaged 30% efficiency tomorrow, we could generate the world’s entire electricity demand using less land than France.

Business models are shifting even faster than the technology

Talking a couple of weeks back on Climate Confident to, Scott Therien from REC Solar, he underscored another accelerating trend:
ownership is moving from customers to developers.

Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) - subscription-style solar, are rapidly becoming the default in commercial and industrial markets. Companies no longer buy solar systems; they buy cheap electricity, long-term certainty, risk management, and resilience.

This shift matters because it:

Removes CapEx barriers

Aligns incentives (developers only profit when systems perform)

Integrates storage more naturally

Enables sophisticated optimisation across tariffs, load profiles, and grid constraints

Extends solar to organisations with limited technical expertise

Put simply: business model innovation is now as important as hardware innovation.

Solar 101 - A Quick Guide

A sidebar for readers who want the foundations without the jargon.

Efficiency:
The percentage of sunlight converted into electricity. Silicon peaks at ~29% theoretically. Tandem cells can surpass 33–34%.

Perovskites:
A class of materials with extraordinary light absorption. Cheap to produce, scalable, and ideal for layering atop silicon.

PPAs:
Long-term agreements where a developer builds, owns, and maintains the solar system, selling electricity to the customer at an agreed rate.

Storage:
Batteries shift solar generation to the hours people use it - crucial in markets where exporting excess energy is restricted or undervalued.

2. The Implications… This Isn’t Just an Energy Story

Solar’s ascent isn’t merely a triumph of engineering. It’s shaping four of the defining pressures of our age.

Climate: the existential engine

Solar must scale because the climate isn’t giving us options.
Spain’s olive oil crisis is a case study: bottles that cost €4–€5 a decade ago hit €12–€15 in recent years because drought and heatwaves ravaged harvests. Climate change is now priced into everyday life - first silently, then loudly, then painfully.

Electricity is how we decarbonise everything else: transport, heat, manufacturing, digital infrastructure. The faster the grid decarbonises, the faster every downstream sector can follow.

Solar is the backbone of that decarbonised grid.

Affordability: the political lever

If climate is the moral case, affordability is the tactical case.
Solar’s cost decline - 99% in 40 years, is unmatched in energy history. Its price stability is becoming a competitive edge for manufacturers, tech companies, and public-sector budgets under strain.

In an era of energy volatility:

Solar is predictable

Solar is local

Solar is inflation-resistant

You decarbonise because it’s right, but you install solar because it’s cheap.

Energy security: the geopolitical shock absorber

Europe learned the hard way in 2022 what dependency means.
Solar is the first energy technology where every country has a viable domestic resource. It reduces import reliance, lowers exposure to geopolitical risk, and strengthens national resilience.

As Aaron Thurlow put it:
“Economies run on energy. Solar is the energy source of the future.”

Resilience: the grid’s new stabiliser

Storage is the quiet revolution here.
Solar-plus-storage reshapes load curves, reduces congestion, and supports frequency stability. In the commercial world, storage turns solar from a daytime resource into a 24-hour economic optimisation engine.

This matters for the AI boom too:
Data centres need colossal amounts of reliable power. Solar-plus-storage is becoming one of the fastest ways to supply it.

3. The Strategies… What Leaders Should Do Next

Senior executives and policymakers have four clear strategic priorities.

1. Align CapEx and OpEx thinking with the new solar reality

Stop treating solar as infrastructure and start treating it as a strategic hedge - against cost volatility, carbon risk, supply-chain fragility, and political exposure.

PPAs, virtual PPAs, and community solar aren’t procurement methods. They’re competitive advantages.

2. Integrate storage early, not late

Storage is no longer optional:

It unlocks higher solar penetration

It balances local grids

It improves project IRR

It ensures energy availability during peak-hour pricing

It increases the reliability of renewable-heavy operations

Ignoring storage today is like ignoring cybersecurity in 2005.

3. Prepare for the perovskite decade

The winners of the 2030s will be the organisations that:

Secure early supply agreements

Hedge against silicon-only module constraints

Redesign rooftops, carports, and land footprints for higher efficiency

Invest in dual-use solar (agrivoltaics, parking canopies, industrial shade structures)

The efficiency step-change is not hype. It’s arriving.

4. Treat electricity demand growth as inevitable

Between AI, EVs, data centres, and electrified manufacturing, demand will surge.
Solar is uniquely positioned to supply that growth at scale without adding climate risk.

If you wait for certainty, you’ll enter the queue behind your competitors who acted sooner.

4. The Signal of Change… Evidence the Shift Is Already Here

Three signs tell us the second wave of solar is not coming - it has begun.

1. Perovskite tandem modules are shipping now

What was theoretical five years ago is now commercial. Not fully scaled yet, but real.

2. PPAs are becoming standard corporate infrastructure

The shift Scott Therien described - from EPC contractor to long-term energy partner, is happening globally. Solar is no longer a product purchase; it’s a strategic service.

3. Record solar deployment continues despite policy friction

The US faces ITC uncertainty, Europe faces grid bottlenecks, emerging markets struggle with finance, and yet global installations keep rising. Momentum is now structural, not cyclical.

This is what a tipping point looks like.

Conclusion: Back to 1983, Standing in a Field in Fota

If you told my teenage self - sunburned, hauling blocks for Ireland’s first solar experiment, that solar would become the cheapest power source on Earth, I’d have laughed. If you’d added that it would one day outperform fossil fuels, reshape geopolitics, and help stabilise the planet, I’d have assumed you’d inhaled too much solvent from the timber shed.

And yet, here we are. Solar is everywhere.
And yet, the truly transformative part still lies ahead.

Higher efficiency.
Smarter business models.
Cheaper electricity.
A cleaner, safer, more resilient world.

This is the second sunrise of solar power.
Let’s not blink and miss it.

Call to Action

If you want to go deeper into the breakthroughs, business models, and grid implications shaping solar’s next decade, check out the full Climate Confident podcast episodes with Aaron Thurlow, Scott Therien, and Laura Miranda Perez of Oxford PV on solar innovation. And while you’re there, hit “Follow” or “Subscribe” - it helps more people discover the insights that accelerate climate action.

This article was originally published on TomRaftery.com

Photo credit: Nick Blackmer on Flickr

Last autumn, in the hills outside Seville, I watched a neighbour flick through a battered notebook full of pencilled entries: planting dates, irrigation notes, guesses at soil moisture. No timestamps. No GPS. No audit trail. Just memory and trust.

“In the end,” he shrugged, “this is the data.”

That line stayed with me long after I left his olive grove, because it captures the central dilemma facing every global supply chain leader today - not just in food, but in electronics, apparel, chemicals, building materials, you name it:

The data you need is held by suppliers you don’t know, in systems you can’t access, in formats you can’t verify.

And yet that data, not the neat ERP dashboards inside your own four walls, now determines your climate credibility, your regulatory exposure, your supply-chain resilience, and your commercial edge.

This is particularly brutal for food brands. For many, 70–95% of emissions sit on farms they don’t own, can’t see, and often can’t even identify.
Not because they don’t care.
But because the chain between farm and brand is long, tangled, and historically opaque:

Farm → co-op → trader → processor → manufacturer → retailer
(Identity evaporates somewhere around step two.)

So how can a Nestlé, a PepsiCo, a Danone, or a mid-sized regional brand, possibly report accurate Scope 3 emissions when half their upstream partners don’t appear on a map?

That’s why this week’s episode of the Resilient Supply Chain Podcast matters. It’s not “an agri-tech story.” It’s a case study in solving the hardest problem in Scope 3:
getting trusted, primary, machine-level emissions data from suppliers you don't control.

Suppliers aren’t just nodes; they’re partners.
Data isn’t just reported; it’s measured.
Incentives aren’t peripheral; they’re foundational.
And resilience isn’t an aspiration; it’s an architecture.

If you want to see where Scope 3 is going, and what your industry must learn from food, listen to this week’s Resilient Supply Chain episode with eAgronom’s team.
It’s not about agriculture.
It’s about the future of supply-chain data.

And that future starts long before the factory, in places most brands have never looked.

This article was first published on TomRaftery.com. Photo credit Adelina S on Flickr

It always begins with something small.
A single scanner at the end of a long, humming warehouse aisle flickers, freezes, and dies.
The technician frowns, taps the side, nothing.
Within minutes, a pallet is stranded.
Within an hour, trucks are idling, orders delayed, costs climbing.
One handheld device, worth a few hundred euro, has just frozen a system worth millions.

That’s the paradox of modern supply chains: global in scale, fragile in detail.

This is where resilience stops being an abstract strategy and becomes operational reality.
And it’s exactly where companies like Honeywell and Peak Technologies, represented by my guests Taylor Smith and Elton Saunders on the Resilient Supply Chain Podcast, are focusing their efforts, on the invisible architecture of uptime, foresight, and device health.

Because in a world of same-day expectations, downtime isn’t a nuisance anymore; it’s a business risk.

The Data Says

According to Gartner (2024), the average cost of unplanned downtime in logistics facilities is between €500,000 - $5M+ per hour for large operations.
And yet, surveys show that fewer than half of those organisations have any kind of predictive maintenance or device-health monitoring in place.

That’s staggering when you consider the scale: there are roughly 6.3 billion connected supply-chain devices in operation globally today, from scanners and thermal printers to sensors and tablets. Every single one is both a productivity multiplier and a potential point of failure.

Meanwhile, UN data estimates global e-waste now exceeds 62 million tonnes annually, with less than a quarter properly recycled.
Much of that waste comes from short-cycle industrial electronics, devices retired not because they’re broken, but because their software is obsolete or their batteries degraded.

And here’s where it gets interesting.
Honeywell’s own internal analysis shows that battery mismanagement is the number-one cause of device under-performance.
Not broken screens.
Not network issues.
Batteries.

Interestingly, buried in those statistics lies a sustainability twist few executives notice. The most common failure mode in mobile devices, the humble battery, is also the largest single driver of hazardous e-waste. Replacing batteries proactively, or designing to eliminate them entirely, isn’t just smart maintenance. It’s climate action disguised as cost control.

The Implications

If you zoom out from that warehouse floor, you can see the same logic rippling through the entire industrial landscape.
Predictive maintenance isn’t just an IT upgrade; it’s a philosophy, a move from reactive firefighting to systemic anticipation.

Economically, the case is straightforward: organisations that embed proactive maintenance see 15–25 % lower operating costs and 30 % longer asset lifespans.
But the deeper implication is cultural.

It demands that leadership stop thinking of devices as disposable tools and start treating them as part of an ecosystem, one that must remain healthy, secure, and upgradable across multiple generations.

This mindset isn’t confined to logistics.
Look at the energy sector: predictive grid management is now central to renewable integration. Wind-farm operators use AI to forecast turbine wear; utilities deploy sensors to detect faults before they cascade into blackouts.
Supply-chain resilience and grid resilience are the same story told through different assets, both hinge on foresight, data integrity, and circular thinking.

Politically, this shift touches sovereignty too. As Taylor noted, Honeywell is reshoring parts of its manufacturing out of China, diversifying to protect against tariff shocks and geopolitical bottlenecks. That’s not just about risk mitigation, it’s about maintaining continuity in a fragmented world.

And socially, there’s a human element. High turnover in warehouses (50–100% a year in some regions) means many workers handling critical devices are new, untrained, and often unaware of maintenance procedures. When systems fail, it’s not only productivity that suffers, it’s morale, trust, and safety.

The Strategies

Resilience isn’t built by chance. It’s engineered through layers of foresight.

Here’s how leading organisations are doing it:

1. Proactive Maintenance as Policy, not Practice.
   Companies are embedding predictive tools to monitor device health, security patches, and battery life in real time.
2. Circular Lifecycle Thinking.
   Designing for repairability, reuse, and refurbishment isn’t just an ESG checkbox, it’s a profit centre. One Honeywell innovation replaces lithium batteries in some scanners with super-capacitors, effectively giving them infinite charge cycles and eliminating battery waste.
3. Data Visibility Across Assets.
   Organisations are consolidating fragmented maintenance systems into unified dashboards, where AI flags anomalies before they become outages.
4. Resilience Metrics in Procurement.
   Device uptime, repair turnaround, and recyclability now feature in tender criteria alongside cost and performance.
5. Human-centred Enablement.
   Tools that guide staff through software updates or battery swaps via step-by-step prompts reduce dependence on tribal knowledge and close the training gap.

Leadership Checklist: Building Device Resilience

• Audit device lifecycles annually, know where every asset stands.
• Integrate predictive analytics into maintenance KPIs.
• Mandate circular-design criteria for new hardware purchases.
• Treat battery health as a sustainability metric, not an afterthought.
• Invest in training: resilience fails where people aren’t prepared.

It’s worth emphasising that the ROI on all of this is fast.
Peak Technologies reports clients recouping investments in predictive maintenance within 12–18 months, primarily through avoided downtime and extended device life.
In an age when capital budgets are tight and emissions reporting is mandatory, that’s not just efficiency, it’s governance.

The Signal of Change

The transformation is already under way.

AI-driven anomaly detection is entering the mainstream. Next-gen systems can now forecast battery failure 30 days in advance, learning from each site’s usage profile.
Analytics tools use camera data to identify when dust or residue builds up on optical sensors, triggering cleaning before quality degrades.

This is more than operational hygiene, it’s predictive intelligence becoming ambient, invisible, and continuous.

In macro terms, we’re witnessing convergence:

• Supply-chain equipment behaving more like smart energy assets.
• Maintenance shifting from scheduled to situational.
• Devices communicating their own state of health across the network.

The environmental dividend is significant. Extending device lifespans by just one year across global logistics would prevent 2.4 million tonnes of CO₂e annually, based on average manufacturing emissions.
Add in reduced transport, packaging, and disposal costs, and the financial savings reach into the billions.

And then there’s resilience in the truest sense:
Fewer single points of failure.
More foresight.
Systems that learn.
Organisations that endure.

Looping Back

Remember that technician at the start, the one staring at a dead scanner as the warehouse clock ticked?

In a resilient, data-intelligent operation, that device wouldn’t die without warning.
It would send a notification: battery health below threshold; replacement scheduled for next shift.
The worker would pick up a ready-charged unit, scan the pallet, and the trucks would roll on time.

No drama. No downtime.
Just quiet efficiency, the kind that multiplies across thousands of nodes until it becomes systemic stability.

That’s what resilience looks like in 2025: not a fortress against disruption, but a living network that anticipates, adapts, and regenerates.

And the deeper truth?
Every decision to repair, update, or recycle smarter is an act of climate action too. The cleanest supply chain isn’t only carbon-neutral, it’s failure-resistant.

If you’d like to hear Taylor Smith and Elton Saunders unpack these insights, on proactive maintenance, circular design, and AI-enabled foresight, listen to the full episode of the Resilient Supply Chain Podcast here.

And maybe, while you do, ask yourself one question:
How many scanners, sensors, or servers in your own organisation are one drained battery away from halting everything?

Because resilience doesn’t start in the boardroom.
It starts in the hands of the technician holding that device.

Photo credit EU-Ukraine Cooperation on Flickr

First published on TomRaftery.com

Towards the end of 2023, the world's shipping lanes flickered red on satellite maps.

Houthi drone attacks in the Red Sea had forced oil tankers to reroute thousands of kilometres. Insurance costs doubled overnight. LNG cargoes sat idle. Prices lurched.

It wasn’t just another disruption; it was déjà vu.

Every time a pipeline ruptures, a refinery burns, or a shipping corridor closes, Europe’s, and the world's energy vulnerability is exposed all over again.

And then amid the chaos, a different kind of story started spreading.

As Bill McKibben wrote recently, “It’s hard to drone a solar panel.”

The line is as sharp as it is true. Centralised fossil infrastructure - refineries, depots, pipelines, is fragile, flammable, and geopolitically hostage. By contrast, solar arrays, wind turbines, and heat pumps are distributed, modular, and resilient. You can’t bomb sunlight. You can’t blockade the wind.

That’s why electrification, powered by homegrown renewables, isn’t merely Europe’s decarbonisation plan. It’s its survival strategy.

The Data Says: The Transition Is Now Driving Itself

Two new reports from Ember confirm that something historic is underway.

In Shockproof: How Electrification Can Strengthen EU Energy Security, Ember finds that 58 % of the EU’s primary energy still comes from imported fossil fuels, a higher share than China (24 %) or India (37 %). During the 2021-2024 energy crisis, that dependency cost Europe an extra €930 billion in import bills.

Meanwhile, Global Electricity Mid-Year Insights 2025 delivers a global milestone:

In the first half of 2025, renewables overtook coal for the first time in human history.

Solar and wind supplied 109 % of global electricity-demand growth, meaning every new kilowatt-hour the world wanted was met, and exceeded by, clean energy. Fossil generation actually fell 0.3 %.

Solar alone added a record 306 TWh, up 31 % year-on-year. Its share of global electricity climbed to 8.8 %, nearly triple what it was in 2021.

And the geography of that growth matters.

China accounted for 55 % of new solar generation, the EU 12 %, the US 14 %, India 6 %. Across Europe, solar reached 14 % of the power mix, even becoming the continent’s single largest source of electricity in June 2025.

This is not a slow drift. It’s a structural pivot in the global power system.

The Implications: From Climate Necessity to Strategic Autonomy

1. The climate inflection

Global power-sector CO₂ emissions plateaued in early 2025 even as demand rose 2.6 %. That’s a profound signal: clean generation is now expanding fast enough to meet humanity’s appetite for electricity without adding carbon.

For Europe, where climate law mandates a 90 % emissions cut by 2040, that plateau isn’t a ceiling, it’s a launchpad. Electrification isn’t an environmental luxury; it’s the only route to keep 1.5 °C remotely viable.

2. The security dimension

McKibben’s observation echoes every policy memo in Brussels: centralised energy systems are targets; distributed ones are deterrents.

In Ukraine, Russia’s missile and drone strikes on grid assets showed how brittle fossil infrastructure can be. Refineries and thermal plants burn; solar rooftops endure. Ukrainian hospitals, schools, and homes have begun installing solar + storage micro-systems precisely because they can’t be easily destroyed.

As McKibben notes, “silicon doesn’t explode.”

Each rooftop array, each village-scale wind turbine, each battery-backed clinic adds a sliver of national resilience. Multiply that by millions, and you get a security doctrine hiding in plain sight.

3. The affordability logic

Energy independence is not just about sovereignty; it’s about stability.

The IEA’s latest data show that wholesale solar and onshore-wind costs are now cheaper than new fossil generation in 91 % of the world. IRENA estimates solar’s global cost per MWh has fallen 89 % since 2010.

Fossil prices, meanwhile, behave like a heart-monitor during an anxiety attack.

Europe paid dearly for every spike. Electrification flattens that line, once panels and turbines are built, their “fuel” is free and their operating costs predictable.

The Strategies: How to Make Europe Shockproof

Tax what we burn, not what we use wisely.

Electricity remains over-taxed in most member states, industrial users pay triple the levies imposed on gas. Shift those charges onto fossil consumption or general taxation. Reward flexibility, not inertia.

Treat grids as strategic assets.

Europe has 1,700 GW of renewables waiting in connection queues, the equivalent of the entire existing generation fleet. Unlocking that backlog is the cheapest energy-security policy imaginable. The upcoming EU Grids Package must finance smarter transmission, faster permitting, and digital flexibility so renewables aren’t stranded.

Electrify end-uses.

• Transport: Electric vehicles displaced oil imports equal to 11 % of Denmark’s total last year.

• Buildings: Heat pumps in the Netherlands already offset 10 % of residential gas demand.

• Industry: Two-thirds of EU energy demand can be electrified with proven tech, from low-temperature process heat to electric arc furnaces.

Resist false bridges.

Liquefied natural gas is not a “transition fuel”; it’s a relapse. Carbon capture isn’t an insurance policy; it’s a delay mechanism. Every euro funnelled into new fossil infrastructure is a euro that won’t harden the grid, train the workforce, or scale batteries.

Signals of Change: Proof, Not Promise

The transformation is visible in data, not declarations.

• Solar overtook coal in the EU in 2024; globally, renewables surpassed coal in 2025.

• Gas demand in the EU is projected to fall 7 % by 2030.

• Half the world has already peaked in fossil-fuel electricity generation.

Even defence analysts have begun to take note. Energy security no longer just means naval patrols and strategic reserves, it means megawatts you can’t embargo.

McKibben puts it bluntly: wars now target energy infrastructure. Distributed renewables, by design, deny the enemy a single point of failure. A refinery can be levelled; a million rooftop arrays cannot.

The Human Factor: Ukraine’s Quiet Revolution

Nowhere is that principle more visceral than in Ukraine.

After years of bombardment, communities have begun rebuilding their energy systems from the ground up.

Schools and hospitals now fit solar rooftops with battery basements; heat pumps replace diesel boilers; neighbourhood associations retrofit entire housing blocks. As McKibben reports, these projects have slashed energy bills by half and kept life-saving operations running through blackouts.

And there’s a deeper transformation at work: the skills born of war are becoming the tools of reconstruction. The same technicians assembling drones are learning to wire motors and install renewables. The same veterans who defended cities will soon rebuild them, electrified, decentralised, resilient.

Ukraine is not waiting for peace to start its energy transition; it’s building peace through it.

The Economic Dividend

Every step toward electrification is a hedge against volatility.

Each gigawatt of new solar or wind reduces import exposure, stabilises prices, and keeps euros circulating locally.

The European Commission’s analysis shows that by 2040, fossil import dependency could be halved, from 58 % to 30 %, if electrification accelerates. The efficiency gains alone are staggering: by then, the drop in fossil-fuel demand would be three times greater than the rise in electricity demand.

Put simply: electrification is productivity by another name.

Conclusion: Europe’s Security Doctrine of the Future

When future historians look back at 2025, they may remember it as the year the world discovered its energy systems had options.

Two things happened almost simultaneously:

• Fossil energy’s geopolitical fragility became impossible to ignore.

• Clean electricity proved capable of powering global growth without carbon.

That convergence redefines power in every sense of the word.

The world's challenge now is to convert momentum into mastery, to build grids that are as flexible as they are vast, policies that reward electrons over molecules, and communities that see energy not as a commodity but as a form of collective defence.

The fossil age built centralised empires; the electric age will build distributed democracies.

Because Bill McKibben is right: you can drone a refinery, but you can’t drone the wind.

And that, at last, is what real energy security looks like.

This article was first published on TomRaftery.com

For too long, climate change has been framed as an abstract moral crusade, a question of belief or politics. But business leaders and policymakers don’t get to operate in the world of abstraction. They run companies, ministries, and economies in the material world, where physical assets get destroyed, balance sheets wobble, and financial systems seize up when unmanaged risk compounds.

The brutal truth is this: climate change is first and foremost a risk management challenge. And like all risks, it can’t be eliminated, but it can be priced, prioritised, mitigated, and prepared for.

That was the framing offered by economist Gary Yohe, one of the architects of the IPCC’s shift from cost–benefit calculus to iterative risk management. Yohe has a way of distilling it to a stark but useful triad: abate, adapt, or suffer. That’s not a slogan. It’s the unavoidable choice set. Every tonne of emissions we cut lowers the risk of catastrophic events. Every euro or dollar invested in resilience reduces the impact when those events still occur. Whatever we don’t abate or adapt to, we will simply have to absorb - as loss, as disruption, as social fracture.

the signals are already everywhere.

• According to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, in 2024 the US, experienced 27 separate billion-dollar disasters, costing nearly $183 billion. That’s more than double the average of the 1980s, and the curve is rising.
• In Europe, climate-linked losses hit €162 billion in just three years (2021–2023), according to the European Environment Agency. The bloc has racked up €738 billion in weather and climate losses since 1980, with floods and storms accounting for two-thirds.
• Insurers are blinking red. State Farm and Allstate have pulled back from California, citing wildfire risk. Florida’s insurance market teeters so precariously that its “insurer of last resort,” Citizens, is now the state’s biggest underwriter.

These aren’t activist talking points. They’re actuarial decisions. If the insurers, society’s professional risk managers, are pricing climate change as uninsurable, then boards and cabinets must take the hint.

Climate Risk Comes in Three Flavours

Executives and politicians need to think about climate risk the way central banks do: by classifying it into buckets that can be monitored and managed.

1. Physical risks.

These are the acute shocks (storms, wildfires, floods, heatwaves) and chronic drags (sea level rise, water stress, permafrost thaw) that hit infrastructure, assets, and people. NOAA’s records show billion-dollar disasters in the US have quadrupledin frequency since the 1980s. Europe is no better: the EEA warns the cost curve will keep rising unless adaptation accelerates.

2. Transition risks.

Markets and regulations are moving. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the global IFRS S2 climate disclosure baseline make scenario analysis and risk integration non-negotiable. Companies that lag will face higher capital costs, eroding market share, or both.

3. Liability risks.

Litigation is now a climate risk vector. As disclosure frameworks tighten, directors and officials who fail to account for foreseeable climate risk could be held accountable, in court.

Insurance: The Canary in the Climate Coal Mine

The Allianz Group recently put it bluntly: “Our goal is to keep the world insurable. But we cannot do it alone.” Their July 2025 climate risk report warns that only about one-third of natural disaster losses are insured, and the gap between insured and uninsured losses is growing faster than coverage can keep up .

This is not just an insurance industry headache. When coverage disappears:

• Credit slows, because mortgages require insurable collateral.
• Investment stalls, because projects can’t be underwritten.
• Public budgets snap, because governments must cover what the market won’t.

Allianz’s conclusion is stark: beyond 3°C of warming, vast areas could become “effectively uninsurable”, leaving states unable to cover the residual costs . That’s systemic risk, the kind that crashes economies. In fact, they warn that the worsening climate crisis could ultimately destroy capitalism. Strong language from an industry as risk averse as insurance.

Finance Has Already Moved

The financial system is treating climate as core business risk. Boards and ministries that lag are exposed.

• The European Central Bank ran its first climate stress test in 2022. The finding: banks were underprepared, with patchy data and inadequate governance. Supervisors are now tightening expectations.
• The Bank of England’s Climate Biennial Exploratory Scenario estimated UK banks and insurers could face £110 billion more in losses under a “late action” pathway compared with early, orderly transition.
• BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has been blunt: climate risk is investment risk (even if they have reframed their messaging on this topic of late!).

If finance is embedding climate into enterprise risk management and capital planning, so must operating companies and governments.

The ROI of Resilience

Treating climate as risk management reframes adaptation. It isn’t charity. It’s corporate finance.

The World Bank estimates $4 in benefits for every $1 invested in resilient infrastructure. The Global Commission on Adaptation projected that $1.8 trillion in resilience investment by 2030 could generate $7.1 trillion in net benefits - through avoided losses, higher productivity, and co-benefits like healthier crops and cleaner water.

Allianz models the same dual-front strategy: mitigation to cap future risks, and adaptation to blunt unavoidable impacts . They’ve committed €170 billion to sustainable investments, from offshore wind to green hydrogen, while still underwriting resilience upgrades for clients. That’s not activism. That’s balance-sheet protection.

Supply Chain Sidebar: When Risk Ripples

Supply chains turn climate hazards into systemic shocks. Consider the 2011 Thailand floods: factories producing 40% of the world’s hard disk drives were submerged, sending global IT hardware supply into chaos for months. Japanese automakers lost hundreds of thousands of units as suppliers sat underwater.

Fast forward: drought in the Panama Canal has already throttled global shipping. A hotter, wetter, more chaotic world means supply networks will face serial disruptions. For business leaders, the lesson is clear: map supplier exposure, build redundancy where critical inputs cluster in risk-prone regions, and bake climate resilience into procurement.

The Playbook for Boards and Politicians

So what does a serious climate risk management agenda look like? Ten moves:

1. Set risk appetite. Define what losses are intolerable (safety, downtime, stranded assets) and codify thresholds.
2. Embed climate in ERM. Align with IFRS S2; run climate scenarios through budget cycles and capital planning.
3. Map asset-level hazards. Use GIS overlays for flood, fire, and heat; triage assets into protect, relocate, or exit.
4. Invest in “no-regrets” resilience. Drainage, passive cooling, flood barriers. (NYC’s subway floodgates post-Sandy are case in point.)
5. Rethink supply chains. Dual-source critical inputs; don’t cluster risk in a single vulnerable basin.
6. Modernise insurance strategy. Combine risk reduction with parametric insurance and captives.
7. Learn from pioneers. Rotterdam’s water plazas, San Francisco’s adaptive seawall programme, resilience can be iterative, flexible, and beautiful.
8. Raise codes and standards. Design for future climate, not historic averages.
9. Boost early warning. Invest in monitoring and response dashboards tied to rehearsed playbooks.
10. Train people. Culture and practice matter. Run compound-risk drills (heat + blackout + wildfire smoke).

Policy Levers That Matter

For governments, the most effective interventions look less like slogans and more like risk engineering:

• Disclosure and prudential rules: Mandate IFRS S2-aligned reporting; empower supervisors to enforce climate risk management.
• Planning and codes: Update building standards for fire, flood, and heat. Embed climate in land-use zoning.
• Blended finance: Scale resilience bonds and public–private infrastructure funds. Target the $4-for-$1 return space.
• Cross-border coordination: Hazards don’t stop at customs posts. Shared data and joint planning are now competitive necessities.

Leadership: Realism, Discipline, and Hope

Here’s where Gary Yohe’s distinction matters. Optimism says it will all turn out fine. Hope says action makes sense, even when outcomes are uncertain. That’s the stance leaders need.

Vaclav Havel put it best: hope is “the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” It’s that certainty which keeps mayors upgrading flood defences, keeps CFOs building resilience lines into budgets, keeps policymakers pushing emissions limits through legislatures.

And it’s not naïve. It’s pragmatic. Leaders don’t need perfect certainty to act. Central banks, insurers, and statistical agencies have already given us enough signal. The choice now is whether to act with foresight, or pay later in compound losses.

Closing Thoughts

Climate change isn’t a morality tale. It’s a risk ledger. And the arithmetic is merciless: every risk not abated must be adapted to, and every risk not adapted to will be suffered. The good news is that the toolkit exists. The return on resilience is positive. And the cost of delay is rising.

The insurance sector has already sounded the alarm. Allianz’s blunt assessment, that entire regions could become uninsurable if we don’t change course, should be ringing in every boardroom and cabinet office.

For leaders, the imperative is clear: treat climate like any other systemic risk. Set thresholds, allocate capital, monitor exposures, build resilience, and move. Hope, not blind optimism, should fuel the work.

Listen and Learn More

If this resonates, you’ll want to hear the full conversation I had with Professor Gary Yohe on the Climate Confident Podcast. We unpack the abate–adapt–suffer triad, the limits of insurance, and what risk management really looks like in a climate-stressed world.

Photo credit Glenn Beltz on Flickr

This post was originally posted on TomRaftery.com

Electrification is reshaping the global economy. From long-haul trucking to steelmaking, from heating systems to the data centres that underpin AI, energy demand is being steadily pulled away from fossil fuels and into electricity. And critically, more of that electricity is being generated from renewable sources every year.

But the transition is not simple. It demands vast new infrastructure, smarter grids, trillions in investment, and political will. The Financial Times recently ran a Special Report - The Electrification of Everything, which captures both the magnitude of the opportunity and the obstacles. From “supercables” that stitch together continents, to blackouts exposing the fragility of underinvested grids, to the shift in how energy is consumed, the message is clear: this is the defining industrial challenge of our time.

Let’s explore the core themes, and why business and policy leaders cannot afford delay.

Supercables and the Infrastructure Test

In Lincolnshire, England, the Viking Link now connects the UK to Denmark across 765 kilometres of seabed and land. On windy days, Britain exports its surplus power; when the North Sea is calm, it imports Danish electrons. It’s a glimpse of the future: a world of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) “supercables,” balancing weather patterns and time zones to make the most of renewables .

Projects now planned stretch even further. A $26 billion venture aims to send Australian solar power 4,300km to Singapore. Another proposal would link Canada to Ireland and the UK with a 6GW line, allowing hydropower from Quebec to power Irish mornings and North Sea wind to cook New Yorkers’ dinners.

These projects are audacious, and fragile. Supply chains for cables and transformers are stretched thin, installation requires specialist ships and narrow weather windows, and politics often intrudes. Norway has seen public backlash to interconnectors blamed for higher domestic prices, while the UK recently pulled support for the Morocco-UK cable, citing cost and security concerns .

And yet, the logic is undeniable. The sun doesn’t shine everywhere at once, but it does shine somewhere. Interconnection balances geography. Storage, as we’ll see later, balances time. Together, they allow us to avoid overbuilding, reduce curtailment, and replace geopolitical dependence on fossil fuels with interdependence built on clean energy.

Blackouts as Warnings

If cables are the frontier of progress, blackouts are the symptoms of neglect. In April 2025, Spain experienced a day-long outage that shut down railways, businesses, telecoms, and internet networks, with Portugal also hit . It was a stark reminder that modern economies are only as strong as their grids.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that annual transmission investment must more than double, from $140bn in 2023 to $300bn by the mid-2030s, to meet electrification and climate targets . That means millions of kilometres of new lines, upgraded substations, and software to orchestrate power across increasingly decentralised grids.

Geopolitics complicates this further. Western suppliers can’t meet demand for transformers, turbines, and cables. China can, and is poised to dominate. UBS analysts warn that demand for distribution transformers alone will exceed what European and US manufacturers can deliver, leaving countries reliant on Chinese firms like Sieyuan and Sanxing.

This reliance creates a security paradox: grids need Chinese kit to function, yet dependence carries obvious risks.  

Storage is one way to mitigate fragility. Batteries can act as shock absorbers, keeping critical systems alive when transmission falters. But unless grids are modernised, even the best storage systems cannot prevent systemic failure. Spain’s blackout was not an anomaly, it was an alarm bell.

Efficiency as the Silent Giant

Electrification isn’t just about swapping fossil fuels for renewables. It’s about transforming demand so that energy use itself becomes far more efficient.

Consider transport. Volvo will launch a long-haul electric truck in 2026 with a 600km range and 40-minute recharge. Heavy trucks were once thought impossible to electrify; now they are entering the market. EVs overall are 2–4 times more energy-efficient than combustion cars, avoiding waste heat and capturing braking energy.

Heating shows a similar leap. Heat pumps deliver three or more units of heat for every unit of electricity consumed, an efficiency gas boilers cannot match.

The IEA estimates that thanks to electrification and efficiency, global final energy demand could fall 15% by 2035 compared with today, even as GDP grows. That’s the holy grail of decoupling.

But progress is uneven. Heat pump sales in Europe fell 22% between 2023 and 2024 when subsidies were withdrawn and gas prices dropped. EV sales have flatlined in parts of Europe and the US due to high power costs and policy reversals. Meanwhile, China sold 12.5 million EVs in 2024, and is on track to hit over 16m this year. And China is investing $800bn in its grids.

Efficiency is the quiet engine of the transition. But without consistent policy and infrastructure support, the gains risk stalling.

Storage: The Backbone of Flexibility

If interconnectors balance geography and efficiency trims demand, energy storage balances time, and time is everything in a system dominated by wind and solar.

BloombergNEF projects 2025 will see 94GW / 247GWh of new storage deployed globally, a 35% jump from last year. By 2035, annual additions could reach 220GW / 972GWh, with utility-scale batteries leading the charge. Precedence Research estimates the stationary storage market will grow from $66.6bn in 2025 to $450.5bn by 2034, a staggering 23.7% CAGR.

China again dominates, mandating storage alongside renewables in many provinces, though policies are shifting toward more market-based approaches. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are also scaling quickly, while the US risks slowing progress due to tariffs on imported batteries.

Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries are the chemistry of choice for stationary storage, driven by Chinese manufacturers, while alternatives like sodium-sulphur and metal-hydrogen are emerging. AI is now being integrated to optimise battery performance, predict failures, and orchestrate dispatch.

Why does this matter? Because without storage, renewables are clipped, wasted, or curtailed. With storage, solar captured at noon keeps the lights on at midnight. Storage reduces price volatility, provides backup during blackouts, and makes grids more resilient to shocks.

The world is building cables and turbines at record pace. But without storage, the system will remain brittle. Think of it as the difference between a house with plumbing but no tank: plenty of water when the tap is on, nothing when it’s off.

The Global Race: China Surges, Europe Persists, America Hesitates

BloombergNEF’s EV Outlook 2025 shows that one in four cars sold worldwide this year is electric. Two- and three-wheelers are electrifying at astonishing rates in Asia. Lithium-ion demand for vehicles alone is set to hit 3.8TWh by 2029.

China leads across the board. Its electrification share of final energy is already 30% (up from 12% in 2000). It dominates EV production, charging, batteries, and increasingly, storage. Europe is pushing forward with strong policy frameworks such as CBAM and the Green Deal, though progress is uneven and industry competitiveness is strained by higher electricity prices.

The US, meanwhile, is faltering. In the first quarter of 2025, $8bn worth of clean energy and EV projects were cancelled; by May, that figure had grown to $15.5bn and 12,000 lost jobs. Policy reversals and new tariffs have chilled investment. Companies like Bosch, AESC, and Kore Power have paused or abandoned battery projects.

As I argued recently, the US is handing the 2030s to China and Europe. Industrial leadership will follow where the supply chains are built. Those who lead in clean energy hardware will shape the global economy of the next decades.

Beyond Economics: Health, Security, and Resilience

The economic case for electrification is clear. But its broader benefits are equally decisive.

• Air quality: WHO estimates 7 million premature deaths annually from air pollution. EVs and electrified heating cut NOx and particulate emissions, saving lives.
• Resilience: During Spain’s blackout, my own home stayed lit by using our EV via vehicle-to-load (V2L). Multiply that by millions of EVs and storage units, and you get a grid with shock absorbers built in.
• Security: Fossil fuels tie nations to volatile markets and authoritarian suppliers. Electrification, anchored in domestic renewables and storage, reduces that exposure.
• Climate: Most importantly, electrification is the only pathway to Paris alignment. Without it, there is no route to 1.5°C. With it, there is at least a fighting chance.

The Hard Road Ahead

None of this is easy. Supercables cost billions and require political trust. Grids need rebuilding at unprecedented scale. Consumers must be persuaded to switch cars, boilers, and behaviours. Supply chains must be scaled responsibly, without creating new dependencies.

Storage itself faces hurdles: raw material constraints, tariffs, recycling challenges. But the alternative - clinging to fossil systems, is costlier still. The IMF estimates climate inaction could wipe 7–18% off global GDP by 2100. Meanwhile, 91% of new renewable projects are already cheaper than fossil alternatives.

The transition is not optional. It is the foundation of competitiveness, stability, and survival.

Conclusion: Urgency Without Panic

The FT’s Electrification of Everything series captures the scale of the challenge and the scope of the prize. Supercables that redraw energy maps. Blackouts that expose fragility. Electrified trucks and heat pumps that prove efficiency gains are real. Storage rising as the backbone of resilience.

For senior business and policy leaders, the message is straightforward: invest, adapt, accelerate. Those who lead will own the supply chains, industries, and standards of the 21st century. Those who delay will cede sovereignty and competitiveness.

To dig deeper, I recommend reading the FT Special Report here. And if you want ongoing insights, listen to my Climate Confident podcast, where I speak with the innovators and leaders driving this transformation.

Electrification isn’t a trend - it’s the operating system of the 21st-century economy. The real question is not if it will happen, but who will write the rules and capture the value.

Photo Credit Richard Stebbing on Flickr.

Article originally published on TomRaftery.com

If you run a global supply chain in 2025, you’re standing at the intersection of unprecedented pressure and unprecedented possibility. On one hand, the science is unambiguous: supply chains account for anywhere from 60% to 90% of global corporate greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the sector. They are also a major generator of waste, from unsold products to inefficient packaging and unnecessary freight miles. On the other, we now have the technology to measure, optimise, and systematically decarbonise those very systems at a scale unimaginable a decade ago.

Yet here’s the uncomfortable truth: while we’ve known for 20 years that supply chains are the lever, we’ve largely failed to pull it hard enough. The climate clock hasn’t stopped ticking - the IPCC warns we need to halve global emissions by 2030 to avoid the worst impacts of warming, and the market is shifting under our feet. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) are already reshaping procurement decisions far beyond Europe’s borders. If your goods cross an EU border, these rules are your reality.

The good news? With the right blend of technology, data, and AI, you can turn sustainability from a compliance headache into a competitive weapon.

Why Supply Chain Emissions and Waste Must Be Tackled First

The numbers speak for themselves. McKinsey research shows that for consumer goods companies, over 80% of emissions are Scope 3, largely embedded in upstream suppliers. And the CDP estimates that supply chain emissions are on average 11.4 times higher than operational emissions. Waste is equally staggering - the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 14% of the world’s food is lost before it even reaches the retail stage, much of it due to poor forecasting, inefficient logistics, and mismatched demand.

You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and for most companies, Scope 3 measurement has historically been fragmented at best, guesswork or ignored at worst. That’s changing fast thanks to new technologies.

The Measurement Revolution: IoT, Digital Twins, and Integrated Data

The first pillar of transformation is visibility. Internet of Things (IoT) devices, embedded in everything from factory machinery to shipping containers, are generating real-time, granular data on production processes, transport conditions, and inventory flows.

Consider Maersk’s remote container management system - every refrigerated container is IoT-enabled, allowing real-time monitoring of temperature and humidity. That’s not just operationally efficient; it reduces spoilage, cuts waste, and lowers emissions by avoiding emergency shipments.

Digital twins, virtual replicas of physical supply chains, are the next layer. Unilever has built digital twins of manufacturing sites to model energy use and material flows, identifying optimisation opportunities without touching the real-world plant. The result: targeted upgrades with faster ROI, and fewer costly mistakes.

And integration is key. Too many companies still have sustainability and supply chain data trapped in silos. As Saskia van Gendt from Blue Yonder noted in our recent conversation, the leaders are those creating shared, cross-functional visibility so that a supply chain routing decision is instantly visible in carbon terms, not months later in a sustainability report.

AI: From Forecasting to Carbon-Aware Decision Making

Once you have the data, AI can do what humans can’t: process vast datasets at speed, spot patterns, and continuously optimise complex systems.

Forecasting accuracy is one of the most immediate wins. Blue Yonder’s AI-powered demand planning tools have helped companies like Bayer Crop Sciences cut over a million unnecessary transport miles in South America — fewer miles means lower fuel use, fewer emissions, and reduced costs.

AI also enables carbon-aware planning. Imagine being able to choose suppliers not just on cost and lead time, but on real-time carbon intensity, factoring in the day’s energy mix in a manufacturing location. In Spain, for example, the grid can swing from 80% renewable one day to 40% the next. AI can match production schedules to cleaner energy windows, or reallocate orders to plants with lower-carbon power.

But AI isn’t a silver bullet. It’s only as good as the data it’s fed, which is why IoT and integrated systems are indispensable. AI also consumes energy, and the sustainability balance sheet must net positive. That means running models efficiently and, where possible, on low-carbon data centres.

Regulatory Forces: Level Playing Field, Higher Stakes

CSRD and CBAM are game-changers. Under CSRD, some 50,000 companies will be required to report detailed Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, along with transition plans, starting this year. CBAM will apply a carbon price to imported goods like steel, cement, and fertilisers based on their embedded emissions.

These aren’t just European concerns. If you export to the EU, your carbon accounting is now a trade issue. As Saskia pointed out, carbon intensity of national grids varies wildly, and shifting sourcing due to tariffs or politics can inadvertently raise your footprint. Companies that have real-time data on supplier emissions will avoid costly surprises, and may even turn low-carbon sourcing into a differentiator.

Waste Reduction: Circularity as a Supply Chain Strategy

Waste isn’t just an environmental problem, it’s a balance sheet issue. Inventory write-offs, returns processing, and disposal costs are all forms of value destruction.

Technology can close the loop:

• Demand-supply matching - Thai food importer CPF used AI-enabled optimisation to cut fresh food waste by 15%, simply by matching imports to actual demand patterns in European markets.
• Reverse logistics - Retailers using image recognition and AI in returns processing can rapidly reclassify and reintegrate products into inventory, preventing landfill and recovering value.
• Design for circularity - Adidas’ “Made to be Remade” trainers are designed for full recyclability, tracked via digital product passports to ensure materials make it back into the supply chain.

Circularity isn’t a CSR add-on. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates it could generate $4.5 trillion in economic benefits by 2030 through reduced material use, waste, and energy.

Breaking Down the Silos: Sustainability + Supply Chain

One of the most important cultural shifts is the alignment of sustainability and supply chain teams. In too many organisations, these groups operate in parallel, one tracking emissions for reporting, the other making operational decisions without full carbon context.

Leaders are creating joint KPIs, shared data platforms, and incentive alignment. A grocery retailer Saskia worked with set departmental-level carbon reduction mandates; the supply chain team could see exactly how a routing change or supplier choice moved the needle against their 60,000-ton reduction target. That’s accountability with teeth.

Characteristics of Leaders vs Laggards

From my perspective, and echoed by Saskia, leaders share five traits:

1. Maturity - Sustainability isn’t a new bolt-on; it’s embedded, with programmes running for a decade or more.
2. Incentives - Carbon and waste reduction targets are tied to executive compensation.
3. Investment in data infrastructure - From IoT to ERP integration, they’ve built the plumbing to capture and use operational and emissions data.
4. Scenario planning - They can model multiple supply chain configurations against both cost and carbon.
5. Transparency - They engage suppliers with clear expectations and preferencing for low-carbon performance.

Laggards, by contrast, are still reporting Scope 3 emissions using industry averages and annual spreadsheets, and making decisions blind to carbon consequences.

The Business Case for Acting Now

Decarbonising and de-wasting your supply chain isn’t just about avoiding penalties or meeting ESG targets. It’s about resilience, cost control, and future market position.

• Cost savings - Transport optimisation alone can cut freight costs by 10–15%. Energy efficiency in manufacturing delivers rapid payback.
• Risk mitigation - CBAM and similar policies will expand; being unprepared could price you out of key markets.
• Customer demand - Gartner research shows 86% of B2B customers expect their suppliers to meet specific sustainability criteria.
• Capital access - Financial institutions are increasingly tying lending rates to ESG performance.

Practical Steps for Senior Leaders

If you’re leading supply chain, energy, or sustainability strategy, here’s where to start:

1. Map your data gaps - Do you know your top 20 suppliers’ actual carbon footprints, not just estimates?
2. Invest in integrated platforms - Ensure supply chain and sustainability teams work from the same, real-time data.
3. Deploy IoT where it matters most - Target high-emission, high-waste nodes first.
4. Use AI for forecasting and scenario modelling - Model not just cost and lead time, but carbon and waste implications.
5. Engage suppliers - Make low-carbon performance a commercial advantage in procurement decisions.

The companies that start now will have the systems, relationships, and market credibility to thrive in a low-carbon economy. The ones that delay will find themselves scrambling under regulatory, investor, and customer pressure.

The Next Best Time to Act is Now

As Saskia put it: “The time to act was 20 years ago, but the next best time to act is right now.” We have the tools, the data, and the AI to cut millions of tonnes of CO₂ and millions of tonnes of waste out of global supply chains. The question is whether we’ll use them decisively enough, soon enough.

If you want to hear more from Saskia van Gendt on how Blue Yonder is integrating sustainability into supply chain technology, including specific customer examples and deeper dives into AI use cases, I recommend listening to the full episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast here.

And don’t just listen. Audit your data, evaluate your tech stack, and set a clear roadmap for cutting emissions and waste now. Because in supply chains, as in climate action, those who move first will define the market the rest have to follow.

This article first appeared on TomRaftery.com. Photo credit Señor Codo on Flickr

Two signals in the past month have made one thing very clear: the clean energy transition has moved from forecast to financial fact. First, the International Energy Agency's World Energy Investment 2025 report confirmed what many of us have been saying for years – capital is flowing into clean technologies at unprecedented speed and scale. Then, the European Central Bank dropped a policy shift that could turn that flow into a torrent.

The IEA's Data: The Direction of Travel Is Set

The IEA's report is more than a snapshot of 2025; it's a map of momentum. Global investment in clean energy is expected to exceed $2 trillion this year, compared to roughly $900 billion for fossil fuels. That's more than double. Solar PV alone is attracting more capital than all other electricity generation combined. Electric vehicle (EV) sales are on track to exceed 20 million units this year, with battery storage deployment growing at over 35% annually.

Grid infrastructure, often the overlooked enabler, is finally seeing serious money, with global investment projected to rise by 10% year-on-year. The direction of travel is unambiguous: clean is outpacing fossil in both growth rate and total spend.

For corporate leaders, this isn't a "maybe" trend, it's a structural market shift. The cost curves for renewables and storage are still falling, policy frameworks are hardening, and consumer demand is following the price signals.

The ECB's Move: Fuel for the Fire

On its own, the IEA data is compelling. But the ECB's decision to adapt its collateral framework to account for climate-related transition risks is the accelerant. By changing how it values assets offered as collateral for loans, the ECB is effectively making it more expensive for banks to hold fossil-heavy assets and more attractive to finance low-carbon projects.

This isn't abstract. If your company is seeking financing for a clean energy project, the cost of capital just got a tailwind. If you're trying to fund new fossil extraction, expect headwinds, and potentially gale-force ones.

Think of it like a financial current. The IEA shows the river already flowing towards clean energy. The ECB just opened the sluice gates.

Corporate Implications: Capital Has a New Compass

For boards and CFOs, this shift changes the risk/reward calculus:

• Cost of capital divergence: Fossil-linked projects will see financing costs rise; clean projects will enjoy preferential treatment.
• Valuation impacts: Assets exposed to transition risk could see write-downs; low-carbon infrastructure could see premiums.
• Investor pressure: ESG-focused funds will find it easier to justify reallocating to clean assets.
• Competitive advantage: First movers in clean technologies will secure cheaper financing and stronger market positioning.

Sectors beyond energy will feel this too. Manufacturers electrifying processes, transport companies investing in EV fleets, data centres running on renewables, all stand to benefit from cheaper capital access and growing investor appetite.

Reinforcing Momentum: IEA + ECB

The synergy between the IEA's findings and the ECB's policy shift is powerful. The IEA gives us the evidence of market momentum; the ECB adds institutional muscle to accelerate it. Together, they send a clear message: clean energy is not just the future, it's the financially rational choice right now.

Consider the growth of corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs). In 2024 alone, companies signed over 45 GW of clean energy PPAs globally, up from 36 GW the previous year. With the ECB's move, those numbers could surge as financing conditions improve.

Green bonds are another indicator. The global market surpassed $1.5 trillion in cumulative issuance last year. ECB-aligned frameworks will likely make these instruments even more attractive, further lowering financing costs for clean projects.

What Leaders Should Do Now

If you're in the C-suite, this is not the moment to "wait and see". It's the moment to move.

1. Audit your capital exposure: Identify fossil-linked assets in your portfolio and model potential financing cost increases.
2. Build a pipeline of clean projects: Position them to take advantage of favourable financing conditions.
3. Engage with your financiers: Understand how their collateral policies are changing and how you can align.
4. Double down on efficiency and electrification: These are now not just operational wins but strategic financial plays.
5. Signal to the market: Publicly commit to science-based targets and low-carbon investment plans to attract capital.

Beyond Energy: Ripple Effects Across the Economy

This isn't just an energy sector story. Construction firms that adopt low-carbon materials, logistics companies investing in electrified fleets, agriculture embracing regenerative practices, all will find the financial environment more accommodating.

Even in heavy industry, where decarbonisation is complex, the financial calculus is shifting. Projects in green steel, low-carbon cement, and industrial heat electrification will find new backers as transition risk pricing becomes the norm.

A Note on the Global South: Inclusion as Opportunity

While these trends are overwhelmingly positive, we must ensure the Global South is not left waiting on the platform as the clean energy train accelerates.

Investment flows must prioritise not just technology deployment in OECD markets but capacity building, infrastructure, and finance access in emerging economies. The upside is huge: leapfrogging fossil infrastructure, creating millions of jobs, and building resilience to climate impacts.

Multilateral development banks, sovereign funds, and private capital all have roles to play. For corporates, this is both a moral imperative and a growth opportunity. Clean energy demand in the Global South represents one of the largest untapped markets of this century.

Conclusion: The Time Is Now

The IEA has shown us the map. The ECB has given us a tailwind. For companies, investors, and policymakers, the direction is set, the current is strong, and the destination is a cleaner, more resilient economy.

The question is no longer "if" we transition, but "how fast" and "who leads".

Read the full IEA World Energy Investment 2025 report here and the ECB's announcement here.

Because in this race, the winners will be those who moved first, and moved boldly.

This post was first published on TomRaftery.com. Photo credit European Central Bank on Flickr

On 23 July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) quietly detonated a legal landmine, one that could reshape corporate risk, regulatory strategy, and accountability frameworks for decades to come.

In its much-anticipated advisory opinion, the ICJ didn’t mince words: climate inaction isn’t just immoral or inefficient, it’s unlawful. The ruling makes it clearer than ever that governments and corporations alike can no longer hide behind voluntary pledges or net-zero marketing. The legal ground is shifting beneath our feet, and if you're running a business, or advising one, you’d best be paying attention.

This wasn’t a new treaty or a surprise coup by climate activists. It was a request for legal clarity, put to the world’s highest court by the UN General Assembly, led by a coalition of small island states and propelled into motion by a youth-led campaign in the Pacific. What the court returned was a firm, legally grounded message: under existing international law, every country, and by extension, every entity operating within one, has binding obligations to protect people and the planet from the harms of climate change.

Liability Isn’t a Distant Threat, It’s a Boardroom Reality

The ICJ opinion doesn’t create new laws, but it stitches together a legal tapestry from existing international agreements, human rights conventions, and customary norms. The result? A legal framework that strengthens the hand of climate litigators and raises the stakes for both governments and corporates.

As of July 2025, there are 3,099 climate litigation cases active worldwide, according to Norton Rose Fulbright’s latest litigation tracker. That number is accelerating. The ICJ’s opinion is jet fuel for many of them. It provides authoritative backing to the idea that failure to reduce emissions, especially when a company or country has the resources to do so, may amount to a breach of international obligations.

We’ve already seen glimmers of this in national courts. Dutch courts ordered Shell to cut its emissions, citing human rights grounds. In the US, a group of youth plaintiffs in Montana won a landmark case against their state for promoting fossil fuels in violation of their constitutional rights. Germany’s constitutional court has ruled its climate law insufficient to protect future generations.

And then there’s the case of Saúl Luciano Lliuya v. RWE. A Peruvian farmer and mountain guide sued German energy giant RWE, arguing that its emissions, representing roughly 0.4% of global industrial CO₂, had materially contributed to glacier melt that now threatens to flood his town.

Another example is the ongoing case brought by 16 Puerto Rican municipalities against 11 fossil fuel majors, alleging that the defendants caused an intensification of the storms which Puerto Rico experienced in 2017. The case is progressing thanks to advances in attribution science, a field that enables scientists to link specific climate impacts to individual corporate emitters. With courts showing growing willingness to admit this science, fossil fuel companies, and potentially those enabling them, are increasingly finding themselves summoned to courtrooms far from their home turf. This is no longer hypothetical. It’s legal reality, and it’s accelerating.

These weren’t legal flukes, they were previews. With this ICJ ruling in hand, the next wave of lawsuits may go beyond delay and reputational damage. We’re talking fines, asset write-downs, and forced divestitures. Climate risk is now legal risk.

Corporate Strategy Just Became a Legal Document

If your climate strategy relies on long-term targets with soft interim steps, it’s time to sharpen your pencils, and your carbon math. The ICJ made clear that the Paris Agreement doesn’t stand alone; it’s part of a broader fabric of legal duties that includes the UN Charter and various human rights instruments.

Importantly, the Court affirmed that states have a duty to act with due diligence and to prevent significant transboundary harm. For multinational companies, this opens a new dimension of exposure. If your supply chain contributes to emissions or deforestation that harms another country, or violates the rights of vulnerable communities, you may not just be facing ESG backlash. You could be enabling state-level breaches of international law, with ripple effects all the way to your legal department.

The Lliuya v. RWE case is especially instructive here. As Imperial College London’s analysis shows, what once seemed legally and scientifically speculative is now seen as a legally credible claim. Courts are increasingly prepared to accept not only that companies contribute to climate change, but that they can be held directly accountable for the downstream consequences. That glacier in Peru? It may as well be melting under the weight of a European emissions ledger.

Fossil Fuels: The Investment That’s Now Wearing Handcuffs

The ruling stops short of banning fossil fuels outright. But it unequivocally reinforces the obligation to align emissions trajectories with the 1.5°C target. That target isn’t aspirational anymore. It’s a legal yardstick.

This matters deeply for fossil fuel producers and their investors. If you’re expanding oil and gas production in 2025, you’re not just betting against the IEA, the IPCC, and basic physics. You’re now operating in defiance of what the world’s highest court has recognised as legal obligations. That’s a litigation powder keg.

We’ve already seen the pushback: shareholders suing boards for failure to disclose climate risks, insurers refusing to underwrite new fossil fuel infrastructure, and regulators probing greenwashing claims. Now add to that: a potential class of plaintiffs invoking international law and human rights when your drilling rig floods their town or village.

Human Rights Meets Scope 3 - Suppliers in the Crosshairs: Enabling Emissions Is No Longer Risk-Free

One of the most profound elements of the ICJ’s opinion is the fusion of climate harms with human rights violations. The right to life. The right to health. Access to water, food, shelter. These aren’t abstract ideals. They’re codified in law, and they’re being infringed by rising seas, deadly heat, and crop failures.

For companies, this means ESG isn’t just a reporting exercise. It’s a potential liability exposure. Think about your Scope 3 emissions, not just as indirect carbon output, but as vectors of harm. If your logistics network contributes to pollution that disrupts health systems in the Global South, or if your financed emissions contribute to weather events that wipe out livelihoods, you may now find yourself tangled in a web of legal accountability.

Suppliers in the Crosshairs: Enabling Emissions Is No Longer Risk-Free

The implications of the ICJ ruling don’t stop at oil producers or utility companies. They reach into the supply chains, the digital systems, the consultancies, the very infrastructure that props up fossil fuel operations. If you provide products or services that help fossil fuel companies extract, transport, or sell hydrocarbons more efficiently, you are no longer insulated from scrutiny.

Let’s say you supply an ERP system, a predictive maintenance platform, or a digital twin solution that improves extraction efficiency. That system may now be seen as an enabler of unlawful climate harm. And while the ICJ ruling doesn’t impose direct corporate liability, it reaffirms that states have legal duties to prevent climate-related harm, including harm linked to business activities. That includes the activities of companies domiciled within their borders, even if the emissions themselves are exported.

This echoes a broader trend we’ve seen in other sectors. Arms manufacturers have faced litigation for supplying regimes that commit human rights abuses. Tobacco companies' logistics and packaging providers have come under fire. Now, fossil fuel enablers are under the spotlight. As attribution science tightens and legal norms evolve, more plaintiffs may begin to ask: who made this continued extraction possible?

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are clear: companies are expected to avoid contributing to adverse human rights impacts, and to mitigate any impacts they're directly linked to via their operations, products, or services. In this light, continued support for unabated fossil fuel expansion becomes not just a reputational issue, but a growing liability.

Prudent suppliers should act now:

• Assess where your products or services are used to enable fossil fuel operations
• Implement climate and human rights due diligence across client portfolios
• Consider contractual clauses allowing disengagement from non-aligned clients
• Publicly disclose fossil-related exposure and decarbonisation safeguards

The message is simple: if you’re helping fossil fuel companies run faster, cheaper, or longer, you’re no longer on the sidelines. You’re in the frame.

If you’re a corporate leader reading this, the message is clear: compliance is no longer about ticking boxes. It’s about demonstrating real-world, near-term emissions reductions, climate resilience, and respect for rights.

Here’s what smart companies should be doing now:

1. Stress-Test Climate Strategies: Use 1.5°C-aligned models. Don’t rely on net-zero pledges with long horizons and fuzzy offsets.
2. Map Legal Exposure: Assess where your operations intersect with vulnerable communities, carbon-intensive value chains, or high-risk regulatory jurisdictions.
3. Engage Boards and Legal Counsel: This is not just for the Chief Sustainability Officer. This is a C-suite and legal risk management issue now.
4. Divest Intelligently: Exit fossil fuel assets early. If you must remain exposed, ensure transparent, science-aligned decarbonisation plans.
5. Embed Rights-Based Due Diligence: Use tools like the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Align climate action with social protection.

This isn’t about altruism. It’s about license to operate, cost of capital, and long-term viability.

The Geopolitical Undercurrent

Let’s not pretend this ruling lands in a political vacuum. The ICJ has now joined a growing list of institutions—from the UN to the EU courts to national tribunals—acknowledging that delay is dereliction.

For countries, especially major emitters, this advisory opinion won’t be the last word. But it will influence the next. Whether it’s in climate negotiations, trade disputes, or aid flows, we’ll likely see this ruling cited again and again as a normative anchor.

And that’s the quiet genius of it: advisory opinions don’t carry direct enforcement, but they shape the landscape in which enforcement happens. They shift what’s politically and legally defensible. In other words, they redraw the red lines.

Conclusion: A Verdict Worth Listening To

As Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." With this ruling, the ICJ has given that arc sharper definition—and stronger legal teeth.

The ICJ didn’t issue a climate wish list. It delivered a legal diagnosis: climate harm is a rights violation, climate inaction is a breach of duty, and every actor, from parliaments to procurement officers, must now operate with this in mind.

If you’re a business leader, take this as a warning shot across the bow. The days of climate inaction being framed as a policy choice are over. They’re now a potential legal liability, a fiduciary breach, a reputational risk, and, frankly, a moral failure.

So read the full ICJ advisory opinion here, and check out Carbon Brief’s excellent summary here. And for more on attribution science's courtroom impact, read Imperial College's deep dive here.

Because this ruling isn’t just about what governments must do. It’s about what all of us must stop ignoring.

The countdown to climate accountability has officially begun, and the arbiters are now judges, not just scientists or activists.

This article was originally posted on TomRaftery.com. Photo credit RB Photo on Flickr

PowerPoints don’t save lives. They don’t cut emissions either. And they certainly don’t help your new hire understand the inside of a 3-storey ship engine without risking a limb.

And yet, engineering organisations across the globe are still using them as their primary communication, onboarding, and sales tool. It’s costing them. In time. In talent. In safety. And increasingly, in carbon.

That’s why I invited Matt Trubow, Commercial Director at immersive technology company Hidden Creative, to join me on the latest episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. What followed was a fascinating conversation about how immersive digital environments are transforming some of the world’s most complex industries.

But this post isn’t just about a podcast. It’s about the bigger story: how immersive tech is reshaping how we explain, sell, and train around complex infrastructure, and why that shift needs to accelerate.

Engineering is high-risk, high-cost, high-stakes. Why are we still using low-fidelity tools?

From offshore wind nacelles to substation switchgear, our infrastructure is getting more sophisticated. But the way we communicate it hasn’t kept pace.

• PowerPoint? Outdated.
• Site visits? Expensive, risky, and carbon-intensive.
• Flying experts around the globe? Unsustainable.

Enter immersive, browser-based 3D platforms like Simmerse, the one Matt and his team have developed. They create photorealistic, interactive representations of complex assets - wind turbines, water treatment facilities, marine engines, that can be explored collaboratively, in real time, from any web browser.

No headsets required. No downloads. Just a link.

And the benefits? Immediate.

1. Massive Emissions Reductions

A single in-person client demo for a large engineering project might require flying several people across countries or continents. Multiply that by hundreds of demos annually, and you’re easily clocking tens of thousands of tonnes of CO2.

One Hidden Creative client, ABB, estimated that shifting their engineering walkthroughs into immersive environments saved them over $688,000 a year, and untold tonnes of carbon emissions. Across six months, they logged 3,000 hours of virtual engagement across web and VR. That’s 3,000 hours where flights weren’t taken, hotels weren’t booked, and emissions weren’t pumped into the atmosphere.

For global supply chains under pressure to decarbonise, this isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a critical lever.

According to the International Transport Forum, business air travel alone accounted for around 12% of total airline emissions pre-COVID. With Scope 3 reporting tightening, eliminating avoidable travel is a fast win.

2. Radical Safety Gains

You can’t open up a live transformer. You shouldn’t be climbing a turbine tower for a sales demo. And if you’ve ever had to tour a confined substation with new hires, you know the hazards are real.

Immersive tech changes the equation.

Matt described how clients now bring new engineers into simulated nacelles, substations, or marine engine rooms before they ever step foot on-site. They explore. They interact. They learn. All without touching a live wire or donning a hard hat.

And it’s not just new hires. It’s regulators. Salespeople. Sustainability leads. Finance stakeholders. Anyone who needs to understand what the asset does, how it operates, and why it matters, without compromising safety.

The ability to offer deep engineering context without the risk of injury is a game-changer.

3. Cost Savings with ROI that speaks C-Suite

Yes, immersive tech requires upfront investment. But compared to the cost of flying subject-matter experts across the world, booking meeting venues, arranging demos, paying per diems, and suffering project delays due to misalignment? It’s a rounding error.

With immersive technologies, engineering firms get a shared, persistent environment for communication and onboarding. Want to show a potential client how your hydrogen-ready turbine interfaces with legacy infrastructure? No problem. Want to onboard 50 technicians in 10 countries without flying a single one of them in? Easy.

And the savings aren’t just financial.

There’s efficiency. Engineers no longer spend hours building custom decks for every sales pitch. There’s consistency. Every stakeholder sees the same model, experiences the same walkthrough, and leaves with the same understanding.

And perhaps most critically, there’s speed. In fast-moving procurement cycles, clarity wins deals. Immersive tech delivers that clarity.

4. Better for People: Less Travel, More Balance

In the first year of launching Hidden Creative, Matt spent over 250 days travelling. That’s nearly nine months on the road. It’s unsustainable, not just environmentally but personally.

We often talk about emissions and cost when we advocate for less business travel. But let’s not forget the human side.

Every night in a hotel is a night away from family. Every red-eye flight is a drain on wellbeing. And burnout, especially in high-skill, high-demand engineering roles, is real.

Immersive environments allow senior experts to be present at critical moments without being physically present. That’s a win for families, a win for talent retention, and a win for the long-term health of engineering teams.

5. Knowledge Capture Before It Walks Out the Door

In industries like energy and infrastructure, the skills gap isn’t coming. It’s here.

According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, nearly 60% of workers will require upskilling by 2030 due to rapid technological advancement, the green transition, and demographic shifts. The urgency for scalable training solutions like immersive tech has never been greater. At the same time, experienced engineers are retiring, often taking decades of operational insight with them.

Immersive tech gives organisations a tool to codify that knowledge. With these platforms, you can record a walkthrough, embed expert commentary, and create persistent training environments that younger staff can return to again and again.

This isn’t just training. It’s institutional memory. Captured. Scalable. Always available.

Why this matters now

Engineering, manufacturing, and energy companies are under unprecedented pressure to decarbonise, reduce cost, and accelerate digital transformation.

Immersive technology delivers on all three.

Yet uptake remains uneven. Many organisations are still stuck in the PowerPoint era, unsure of how to get started, daunted by perceived complexity, or waiting for others to go first.

They shouldn’t wait.

The technology is here. It’s mature. It’s accessible. And the savings, in carbon, in cost, in lives, are real.

If you’re responsible for sustainability, digital transformation, or workforce development in your organisation, it’s time to put immersive technology on your agenda.

This isn't just a tech upgrade. It's a communication shift that matches the complexity of our world.

Want to hear more?

If you’d like to hear Matt walk through how their clients are saving hundreds of thousands in costs, reducing emissions, and rethinking engineering sales and onboarding, check out the full episode here: Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, Episode 77.

Or visit https://www.sustainablesupplychainpodcast.com/ to explore more episodes.

If your engineers are still relying on PowerPoint and plane tickets, it's time to upgrade. Not just your tools, but your impact.

This article was first published on TomRaftery.com

Photo credit Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Flickr

In climate circles, we’ve gotten comfortable talking about demand. Cut emissions. Electrify transport. Install solar panels. Swap gas boilers for heat pumps. Retrofit buildings. All absolutely essential. But there’s a blind spot we keep dodging: fossil fuel production. We are still pouring capital, labour, subsidies, and policy momentum into the supply of fossil fuels, as if the laws of physics and atmospheric chemistry simply don’t apply at the source.

That contradiction lies at the heart of the conversation I had recently with Tzeporah Berman, Chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative and one of the most articulate voices making the case for a global mechanism to wind down fossil fuel production. But what Tzeporah illuminated isn’t just a policy gap, it’s a crisis of logic, and one that imperils all our climate targets.

Because here’s the thing: we can’t burn what we don’t produce. And right now, we’re producing far, far too much.

We’re Planning to Burn 110% More Than the Planet Can Handle

According to the 2023 UN Production Gap Report, governments around the world are on track to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C. In fact, they’re planning to extract 110% more oil, gas, and coal than would be consistent with the 1.5°C target, and 69% more than would be consistent with the 2°C target.

That’s not an oversight. That’s policy. That’s inertia. That’s fossil fuel companies leveraging their record profits and lobbying power to shape energy futures that lock in carbon emissions long after renewables have become cheaper than legacy fuels.

Tzeporah points out something many people working in energy policy have known for years but struggled to make centre-stage: the Paris Agreement doesn’t even mention fossil fuels. The words “oil,” “gas,” and “coal” appear precisely zero times. That omission is not just symbolic, it’s systemic.

Why the Market Can’t Fix This Alone

The dominant theory, championed by even well-meaning climate leaders, is that we can just electrify everything, and let market forces gradually starve out fossil fuels. Build more solar, wind, and batteries, and eventually, they’ll become so cheap and ubiquitous that the demand for coal, oil, and gas will fade away.

It’s seductive. It’s also false.

Because fossil fuel markets are distorted beyond belief. The IMF estimates $7 trillion per year in fossil fuel subsidies, which is equivalent to 7.1% of global GDP, and that includes everything from direct production incentives to the staggering socialised costs of air pollution, healthcare, and disaster response.

These subsidies keep uncompetitive fuels alive. Worse, they empower fossil exporters to undercut clean tech on price, delay transition policies, and paint a fantasy of “clean oil” or “abated gas” through expensive, failed tech like carbon capture and storage.

Meanwhile, global oil and gas majors, flush with war-time profits, continue to expand production. ExxonMobil, for example, plans to spend $140 billion (with a b) to increase oil production in the Permian Basin by 25% between 2023 and 2027. And, Saudi Aramco, the world's most profitable company, has pledged $150 billion in new oil and gas investments over the next decade. These are not signals of a system in managed decline, they're a bet on significantly growing their death machines.

The Bad Math of Net Zero

Tzeporah calls out the sleight of hand we see in net zero commitments. The term, increasingly hollow, has been co-opted as a licence to carry on emitting today while waving vague promises of offsets and carbon removals tomorrow.

Let’s be clear: net zero does not mean zero fossil fuel production. In many cases, it’s the opposite. It means burn now, capture later. But that “later” is speculative, underfunded, and massively underdelivering. A recent preprint study cited by Carbon Brief estimates that just 12% of carbon-offset projects currently in operation result in genuine emissions reductions. Investigations into Verra, the world's leading certifier, found that over 90% of its rainforest-related offsets may be "worthless", with exaggerated or ineffective climate benefits. A comprehensive review by Carbon Brief further revealed that 43% of reports showed overstated emissions reductions, and over 70% documented harm to Indigenous peoples and local communities, including land grabs and human rights violations. The largest carbon capture projects in the world are mostly being used to extract more oil (enhanced oil recovery), not to draw down legacy emissions.

Worse, some of these net zero roadmaps explicitly allow fossil fuel production to increase, just so long as it's paired with unproven removals or nature-based offsets. This is not climate leadership. It's carbon accounting theatre, at best. Fraud at worst.

A Treaty for the Supply Side

What Tzeporah and her team are proposing is both radical and blindingly obvious: a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, modelled on the nuclear treaties of the 20th century, to coordinate a global phaseout of coal, oil, and gas production.

And just like with nuclear arms, the key isn’t getting every country to the table at once. You start with the willing. You build ambition. You set norms. And slowly, the pressure mounts on the laggards to follow suit.

Already, 17 countries have endorsed the initiative, including Colombia, Latin America's fifth-largest coal exporter, whose President Gustavo Petro stood on the UN floor and said, in essence: we know our fossil exports are worsening the crisis, but we can’t stop alone. We need global cooperation. We need fair finance. We need just transition mechanisms.

And that’s the key: no country should be forced to choose between servicing debt and servicing climate. But many of them are. Rich countries, particularly those historically responsible for fossil fuel expansion, must not only stop expanding themselves, but help others leapfrog past the fossil age entirely.

Just Transition Must Mean Something

A phaseout without justice is just austerity by another name. A true transition means that fossil fuel workers are retrained, communities are invested in, and producer economies have a clear path to diversification.

Take Malaysia, where fossil fuels make up nearly 67% of GDP. You can’t just flip a switch there. But you can offer debt relief, international finance, trade partnerships, and public investment to chart a new industrial direction.

We’ve done this before. In the EU, the Just Transition Mechanism is mobilising €55 billion to support coal regions and carbon-intensive industries. Spain, notably, negotiated a just transition deal with coal unions that included early retirement, retraining, and land restoration, avoiding the backlash seen in places like France or the US.

The Fossil Fuel Treaty initiative is working on similar tools at the international level: debt-for-transition swaps, trade frameworks, and tax agreements designed to help countries leave fossil fuels in the ground and stay solvent.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

Let’s not sugar-coat it. We are in the last decade where we can meaningfully shape the trajectory of the climate. After that, it’s not about avoiding damage—it’s about surviving what we’ve locked in.

Already, 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history, breaking the record set just the year before in 2023, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Wildfires, floods, and lethal heatwaves are displacing millions globally. Over 7 million people die prematurely each year from air pollution, most of it driven by fossil fuel combustion. And despite endless pledges and conferences, emissions from fossil fuels rose again in 2024 to 37.4 billion tonnes of CO2, up 0.8% year-on-year, marking yet another all-time high.

To top it all - we already have more than enough fossil fuels in existing fields and mines to power the global transition, while we scale clean energy. According to the IEA’s 2023 update to its Net Zero Roadmap, no new oil and gas fields, coal mines, or mine extensions are needed beyond those already approved as of 2021. Every additional approval is a political decision, not an economic necessity.

We do not need new extraction, not in the North Sea, not in Alaska, not in the Amazon, not in Africa. The infrastructure already in place is more than sufficient to meet projected demand during a managed decline, if we stop expanding the problem.

Making Fossil Fuels Politically Toxic

Public opinion is shifting, but not fast enough. The fossil fuel industry has spent billions marketing itself as “part of the solution.” As Tzeporah notes, 98% of oil company ads highlight green energy, while 98% of their capex still goes to fossil fuel expansion. That’s not greenwashing, that’s gaslighting.

We need to make fossil fuel expansion as socially unacceptable as asbestos, lead paint, or smoking in a maternity ward. It’s not just about economics or emissions. It’s about safety. Security. Justice. People's lives.

And people need to talk about it. One of the simplest and most impactful things any of us can do is break the silence. Link fossil fuels to the disasters in the news. Bring it up at the school board meeting. Ask your elected reps what they’re doing to end new fossil fuel projects. If you’re in business, push your organisation to endorse the Treaty publicly. And if you’re in media or marketing, stop giving the industry a platform.

Conclusion: We Can Do This

This isn’t a message of doom, it’s a call to action. The technologies we need already exist. The capital is there. The public support is growing. What’s missing is the political will to constrain production at its source.

And that’s exactly what the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty aims to deliver.

If you want to learn more about this treaty, the movement behind it, and the strategies countries like Colombia are using to lead from the front, listen to my full conversation with Tzeporah Berman on the Climate Confident podcast. It’s a powerful, paradigm-shifting discussion that cuts through the greenwash and gets to the heart of the matter.

Because it’s simple. We can’t fix climate change without stopping fossil fuel production. And we don’t have time to wait.

Photo credit DieselDemon on Flickr Post originally posted on TomRaftery.com

A decade ago, sustainability in supply chains was often buried under the “CSR” banner - a catch-all label for community programmes, charitable donations, and maybe a glossy annual report featuring a smiling child and a wind turbine. These initiatives weren’t inherently bad, but let’s be honest: they rarely touched the operational core of a business. Today, that’s no longer tenable.

In the latest episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, I sat down with Rhea Rakshit, VP of Product Management at Sayari, to explore how the conversation around ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) has evolved, and more importantly, how companies are wrestling with the practical, data-driven, regulation-heavy challenge of supply chain transparency.

This isn’t a feel-good campaign. It’s a strategic imperative. And getting it wrong has consequences that range from reputational damage to fines, stranded assets, and fractured supplier relationships. Getting it right, on the other hand, builds resilience, improves forecasting, and opens doors to new markets and partnerships.

Let’s break this down.

The Case for Transparency: Regulation Meets Risk

The explosion of legislation in recent years - the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), the EUDR (deforestation-free products regulation), and the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), has reframed ESG from a nice-to-have to a non-negotiable. Businesses must now not only know their supply chains, but prove it.

And “know” doesn’t mean having a spreadsheet of Tier 1 suppliers. It means understanding the entire upstream value chain: who’s mining the cobalt, growing the cotton, or shipping the timber, and under what conditions.

Why? Because regulators, consumers, and investors increasingly demand it. According to a 2023 study by McKinsey, over 70% of supply chain leaders cited increasing pressure from regulatory bodies as a key reason they’re prioritising ESG initiatives. Not to mention the business exposure: 61% of global supply chains pass through regions with high environmental or social risk.

Visibility Isn’t Enough — Insight Is What Matters

One of Rhea’s most resonant points in our conversation was the difference between visibility and insight.

Visibility is table stakes. It’s the ability to map out your suppliers, sub-suppliers, and raw material sources. But without analytical depth, insight, it’s little more than a compliance exercise.

True insight means answering critical, scenario-driven questions: Are my most critical suppliers all located in high flood-risk zones? How much of my supply is vulnerable to climate disruption? Am I unwittingly sourcing from regions flagged for forced labour or linked to deforestation?

These aren’t just ESG questions. They’re operational ones. As Rhea put it, Understanding that your most critical suppliers are in a flood-prone area is a business decision, not just a sustainability concern.

Insight lets you act, not just react. It’s what separates a company that scrambles to explain a scandal from one that proactively shifts suppliers and builds redundancies before a crisis hits.

From Siloed Departments to Integrated Risk Management

Historically, ESG lived in its own corner, maybe under a VP of Sustainability, maybe rolled into Marketing (which tells its own story). It was siloed, underfunded, and disconnected from core operational teams.

That’s changing fast.

We’re now seeing more companies stand up cross-functional “centres of excellence” around sustainability. Legal, compliance, procurement, and sustainability teams are increasingly working in lockstep. And rightly so, because risks don’t respect organisational charts.

One global manufacturer I spoke with recently had their Chief Risk Officer chairing a taskforce that included ESG leads, sourcing managers, and finance. Their goal wasn’t to “green” their brand. It was to keep factories running and avoid reputational implosions from hidden forced labour in Tier 3 suppliers.

That’s the future of sustainable supply chain leadership: not isolated ESG champions but embedded, cross-functional decision-makers driving resilience and value simultaneously.

Why ESG Is Still Hard (And Why That’s Okay)

Let’s not pretend this is easy. ESG data is messy, inconsistent, and often deeply political. Suppliers in the Global South are being asked to conform to reporting requirements built in Brussels or Washington, with little support or context. As Rhea pointed out, expecting seamless transparency from halfway across the world is both naïve and, frankly, unfair.

But we’re seeing meaningful progress. Platforms like Sayari, which use graph technology to surface hidden commercial relationships and state-owned enterprise connections, are helping companies illuminate dark corners of their supply chains. The tools exist. The challenge is implementation, and the will to act.

The good news? Many companies are embracing this challenge. Look at how Unilever has committed to full supply chain traceability for key raw materials, or how IKEA is working to phase out suppliers linked to deforestation (albeit, after several embarrassing reports linking its furniture to deforestation). It’s slow, sure. But it’s happening.

Metrics That Matter: What Should You Be Measuring?

Everyone loves a dashboard. But ESG performance isn’t about how colourful your metrics are - it’s about whether they’re actionable.

Some baseline KPIs might include:

• Percentage of supply chain mapped to raw material level
• Number of suppliers in high-risk geographies (climate, political, labour)
• Incidents of forced labour or human rights violations identified and remediated
• Carbon intensity per product or region
• Percentage of goods linked to deforestation-free sourcing

But beyond that, the most strategic question might be: “Is our supply chain becoming more future-proof?”

Are you reducing exposure to volatile regions? Are you building in flexibility? Are you choosing suppliers not just for cost, but for shared values and long-term viability?

This is the new business case for ESG. It’s not about doing less harm. It’s about building a better supply chain - one that actually works in a disrupted world.

Forced Labour, Climate Change, and Deforestation: Interconnected Challenges

Let’s call out the elephant in the room. ESG isn’t a single issue. It’s a knot of interrelated risks that play out across time and geography.

Forced labour and deforestation aren’t just social or environmental issues, they’re economic ones. Products linked to these practices face boycotts, border seizures, and legal action. And they’re often more vulnerable to climate impacts as well. Deforested regions erode soil health, worsen flooding, and destabilise ecosystems. That’s a triple threat: environmental, social, and operational.

Climate change, meanwhile, is no longer a future scenario. It’s a supply chain disruptor today. The 2022 floods in Pakistan, the wildfires in Canada, and droughts across southern Europe all had ripple effects on shipping, sourcing, and delivery.

ESG is, at its core, a resilience strategy. Read that again.

Closing the Loop: From Identification to Remediation

Identifying risk is step one. Acting on it is what counts.

Too many companies stop short at mapping their suppliers and reporting a few stats. What we need is structured remediation: clear protocols for engaging suppliers, setting expectations, supporting improvement, and ultimately deciding whether to continue the relationship.

As Rhea noted, this is where the software space is evolving - enabling not just risk identification, but end-to-end tracking, engagement, and improvement.

It’s not about policing suppliers. It’s about partnership. If a supplier in Southeast Asia lacks reporting tools or documentation, what support can you offer? If they’re linked to deforestation, are there transition pathways?

This is where ESG stops being an audit and starts becoming a transformation.

The Road Ahead: ESG as Competitive Advantage

We’re now seeing leading companies treat ESG not as a constraint, but as a differentiator. Brands that can prove sustainable sourcing, ethical labour practices, and climate-smart logistics will win over customers, investors, employees, and increasingly, regulators.

Supply chain transparency tools are becoming table stakes, and the companies that embed ESG into core operations will be the ones that thrive as disruptions mount.

Because make no mistake, this isn’t just about compliance. It’s about survival. It’s about building supply chains that are smarter, cleaner, and more adaptive to the world we actually live in.

Want to Go Deeper?

If this topic struck a chord with you, and it should, I’d encourage you to listen to my full conversation with Rhea Rakshit on this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast.

We talk about the role of design in ESG strategy, the tension between buyers and suppliers, and what it really takes to move from buzzwords to impact.

Trust me, it’s well worth your time. And if you enjoy it, follow the podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure to catch future similar critical conversations.

This article was first published on TomRaftery.com. Photo credit International Labour Organisation on Flickr

In the murky depths of sustainability reporting, one data point rules them all: the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF). It’s not new. It’s not flashy. But for manufacturing leaders trying to wrestle emissions down to net zero by mid-century, PCF is about to become the gold standard. The only problem? Most manufacturers are still working with static spreadsheets, outdated databases, and averages that could be off by orders of magnitude.

In episode 62 of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, I sat down with Simon Kim, CEO and founder of Glassdome, to dig into what it takes to get PCF right—and why real-time, machine-level data is the linchpin to doing it accurately, affordably, and at scale. You can listen to the full episode here.

The problem with averages

Let’s not sugar-coat it: most emissions data used today is guesswork dressed in compliance clothing. Lifecycle databases and emission factor repositories serve as the default inputs for many corporate footprinting efforts. They're based on industry averages, not actual emissions. That might pass regulatory muster for now, but it’s a poor foundation for serious decarbonisation.

Here’s why that matters: if every supplier reports using the same average data, there’s no differentiation. Supplier A and Supplier B look identical on paper, even if one is running on super clean solar and the other on coal. And for manufacturers trying to decarbonise supply chains—where Scope 3 emissions typically account for 70% or more of total emissions—that’s a big blind spot.

Primary data: the way forward

Simon and his team at Glassdome have built a system that plugs directly into manufacturing machinery—bypassing the black box of assumptions entirely. Their software connects to legacy equipment through custom-built drivers (think USB printer drivers, but for CNC machines and robotic arms), extracts machine-level energy and material usage data, and uses it to compute real-time PCFs.

With this kind of granularity, manufacturers can:

• Pinpoint carbon hotspots on the factory floor
• Compare the emissions of two identical-looking parts from different suppliers
• Adjust operations in real-time to reduce emissions

And perhaps most importantly, they can report to regulators with confidence, rather than caveats.

Regulation is coming—fast

The EU is leading the charge. The 2023 EU Battery Regulation mandates site-specific, primary emissions data for all batteries sold within the bloc. And it’s not just a one-off. The Digital Product Passport and Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) are queuing up next, targeting a wide range of sectors from textiles to consumer electronics.

If your products cross a European border, you’re in scope. And just as USB-C became the global standard after an EU push, PCF compliance will likely follow a similar trajectory. Apple didn’t redesign iPhones for Europe only. Manufacturers won’t either.

The SME dilemma

Big manufacturers have compliance teams, sustainability officers, and budgets to throw at decarbonisation. But small and mid-sized manufacturers? Not so much.

If you want to bring SMEs along, emissions tracking needs to be automated, affordable, and as close to plug-and-play as possible. That starts with scalable data infrastructure. Not million-euro IT overhauls, but low-cost, IoT-driven systems that can be deployed quickly, generate actionable insights, and plug into broader reporting platforms like Siemens' SiGreen.

The goal isn’t just to survive audits. It’s to create competitive advantage. If you’re a supplier who can deliver emissions transparency along with your products, you’re already ahead of 90% of the market.

A future of comparability

Today, PCF disclosures are rare. But five years from now, they could be as common as nutrition labels. Simon recalled his surprise visiting Europe, where food packaging prominently features A-to-E health ratings. He expects the same thing for carbon. Oatly, for instance, already lists the CO2e per litre on its oat milk packaging. Most dairy competitors don’t. So while 0.54kg CO2e/kg may sound good, there’s really no way of telling, because there's no benchmark, or reporting standard - yet.

Once PCF becomes a standardised consumer signal, lagging behind won’t just be a regulatory risk—it’ll be a branding liability.

AI and emissions tracking: Not yet

Everyone wants to sprinkle a bit of AI on their sustainability problems, but you can’t optimise what you don’t measure. AI can help once the data exists, but until then, the first step is infrastructure. Get your data out of the machines. Then let the algorithms go to work.

Eventually, AI could handle system boundaries, allocation rules, and PCF methodology selection. But today, it’s real-world sensors and IoT gateways that need the spotlight.

Supply chain first, always

If you’re a manufacturer reading this and wondering what to do tomorrow, the advice is simple: after data infrastructure, tackle your supply chain. Scope 3 is the big beast, and getting even partial transparency into your tier-1 and tier-2 emissions is better than staying in the dark.

Work with suppliers, share goals, define data exchange frameworks. Don’t wait for regulation to drag you forward. If you’re the one asking the hard questions about emissions now, you’ll be the one winning business tomorrow.

Final thoughts

Product carbon footprinting isn’t some distant goal. It’s happening now. And while there’s still a wild west of frameworks and methodologies out there, the direction of travel is clear.

Primary data is in, industry averages are out. Real-time beats annual. And machine-level granularity is the new currency of credible emissions reduction.

If you're ready to step beyond box-ticking and into actual impact, the tools exist. And so does the imperative.

To learn more, check out the full conversation with Simon on the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast.

This article was first published on TomRaftery.com

Bankability or Bust: Why Industrial Decarbonisation Hangs in the Balance

Industrial decarbonisation isn’t a footnote in climate action, it’s one of the most critical, daunting, and often misunderstood frontlines in our battle to limit global warming. We’re talking about the bedrock sectors of modern civilisation: steel, cement, chemicals, aluminium, shipping, aviation - the heavy hitters responsible for around 30% of global CO₂ emissions, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). These are not optional extras. These are the building blocks of everything from bridges to broadband towers to the very fertiliser that feeds us.

And they’re hard to decarbonise. Not just because they burn a lot of fossil fuel, but because they’re capital-intensive, margin-sensitive, and until recently stuck in a kind of low-carbon limbo. They know where they need to go. But getting there? That’s the kicker.

In a recent episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I spoke with Faustine Delasalle, CEO of the Mission Possible Partnership (MPP), an organisation spearheading decarbonisation efforts across these sectors. And the conversation drilled into one truth that rarely makes headlines but should be etched on the walls of every climate conference hall:

“If projects aren’t bankable, they aren’t investable. If they’re not investable, they won’t get financed. And if they don’t get financed, they’ll never see the light of day.”

Let’s unpack what that means—and why industrial decarbonisation now hinges on what you might call a “demand-chain reaction”.

The Tech Exists. The Commitment Exists. The Money? Still Waiting

The technical roadmaps are there. We know how to make green steel using hydrogen instead of coal. We can produce low-carbon cement by reducing clinker content or even using entirely new chemistries. Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF)? Possible. Green ammonia? Feasible. Shipping? Working on it. The innovation isn’t the bottleneck.

What is? The economics. A ton of green steel still costs more than a ton of conventional steel. That differential, known in some circles as the green premium, or conversely, the dirty discount, is killing momentum.

Even when companies want to invest, the business case often falls apart on paper. Lenders hesitate. Insurers waver. Boards drag their feet. Because while we’ve got 700+ commercial-scale decarbonisation projects in the global pipeline (as tracked by MPP), the vast majority haven’t reached final investment decision (FID). And unless they cross that threshold within the next 18–24 months, they won’t be operational by 2030, which is the inflection point for keeping a 1.5°C world within reach.

Bankability Isn’t About Hype—It’s About Buyers

This is where the conversation gets a little uncomfortable. For all the fanfare about corporate net-zero commitments, the follow-through is spotty. As Faustine put it:

“Project developers don’t just need capital—they need a buyer. Someone willing to purchase green commodities at a premium. And right now, voluntary demand only gets us so far.”

You might have heard of buyers’ clubs like the First Movers Coalition, where companies agree to procure small percentages (1–5%) of green steel or cement. That’s a good start, and yes, it helped get some early-stage projects off the ground. But let’s not kid ourselves - that level of demand won’t carry us to industrial-scale transformation.

Voluntary action hits a wall when the CFO starts asking about cost parity and return on investment. We’re stuck in a weird holding pattern where demand is too soft to de-risk supply, and supply is too scarce to drive down cost.

The Carrot Is Nice. But the Stick Works Faster.

So how do we flip the economics? In short: policy. And not just subsidies. Faustine made a compelling case for what’s needed now - mandates, procurement standards, and regulatory demand signals that force the market to adapt.

We’ve seen this work before. Think back to Germany’s feed-in tariffs for solar power in the 2000s. By guaranteeing 45 euro cents per kilowatt-hour of solar-generated electricity at a time when market prices were a fraction of that they jumpstarted the global PV industry. Fast forward to today, and solar is the cheapest form of electricity in history.

The same dual-pronged approach powered the rise of electric vehicles: consumer subsidies on the one hand, and EU manufacturer fleet-average CO₂ targets on the other. Europe’s tightening rules, like the 2035 ban on new internal combustion engine sales are driving innovation because they leave no room for complacency.

Now imagine applying that logic to steel, cement, and ammonia. Mandates for green public procurement, building material standards, and clean fuel quotas in aviation and shipping. Couple that with production tax credits or investment guarantees and you’ve got a recipe for scale. Not perfection, scale.

A $1 Trillion Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight

Let’s put some numbers on this.

MPP tracks over 560 industrial decarbonisation projects that haven’t yet reached FID. Combined, they represent a $1 trillion investment opportunity - real money, real infrastructure, and real emissions reductions waiting to happen.

This isn’t vaporware. These are legitimate projects announced by companies, with locations, technologies, and timelines. What they lack is a clear signal that the green output will be purchased at a viable price.

If that demand existed say, through clean product mandates in steel for carmakers, or cement standards for construction contracts, then suddenly these projects go from speculative to investable. From vision to bricks-and-mortar.

Where It’s Working, and Where It Isn’t

No country has it completely figured out, but some regions are experimenting at scale.

• United States: The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is throwing hundreds of billions in subsidies at clean tech. But as Faustine noted, it’s not working uniformly (and sadly the new administration is killing it off!). Compare California, which layers on state-level regulations, to Texas, which relies on subsidies alone. Guess which one is seeing more green steel and ammonia activity? (Hint: it’s not the Lone Star State.)

• Europe: A pioneer in clean industry, but increasingly hamstrung by high energy costs and limited renewable capacity (with exceptions like here in Spain, also Portugal, and the Nordics). The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is a bold step, but questions remain about implementation and competitiveness.

• Emerging economies: Places like Brazil are starting to see the value in producing green fertilisers at home using domestic renewables. Ethiopia and Rwanda are already phasing out combustion engine imports. The global south may end up leapfrogging the old industrial order, if access to finance can match political will.

Hydrogen’s False Promise? Why Ammonia Might Not Be the Domino We Need

Faustine highlighted ammonia as a potential first domino in industrial decarbonisation largely because it’s already produced using hydrogen, and green ammonia could replace both fertiliser feedstocks and shipping fuels. From her view, ammonia is attractive because it straddles multiple markets and requires fewer process overhauls than, say, green steel.

But here’s where I diverge.

Hydrogen, especially green hydrogen is not a free lunch. It’s wildly inefficient. First, you lose about 30–40% of your energy just producing hydrogen via electrolysis. Then, if you’re converting it to ammonia, that’s more energy lost. And if you’re planning to crack it back into hydrogen downstream, add more losses again. The full cycle from electrons to molecules and back to electrons is like a leaky bucket.

And here’s the kicker: every kilowatt-hour wasted in hydrogen production is a kilowatt-hour not going into electrifying transport, heating homes, or running industrial heat pumps that could decarbonise more effectively, more affordably, and more directly.

In a world where clean electrons are scarce and in high demand, diverting that electricity into hydrogen pathways should be considered a last resort, not a primary solution.

That doesn’t mean green hydrogen has zero role. In sectors where there’s genuinely no viable alternative, such as long-range shipping or fertiliser production in areas with no access to other clean feedstocks it may be unavoidable. But we should be laser-focused on using it where nothing else will do. Not where electrification could do the job faster, cheaper, and far more efficiently.

Efficiency, Design, and the Hidden Wins

While we obsess over fuel switching and process redesigns, let’s not forget the low-hanging fruit.

• Energy efficiency remains one of the most cost-effective ways to cut emissions. Always has, always will.

• Material efficiency using less cement per building, lighter-weight car designs, recycling aluminium offers gains without breaking ground.

• System efficiency optimising supply chains, reducing overproduction, embracing circularity can reshape entire sectors without a single new technology.

2030 or Bust? Not Quite, but Close.

MPP’s modelling shows we need 700 green industrial plants up and running by 2030 to align with a 1.5°C pathway. That’s… not happening. Not at the current rate. Projects need to be approved by 2026 at the latest to hit that mark, and we’re nowhere near the FID surge we need.

But Faustine remains cautiously hopeful. Even if we miss the 2030 milestone, the sheer volume of pipeline projects suggests that by 2035, the industrial landscape could look very different. That’s a delay we can’t afford, but also a shift we can’t ignore.

Listen to the Full Conversation

If this post has piqued your interest, and I hope it has, then I’d encourage you to listen to the full conversation with Faustine Delasalle on the Climate Confident podcast. We cover financing strategies, buyer incentives, regional disparities, and what it’ll take to bring those 700 projects to life.

 Listen to the full episode here

Let’s stop treating industrial decarbonisation as someone else’s problem, or worse, as too hard to tackle. The pathway is difficult, but visible. The tools exist. The money is waiting. What we need now is the will to buy, to build, to believe that this transformation i s not just possible, but mission-critical.

This article was originally published on TomRaftery.com. Photo credit ILO Asia-Pacific on Flickr

We’ve spent years fine-tuning the rhythms of supply chains, applying digital tools, data, and policy nudges to reduce carbon, optimise inventory, and electrify logistics. Yet one of the most urgent environmental flashpoints remains stubbornly neglected, wrapped in complexity and often exported far from sight: electronic waste.

Every cable, phone, laptop, server, industrial controller, when it reaches the end of its useful life, joins a growing mountain of discarded technology. E-waste is now the fastest-growing solid waste stream in the world. And it's not just about volume. It's about what’s inside: rare earths, heavy metals, flame retardants. Stuff that’s hazardous to extract, toxic to dispose of, and increasingly hard to source.

In episode 60 of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, I sat down with Kenny McGee, founder and CEO of Component Sense, to discuss what’s really happening on the ground with global e-waste, and what it means for supply chain professionals and sustainability leaders. Kenny shared insights from a recent trip to Agbogbloshie in Accra, Ghana, formerly the world’s largest e-waste dump site. What he found there was equal parts inspiring and devastating.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The Global E-Waste Equation: 62 Million Tonnes and Climbing

Let’s set the context. According to the UN’s Global E-Waste Monitor, the world generated over 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022. That’s a 20% increase over five years, with projections putting us on track for 82 million tonnes by 2030. Only 17.4% of that waste is formally documented as collected and recycled.

Why so little?

Because e-waste, more than any other category of waste, is mired in complexity. It straddles legality, informality, and outright criminality. It’s difficult to sort, expensive to recycle properly, and often shipped illegally or semi-legally to countries with weaker environmental regulations under the label of “used goods.”

And here's the kicker: it’s not all waste. Much of it is perfectly usable equipment, or equipment that could be refurbished or repurposed. But in a system designed to prioritise throughput, not longevity, even minor faults often mean the scrap heap.

What Happens When a TV Leaves Europe

Kenny’s trip to Agbogbloshie was not the typical sustainability mission of metrics and dashboards. It was an attempt to trace the physical reality of the “end of life” phase of electronics.

What he found is a system of extraordinary resourcefulness built on unbearable trade-offs. Second-hand traders in Ghana buy shipping containers full of discarded electronics, ostensibly tested and working. But in reality, Kenny says, only around 20% of the goods function on arrival. The rest? They enter a cascading informal repair and salvage economy.

Technicians, many of them teenagers tear down, scavenge, resell, and in many cases, burn. Circuit boards are stripped of copper and gold. Cables are incinerated to get at the wire inside, using polystyrene from old fridges to boost the flames. The smoke is dense. Toxic. Relentless. Burning plastic infused with brominated flame retardants is a regular part of daily life.

And this isn’t happening on some remote industrial site. It’s happening in people’s front yards. Right next to their bedrooms. Children grow up with this as their air, their soil, their normal.

All of this from equipment that was supposedly “recycled” in Europe.

Circularity Has a Border Problem

The circular economy sounds great in theory. Keep products and materials in use. Design for disassembly. Refurbish and reuse.

But it breaks down when the loop crosses borders.

By EU law, it’s illegal to export e-waste to developing countries. And yet, as the Basel Action Network and other watchdogs have shown, thousands of tonnes slip through every year disguised as “used goods.” That loophole, deliberate or not, transforms a circular process into a linear one that ends in uncontrolled incineration, contamination, and exploitation.

Kenny traced some of these downstream paths. He saw British and Chinese companies operating in Ghana, buying circuit boards, stripping them of components, and shipping them back to Asia. He found high levels of secrecy, a lack of regulatory oversight, and a clear mismatch between sustainability rhetoric and material practice.

Waste, Work, and the Fragile Economics of Survival

Here’s the brutal paradox: for many in Ghana, e-waste is not just pollution. It’s livelihood.

An estimated 40,000 to 140,000 people live in and around the Agbogbloshie site. Some work in repairs. Others in salvage. Others in micro-trading - recycling cables, reselling components, or running makeshift TV halls that stream Champions League matches on salvaged screens.

Shut down the supply of e-waste, and you're not just cleaning up a dumpsite. You're cutting off entire communities from their only source of income.

That’s what makes the e-waste challenge so thorny. It’s not simply a case of enforcement or clean-up. It’s a case of creating real alternatives. Replacing unsafe work with safe work. Preserving livelihoods without poisoning the air.

As Kenny put it, “my goal was always to have the adults working in quality jobs and the kids at school.” But achieving that, he quickly realised, isn’t a matter of intention - it’s a matter of system-wide transformation.

What Can Manufacturers Do?

The design stage of electronics is where the greatest influence lies. And the message is clear: we need devices that are easier to repair, easier to disassemble, and longer lasting by default.

Kenny’s company, Component Sense, already works with manufacturers to repurpose unused or obsolete components. They’re tackling overproduction and inventory waste. But as he noted in our conversation, even industrial equipment could be made modular: upgrade the technology, reuse the housing. Don’t redesign everything from scratch.

The same applies to consumer electronics. We need:

• Batteries that can be replaced without a heat gun.
• Screens that can be swapped without a trip to the Genius Bar.
• Spare parts that are available for years, not months.
• Software updates that don’t brick older models.

Right to repair legislation is gaining traction in the EU, US, and beyond. But legislation alone won’t solve it. We need incentives that make repair the smart economic choice - not just the moral one.

And just as importantly, we need supply chains that support transparency beyond Tier 1. That means tracking not only how products are made, but how they’re unmade. Where they go. Who handles them. And under what conditions.

What Can We Do as Consumers and Professionals?

If you’re in supply chain, procurement, or sustainability, you’re in a position of leverage.

• Start by asking your suppliers what happens to their obsolete inventory.
• Review your takeback and recycling processes - not just on paper, but in practice.
• Partner with organisations like Basel Action Network, Closing the Loop, or the WEEE Forum to understand what responsible e-waste treatment actually entails.

And personally? Resist the upgrade treadmill. That new phone, laptop, or smart speaker might come with a green sticker - but it comes at a cost, too.

Extending the life of your electronics is one of the simplest and most impactful sustainability decisions you can make.

The Supply Chain Imperative

What struck me most in speaking to Kenny was just how embedded this issue is in supply chains. E-waste isn’t a downstream problem. It’s an upstream design flaw, a midstream inventory failure, and a downstream regulatory gap.

It’s the shadow side of global logistics - the reverse flow that rarely gets tracked, let alone optimised.

But as supply chain professionals, we can help rewrite that story. We already understand flows, data, optimisation. Now we need to apply that same thinking to obsolescence, repairability, and reuse.

Not to push the problem further afield, but to fix it at the root.

Listen to the Full Episode

If you want to hear more from Kenny about what he saw in Ghana, how Component Sense is tackling electronic surplus, and what manufacturers can do to be part of the solution, listen to the full episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast:

 Repair or Ruin: E-Waste, Informal Economies, and the Role of Manufacturers

Let’s stop calling e-waste a downstream problem. It’s a systems problem. And that makes it a supply chain problem - one we can absolutely begin to solve.

This article was first published on TomRaftery.com. Photo credit Fairphone on Flickr

The energy revolution is well underway, and it’s no longer just about massive wind farms or sprawling solar fields. The real game-changer? Decentralisation. In this latest episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Chris Doherty, CEO of Joulen, about how smart battery systems, AI, and distributed energy solutions are flipping the traditional power grid on its head. The bottom line? The future of energy isn’t just green; it’s democratic.

From Centralised to Decentralised: The Great Grid Shake-Up

For over a century, electricity has been a one-way street. Large power plants generate it, high-voltage lines distribute it, and we consume it. But with renewables on the rise, a new model is taking hold—one where businesses and households don’t just consume energy but generate, store, and even trade it.

Take the UK’s recent milestone: the last coal power plant was shut down in September 2024, marking a significant leap toward clean power. However, this transition raises questions about energy security and grid reliability. With coal historically serving as a baseload power source, replacing it with renewables requires a robust strategy for storage and demand management. Advances in battery technology, virtual power plants, and smart grid systems will be essential to ensuring a stable energy supply without reverting to fossil fuel backups. But as Chris points out, the challenge now is ensuring grid stability while accommodating increasingly decentralised renewable sources. Grid-scale assets are still crucial, but the real opportunity lies in small-scale solar, home batteries, and Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) that aggregate thousands of these small systems into flexible energy hubs.

Virtual Power Plants: The Cloud Computing Analogy

Think of a Virtual Power Plant like cloud computing. Instead of a single, ginormous computer, cloud services rely on thousands of smaller, interconnected servers, or CPUs. Similarly, a VPP connects homes, and businesses with solar typically, as well as other small forms of electricity, forming a virtual energy plant that can supply power when needed. This is the key to unlocking a resilient, distributed energy system where everyday people play an active role.

Germany is leading the charge in this area. In 2023 alone, over 555,000 battery storage units were installed in homes across the country. This rapid adoption has been driven by a combination of strong policy incentives, including subsidies for battery storage, low-interest green loans, and a favourable feed-in tariff system that rewards homeowners for selling excess energy back to the grid. These financial mechanisms have played a crucial role in making energy storage more accessible and financially viable for everyday consumers. These homeowners are now energy traders, selling excess power back to the grid when prices spike. Meanwhile, in the UK, Chris argues that similar financial structures should be extended to everyday people—not just large-scale investors—so they can benefit from energy markets too.

The Brooklyn Microgrid project in New York has proven that blockchain can facilitate peer-to-peer solar energy trading, reducing reliance on traditional utilities. But can this model scale to national energy trading networks? Countries like Australia and Germany are exploring blockchain-powered marketplaces, yet challenges remain—transaction speed, regulatory roadblocks, and integration with legacy grid systems all pose hurdles to widespread adoption. While blockchain offers a promising path to decentralised, transparent energy trading, its true scalability is still being tested. As I discussed in a previous blog post on decentralised energy and peer-to-peer trading (read it here), blockchain’s ability to automate and secure transactions has the potential to reshape how we buy and sell power—but only if it can overcome these systemic barriers.

Why Government Incentives Matter

Let’s talk money, because that’s often the biggest barrier to entry. While the UK government has ambitious goals—like a fully clean electricity system by 2030—those targets will only be met if everyday consumers and businesses can afford to participate.

Chris makes a compelling case for government-backed green loans or tax incentives to drive uptake. Historical data supports this approach—studies have shown that well-designed incentives significantly boost adoption rates. For example, Germany’s solar feed-in tariffs led to a boom in residential solar installations, while the UK’s previous Green Homes Grant provided funding that helped thousands of households adopt energy-efficient upgrades. Case studies like these demonstrate that financial support can play a crucial role in accelerating the energy transition. The success of electric vehicles (EVs) (particularly the Norwegian example) also offers a clear precedent. Thanks to tax incentives and corporate schemes, EV adoption has surged. So why not apply the same logic to home battery storage and solar?

EVs as Batteries on Wheels

Speaking of EVs, they’re no longer just about transport—they’re power stations on wheels. My new Kia EV3 is a prime example, equipped with vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities. This means in theory I can charge my car with solar power during the day and then use that stored energy to power my house at night. In the future, entire neighbourhoods could form microgrids, sharing power between homes and vehicles.

This isn’t some distant sci-fi vision; it’s already happening. Nissan, for example, has been running V2G trials in the UK, showing that EVs could provide valuable grid balancing services. Imagine a world where instead of being charged for power, your car actually pays you for plugging it in.

In fact, this is already happening for some EV owners in the UK who are on Octopus Energy's Intelligent Octopus Gotariff. When excess energy floods the grid, these customers get paid to charge their vehicles, helping to balance supply and demand while making EV ownership even more financially attractive. Similar programs are emerging in other countries too, demonstrating how smart energy tariffs can turn everyday consumers into active participants in energy markets.

Final Thought: Energy Freedom is the Future

The energy landscape is shifting from a handful of large players controlling everything to a system where everyone can generate, store, and trade power. And just like cloud computing changed the IT industry forever, decentralised renewables and AI-driven energy markets are set to revolutionise how we power our lives.

The best part? This isn’t some elite club—it’s open to anyone with a roof, a battery, and/or an EV.

Curious to learn more? Chris and I explored how energy decentralisation is reshaping markets, the role of smart batteries and AI-driven optimisation, and how government policies can accelerate adoption. Listen to the full Climate Confident episode now and get inspired to take control of your energy future.

First published on TomRaftery.com

Procurement? Meticulously structured. Spreadsheets, approvals, supplier negotiations—the works. Getting shiny new servers into a data centre is a well-rehearsed symphony. Forward logistics? Seamless. Orders placed, assets tracked, everything arriving at its designated rack on time.

But what happens after?

Where do the old machines go—the ones still operational, but replaced by newer, faster, shinier iterations? Stacked in storage rooms? Scrapped too early? Left collecting dust?

Here’s the reality: Reverse logistics is an afterthought in most enterprises. IT asset management? Disjointed, reactive, and alarmingly inefficient. Millions of euros in valuable technology—discarded, misplaced, forgotten.

And it’s not just about sunk costs. The problem scales. The numbers boggle the mind: 62 million metric tonnes of electronic waste in 2022 alone, set to increase to 82 million tonnes by 2030 (according to the 2024 Global E-Waste Monitor). Meanwhile, IT infrastructure is on track to consume 20% of global electricity by the end of the decade.

So, why aren’t more companies taking IT asset reuse, refurbishment, and resale seriously?

IT's Energy Appetite: A Growing Liability

Servers, routers, data centres—they don’t sip power, they guzzle it. The cloud isn’t floating on air; it’s sitting on concrete, steel, and silicon, pulling electricity at an unprecedented rate. AI, edge computing, hyperscale growth—it all piles onto an already bloated energy footprint.

And yet, much of this demand is driven by outdated, inefficient hardware. Legacy equipment hums away, burning unnecessary kilowatts, long past the point where an upgrade would make more financial and environmental sense.

The solution isn't just upgrading—it’s what happens next. Reverse logistics, done right, ensures that:

 Existing assets are repurposed, resold, or reconditioned instead of scrapped.
 Energy-efficient hardware replaces outdated systems sooner, lowering operational emissions.
 Decommissioned equipment is recycled properly, reclaiming valuable materials instead of contributing to landfill.

The alternative? Short-term thinking that leads to long-term waste.

Reverse Logistics: The Missed Business Opportunity

Beyond sustainability, reverse logistics is a financial play that too many companies are ignoring. The numbers don’t lie:

 20–30% savings on IT procurement for organisations that integrate refurbished assets into their infrastructure.
 Faster tech refresh cycles without the long lead times and supply chain bottlenecks seen in new hardware procurement.
 Avoidance of regulatory penalties, with stricter e-waste laws pushing companies to prove responsible disposal.

Still, many businesses default to disposal over reuse. Why? Lack of visibility. Poor asset tracking. No incentive structures rewarding lifecycle management.

Regulatory bodies are catching on, though. The EU’s WEEE Directive and Right to Repair laws are shifting the burden, ensuring that manufacturers—and, increasingly, enterprises—take accountability for asset reuse and disposal.

AI, Automation & Reverse Logistics: A New Era of Asset Management

Reverse logistics is messy. Unpredictable. A logistical Rubik’s cube. Unlike forward logistics—where assets move along a clear, linear path—reverse logistics forks in multiple directions.

Where does a decommissioned server go?

• Resale? If it’s in good condition, it holds value.
• Internal redeployment? If another department can use it, no need to buy new.
• Recycling? If all else fails, materials can be reclaimed.

This complexity is why AI and predictive analytics are changing the game.

 AI-driven asset tracking ensures that every piece of IT hardware is accounted for—where it is, how much life it has left, and whether it should be resold, refurbished, or scrapped.
 Machine learning-powered triage evaluates condition, streamlining decision-making on redeployment vs. disposal.
 Blockchain-backed chain of custody tracking ensures compliance with evolving regulations, minimising risk and maximising value.

And the result? Companies regain control of their IT inventory, ensuring nothing is wasted, forgotten, or disposed of prematurely.

The Circular Economy: Big Tech is Already Moving

Some of the biggest names in the industry are leaning into reverse logistics hard:

 Cisco: Their Takeback Programme ensures that 99.9% of returned hardware is reused or recycled.
 HP: A Certified Pre-Owned IT Programme keeps assets in circulation, reducing demand for new production.
 Dell: Their Asset Recovery Services allow companies to return old hardware for resale, reuse, or responsible recycling.
 Apple: Their Certified Refurbished program ensured 12.8M devices and accessories were sent to new owners in 2023

The shift toward circularity isn’t just a sustainability play—it’s a strategic advantage.

Building a Smarter Reverse Logistics Strategy

If reverse logistics isn't on your company’s radar, it needs to be. Here’s how businesses can start making the shift:

 Audit Your Existing IT Assets. Know what you have, where it is, and what condition it's in. IT Asset Management (ITAM) tools are critical here.
 Establish a Formal Reverse Logistics Process. No more ad-hoc decommissioning. Set up structured workflows for redeployment, resale, and recycling.
 Leverage AI & Automation. Asset tracking, condition analysis, and lifecycle optimisation must be data-driven to be scalable.
 Work with Certified ITAD Partners. IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) vendors ensure compliance, proper recycling, and maximum value recovery.

Final Thoughts: Reverse Logistics Isn’t Optional Anymore

For too long, reverse logistics has been ignored—seen as a back-office problem rather than a strategic opportunity. But with IT infrastructure’s energy consumption spiralling, sustainability mandates tightening, and AI reshaping supply chain efficiencies, companies that fail to optimise reverse logistics risk falling behind—both financially and environmentally.

The path forward? Structured, data-driven asset management that prioritises reuse over disposal. Companies that embrace circular IT strategies will cut costs, improve sustainability, and gain resilience in an increasingly volatile supply chain landscape.

 Want to go deeper? I spoke with Shannon Payne, SVP of Supply Chain Solutions at MDSi, about how businesses can rethink reverse logistics, harness AI for smarter asset management, and reduce IT’s ballooning energy footprint. Listen to the full episode here.

Article first published on TomRaftery.com. Photo Credit Rwanda Green Fund on Flickr

Energy. The lifeblood of civilisation. The force that propels economies, lights up megacities, keeps your phone buzzing at 2 AM. And yet, the entire system—the backbone of modern life—is cracking, shifting, warping into something entirely new. Fossil fuels, the undisputed rulers of the past century, are on their way out. But are they leaving fast enough? That’s the billion, no, trillion-dollar question.

I just sat down with Jarand Rystad, Founder and CEO of Rystad Energy, a guy who doesn’t just observe the global energy chessboard—he helps define the moves. We ripped into the hard questions: Is the energy transition accelerating at a breakneck pace, or are we still stuck in second gear? Are policy missteps slowing progress? And crucially, do we have a chance in hell of outrunning climate catastrophe?

Spoiler alert: The energy revolution is in full swing. But momentum alone won’t save us. The stakes? Higher than ever. Wildfires torching landscapes. Supercharged storms rewriting coastlines. Energy markets seesawing in chaos. The transition isn’t some academic exercise—it’s the fulcrum upon which our collective future teeters.

Why This Shift Is Unstoppable

Conventional wisdom says the energy transition is a political affair—governments pushing green policies, activists waving placards. Nice story, but wrong. Economics is the real kingmaker. And the numbers? Staggering.

️ Solar & Wind: The Price Tag Tells the Story – Forget subsidies. Forget government mandates. In 2024, renewables are just…cheaper. Solar costs have imploded, free-falling by 81% between 2009-2019 and it has continued to fall precipitously year on year since (thanks, BloombergNEF). Wind isn’t far behind. This isn’t a “green” decision anymore. It’s a financial one.

️ Batteries: The Gamechanger That’s Already Here – Ten years ago, the idea of storing renewable power for later use felt like sci-fi. Now? Lithium-ion battery costs have nosedived by over 90% between 2010-2023 (IRENA says hello). Grid-scale storage is no longer theoretical—it’s happening.

️ Fossil Fuel Investing? A Sinking Ship – Once a safe bet, now a financial minefield. Oil and gas markets swing wildly, spooking investors—some of whom are doubling down on renewables, while others hesitate amid shifting political tides. BlackRock, Vanguard, and Wall Street’s biggest players had been making decisive moves into clean energy, but with the new U.S. administration recalibrating policies, some are slowing their green pivot, waiting to see how regulations shake out.

Jarand Rystad put it plainly: If climate change weren’t even a thing, the energy transition would still be happening. It’s simple—clean tech is cheaper, faster, smarter. But don’t pop the champagne yet. The road ahead? Riddled with potholes.

Three Colossal Roadblocks (And Why They Matter)

 China: Renewable Powerhouse or Coal Addict?

China is a paradox wrapped in a contradiction. In 2024 alone, they threw 357 GW of renewables onto the grid—more than the entire historical solar & wind capacity of the U.S. (around 310 GW, for context). But—and here’s the kicker—they’re still greenlighting new coal plants.

Why? Two words: Energy security. No country wants rolling blackouts. The problem isn’t building renewables; it’s making them reliable. Storage, grid flexibility, and high-voltage transmission lines are the missing pieces. And until those systems scale up, coal remains the crutch.

 Hydrogen & Carbon Capture: Savior or Overhyped Distraction?

Hydrogen sounds sexy, but let’s be real—it’s not powering your house or your EV. It’s expensive, inefficient, and, outside of industries like steel or aviation, it’s a square peg in a round hole. Electrification beats hydrogen in most scenarios. Every. Single. Time.

Carbon capture? More theory than practice. Sure, we can trap CO₂ from cement plants, but direct air capture is still a financial nightmare. Betting on carbon capture to save fossil fuels? Like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a leaky, cracked, coffee cup.

 AI & Data Centres: The Hidden Energy Guzzler

AI is rewriting industries, sure. But it’s also rewriting the global energy demand curve. By 2030, data centres could devour 8% of global electricity. That’s terrifying.

The solution? Smart AI (hello DeepSeek, or similar) that uses very little electricity itself, and optimises power use, grids running on renewables, and better hardware efficiency. Otherwise, AI’s rapid rise could backfire, slamming the brakes on emissions reductions elsewhere.

So What Needs to Happen—Yesterday?

️ Fossil Fuel Subsidies Need to Die – Governments are still dumping $7 trillion (yes, with a ‘T’) into fossil fuel subsidies (IMF stats). Imagine if even half of that went to renewables, storage, and transmission? Game over for coal and oil.

️ Investment Needs to Go Supersonic – We hit $1.8 trillion in clean energy investment in 2023. Sounds great? Not even close. The IEA says we need $4 trillion per year by 2030. That means doubling down—fast.

️ Grid Infrastructure Needs a Revolution – Renewables don’t work like fossil fuels. They’re intermittent, decentralised, and demand a smarter grid. We need better transmission lines (and optimized use of those lines), AI-driven power distribution, and massive battery deployments. This isn’t an option—it’s a requirement.

The Verdict? We’re Winning, But Not Fast Enough

Solar and wind are smashing fossil fuels on cost. China’s renewable buildout is staggering. Investors are funneling capital into clean energy like never before. But time is the one thing we don’t have. The 1.5°C climate goal? Almost out of reach. Global emissions? Still stubbornly high. And policy chaos? Threatens to slow everything down.

The next 10 years are make-or-break. The choices made right now will determine whether we head towards a livable future—or lock in climate chaos for generations.

Want the full deep dive? Listen to my full conversation with Jarand Rystad.

What’s your take? Are we sprinting fast enough—or still crawling towards the finish line? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

Article first published on TomRaftery.com. Photo credit Wayne S. Grazio on Flickr

The global energy transition is accelerating at a remarkable pace. Solar and wind power have become some of the most cost-effective energy sources in history, and countries worldwide are ramping up deployment to decarbonise their energy systems. Yet, despite this progress, a critical challenge threatens to undermine these efforts: grid flexibility.

As more variable renewable energy sources (VREs) like solar and wind are integrated into the power grid, maintaining stability and reliability becomes increasingly complex. Traditional grids, originally designed for consistent, dispatchable power from fossil fuels and nuclear plants, are struggling to adapt to the intermittent nature of renewables. Without strategic investments in grid-balancing technologies and flexible infrastructure, the risk of energy curtailment, price volatility, and even blackouts grows.

In a recent episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I had the opportunity to speak with Anders Lindberg, President of Wärtsilä Energy, about this very issue. Wärtsilä has conducted system modelling in over 200 markets globally, revealing that without addressing grid flexibility, the cost of transitioning to renewables can skyrocket. For example, in Chile, the difference between a system relying solely on renewables and batteries versus one that incorporates flexible engine power plants is a staggering $17 billion. This insight is not just about economics; it’s about designing energy systems that are secure, sustainable, and resilient.

But why exactly is grid flexibility so critical, and what can be done to solve this growing challenge?

The Inflexibility Problem

Power grids have historically relied on large, centralised fossil fuel plants—coal, gas, and nuclear—that can produce steady, controllable amounts of electricity. In contrast, renewables like wind and solar are variable by nature. As is often said, "the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow" (actually, the sun does always shine, and the wind does always blow, maybe just not where you need them!). This variability leads to periods where renewable generation outpaces demand, resulting in curtailment—turning off renewable capacity to avoid overloading the grid. And it is the renewables that are curtailed, because they are easier to turn off than large thermal power plants.

Curtailment is not only wasteful but also economically damaging. Developers and investors hesitate to fund new wind or solar projects if there’s a high risk their output (and therefore the developer's return on investment) will be curtailed. It also slows down decarbonisation efforts, as inflexible coal and gas plants are often kept running to maintain grid stability. Worse still, keeping these plants online means continued emissions and fossil fuel consumption.

A case in point is California, where up until very recently solar curtailment had been rising due to inflexible grid infrastructure. According to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), solar curtailment reached record highs in recent years, particularly during the spring when solar output peaks and demand is low. Without adequate storage or flexible backup, this surplus energy goes unused, delaying the state’s renewable energy goals.

Why Batteries Alone Aren’t Enough

Battery storage is often touted as the solution to renewable variability, and it certainly plays a vital role. Technologies like lithium-ion batteries can respond in milliseconds to grid imbalances, stabilising short-term fluctuations. However, batteries typically excel at managing seconds to hours of supply-demand mismatches—not days, weeks, or seasonal shifts.

Take Texas, for example. The state has made significant investments in wind and solar, but during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, the grid faced catastrophic failures. Energy demand spiked due to record-low temperatures, while natural gas infrastructure and wind turbines that hadn't been properly weatherised, froze. Texas' grid, largely isolated from neighbouring states, lacked the resilience and flexibility to manage the crisis, leading to widespread outages and tragic consequences.

This event highlights that for now battery storage alone can’t safeguard against prolonged or large-scale disruptions. With current battery technology what’s also needed is a combination of flexible, dispatchable generation sources that can scale up or down based on demand.

The Role of Flexible Engine Power Plants

Anders emphasised in our discussion that Wärtsilä’s flexible engine power plants offer an effective solution to this challenge. These engines can ramp up and down in minutes—far faster than traditional coal or nuclear plants—and can run for hours, days, or even weeks when needed. Currently, many of these engines run on natural gas (methane), but they are designed to transition to sustainable fuels like green hydrogen and sustainable synthetic fuels as they become commercially viable.

Flexible engines serve as the “yeast in the bread,” as Anders aptly put it—a small but essential ingredient that enables the entire system to function smoothly. By complementing battery storage and renewables, they provide the medium- and long-term flexibility grids need to stay balanced and resilient.

Markets like South Australia and Texas are already recognising the importance of flexibility. South Australia, for instance, has integrated large-scale batteries and flexible gas generation to balance its high penetration of wind and solar. Similarly, Texas has started investing in flexible capacity, aided by regulatory frameworks like nodal pricing and the Texas Energy Fund, which incentivise providers to supply energy during peak demand.

Green Hydrogen: The Long-Term Solution?

Much has been said about green hydrogen as the future of clean, dispatchable power. Hydrogen produced through electrolysis using renewable energy could, in theory, power grid-balancing engines with zero emissions. However, Anders Lindberg cautions that green hydrogen is unlikely to scale significantly until 2035–2040. And, generating green hydrogen is an inefficient process that should only be used when there is an excess of renewable energy (instead of curtailment, for example).

Currently, over 95% of hydrogen production is “grey hydrogen,” created from fossil fuels with substantial carbon emissions. The infrastructure for producing, storing, and distributing green hydrogen is still in its infancy. In the meantime, relying on flexible natural gas engines—with the ability to convert to green fuels later—may be the most pragmatic approach.

Policy and Market Incentives Are Essential

Addressing grid flexibility isn’t just about technology—it’s also about creating the right market conditions. Traditional energy markets reward generators for producing as many megawatt-hours as possible. However, flexible assets like balancing engines may only operate for a few hundred hours a year, making them economically unviable without proper incentives.

Texas offers a blueprint for how markets can evolve. By allowing energy prices to reflect real-time supply and demand (nodal pricing), the state incentivises flexible generation to step in when needed. Additionally, capacity markets in regions like the UK ensure that operators are compensated for maintaining reserve capacity, not just energy produced.

Globally, policymakers need to rethink market design to reward flexibility, resilience, and emissions reductions—not just raw output.

Building a Future-Proof Energy System

Balancing grids in a renewable-heavy world is one of the most complex engineering and policy challenges we face. It requires a careful blend of technologies—short-term solutions like batteries, medium-term solutions like flexible engine power plants, and long-term solutions like green hydrogen. It also demands regulatory innovation to ensure that these technologies are financially viable.

Ignoring grid flexibility could slow or even derail the energy transition. But by investing in the right infrastructure today, we can create power systems that are not only cleaner but also more reliable and cost-effective.

If you're interested in learning more about how grid flexibility can accelerate decarbonisation while maintaining energy security, I highly encourage you to listen to my full conversation with Anders Lindberg on the Climate Confidentpodcast.

Let’s continue this vital conversation—because a sustainable energy future depends on more than just renewables; it depends on building systems that can support them.

This post was originally posted on TomRaftery.com
Photo credit sea turtle on Flickr.

As sustainability moves from a side conversation to a central business imperative, the demand for accurate and trustworthy carbon accounting has never been more urgent. Whether driven by regulatory requirements, customer expectations, or competitive advantages, businesses are facing increased pressure to measure, report, and reduce their carbon footprints. Yet, the challenges remain substantial: fragmented data, inconsistent methodologies, and the ever-present question: Are you building trust or risking accusations of greenwashing?

In this post, we explore why rigorous carbon accounting matters, the strategies organisations can adopt, and how new tools and approaches are helping companies build trust in their sustainability data. This discussion stems from insights shared on my latest Climate Confident podcast episode, where I spoke with Stephan Müller from SAP about innovations in sustainability reporting. But here, we zoom out and take a closer look at the broader implications for businesses striving to navigate this complex, evolving landscape.

Setting the Stage: Why Carbon Accounting Matters

At its core, carbon accounting is about measuring, tracking, and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The stakes are high: organisations that fail to accurately report emissions risk reputational damage, regulatory penalties, and financial inefficiencies. More fundamentally, robust carbon accounting enables companies to identify areas for emissions reductions, align with net-zero targets, and maintain trust with customers, investors, and other stakeholders.

External Pressures Are Driving Change

Regulatory initiatives are a major catalyst. In the European Union, for example, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is reshaping how businesses approach sustainability disclosure. By mandating companies to report on environmental impacts with increasing rigor, frameworks like the CSRD are turning sustainability reporting into a non-negotiable component of corporate governance.

Globally, we see similar shifts. From the ISSB's (International Sustainability Standards Board) efforts to standardise sustainability disclosures to carbon taxes in countries like Canada and Germany, the financial implications of emissions reporting are significant. Carbon pricing alone has soared: in Germany, the cost of CO2 emissions rose from €10 per tonne in 2014 to more than €65 in 2024.

Some projections indicate carbon prices may exceed the price of oil in the next decade, further emphasising the importance of addressing carbon emissions now before costs spiral.

Internal Transformation Is Equally Important

Beyond external pressures, carbon accounting is a tool for internal change. By aligning emissions data with financial systems, companies can identify carbon-intensive operations and prioritise decarbonisation efforts where they matter most. This level of insight moves sustainability from a vague aspiration to an actionable strategy.

As Stephan Müller highlighted on the podcast, CFOs are increasingly becoming Chief Value Officers, responsible not just for financial health but for managing sustainability metrics as well. This evolution reflects a broader realisation: sustainability is a competitive advantage.

For instance, sectors such as manufacturing, agriculture, and heavy industry are recognising that transparent, auditable carbon data not only reduces regulatory risk but also builds trust with customers. Companies that provide reliable carbon footprints for their products can gain market preference as customers increasingly prioritise low-carbon options.

Strategies for Accurate and Trustworthy Carbon Accounting

1. Move Beyond Spreadsheets

The era of manually tracking emissions in Excel is coming to an end. While spreadsheets have served as a stopgap, they are fraught with errors, lack traceability, and fall short of auditability standards. Transitioning to integrated, enterprise-level carbon accounting solutions aligns emissions reporting with the rigor of financial accounting.

For example, SAP's new Green Ledger applies financial accounting principles to carbon emissions. By embedding carbon data into ERP systems, companies can trace emissions from source documents—such as purchase orders or goods receipts—all the way to sustainability reports. This level of transparency and control reduces errors and ensures that emissions data can withstand external audits.

2. Engage Your Supply Chain

Scope 3 emissions—those arising from suppliers and downstream activities—often account for the largest share of a company's carbon footprint. Yet, they are notoriously difficult to measure and verify.

To address this, businesses must collaborate with suppliers to standardise data collection and improve data quality. Platforms like SAP's Sustainability Footprint Management and Sustainability Data Exchange allow organisations to collect supplier emissions data efficiently and ensure traceability. A network-based approach simplifies communication, reducing the need for manual data requests.

3. Leverage Technology and AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are transforming carbon accounting. AI can assign carbon values to invoices, streamline emissions calculations, and identify optimisation opportunities within production processes. Additionally, predictive analytics enable companies to forecast their future carbon emissions based on business plans and resource projections—providing foresight that is essential for hitting net-zero targets.

4. Make Data Accessible and Actionable

To drive meaningful change, sustainability data must be democratised across the organisation. Rather than being siloed in specialist systems, emissions data should be embedded into decision-making processes. For example, procurement teams should have visibility into the carbon impact of goods before making purchasing decisions. Aligning carbon budgets with financial budgets also ensures accountability and progress toward emissions targets.

The Business Case for Trustworthy Carbon Data

Trust is emerging as one of the most valuable currencies in business today. Companies that can demonstrate accurate, auditable carbon data stand to gain in multiple ways:

1. Investor Confidence: Investors are increasingly using ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) metrics to assess risk. Reliable carbon reporting enhances investor trust and can lower the cost of capital.
2. Customer Loyalty: Transparent carbon footprints allow businesses to market their products as sustainable with confidence—building trust and strengthening customer relationships.
3. Regulatory Compliance: Accurate reporting ensures organisations remain ahead of evolving regulations, avoiding penalties and reputational damage.
4. Operational Efficiency: By identifying carbon hotspots, companies can optimise resource use, reduce energy costs, and improve margins.
5. Employee Recruitment and Retention: Companies with trustworthy carbon data often attract top talent more easily and improve retention rates. Employees increasingly prefer working for organisations that are genuinely committed to sustainability and transparency, reducing recruitment costs and increasing workforce stability.

A 2023 McKinsey report found that companies with clear sustainability data were 40% more likely to outperform competitors on cost efficiency and profitability metrics—a tangible incentive for embracing robust carbon accounting.

Conclusion: Trust, Transparency, and Transformation

The road to net-zero is paved with data—but not just any data. Accurate and trustworthy carbon accounting provides the foundation for businesses to meet regulatory demands, build stakeholder trust, and identify opportunities for meaningful emissions reductions.

As CFOs take on broader sustainability responsibilities, tools like SAP’s Green Ledger demonstrate how aligning carbon reporting with financial accounting can deliver both clarity and competitive advantage.

The question for companies is no longer whether to prioritise carbon accounting, but how quickly they can move from aspiration to action. Businesses that invest in accurate reporting today will be better positioned to thrive in a carbon-constrained future.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into this conversation, check out my full Climate Confident podcast episode with Stephan Müller from SAP, where we discuss the Green Ledger, the evolving role of CFOs, and strategies for building trust in carbon data.

For more insights, subscribe to the podcast and stay tuned for weekly discussions on the strategies shaping a sustainable future.

Photo credit Ken Teegardin on Flickr. This blog post was originally posted on TomRaftery.com

Today, the issue of industrial waste is one of the most pressing challenges for manufacturers worldwide. Circularity in supply chains—ensuring products and materials are reused and recycled as much as possible—is an essential strategy for reducing waste, increasing resilience, and boosting economic value. This topic was front and center in a recent episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, where I had the privilege to interview Kenny McGee, CEO of Component Sense, a company that tackles the thorny issue of excess inventory in the electronics industry.

Kenny’s journey began back in 2001 when he observed firsthand the immense waste generated by overproduction and stock mismanagement in the electronics sector. Following a boom in demand, there was a bust, and so many clients were left holding millions of dollars’ worth of unused components. This situation was not just financially burdensome; it was also a potential environmental catastrophe. Valuable resources were left languishing or being scrapped due to poor redistribution systems. In the interview, Kenny shared how witnessing this firsthand led him to set up his company, Component Sense, a company which aims to find new uses for these components, helping reduce waste, increase efficiency, and ultimately contribute to a more sustainable world.

The Problem of Waste in Manufacturing: It’s Bigger Than You Think

Manufacturing, especially in sectors like electronics, is resource-intensive. Kenny highlighted how an average mobile phone contains two-thirds of the elements in the periodic table—copper, cobalt, rare earths—all mined and processed with significant energy use and environmental impact. Yet, despite the value and effort embedded in these materials, they are often discarded, unused, or destroyed when they become surplus. During our conversation, Kenny shared an eye-opening example: a client in South Korea was scrapping $2.5 million worth of new components each month, simply to prevent competitors from gaining access to these parts. This illustrates a key problem—a narrow competitive mindset, rather than a focus on resource stewardship.

Globally, this wasteful mindset needs to change. In 2019, the United Nations reported that 53.6 million metric tonnes of e-waste were generated, with only 17.4% documented as being collected and recycled. The waste isn’t just about lost materials; it also means lost opportunities to build a more sustainable economy.

Circularity in Practice: How Can It Be Done?

One of the standout moments of the podcast was when Kenny spoke about the "InPlant" system—an innovative solution designed to help companies manage excess inventory within their own facilities. By taking feeds directly from their clients’ ERP systems, Component Sense is able to identify excess stock, categorise it, and help redistribute it before it becomes obsolete. This prevents valuable resources from ending up in landfills and helps create a steady supply of parts that are needed by other manufacturers.

This kind of circular thinking isn’t limited to electronics. The automotive industry, for instance, has been making strides in creating more circular production processes. Companies like Renault have implemented closed-loop recycling systems for aluminum and plastic, using waste materials from old vehicles to manufacture new ones. Similarly, the construction sector has begun to see the value in circularity by using reclaimed building materials and modular construction techniques that allow for easier disassembly and reuse.

Challenges to Circularity: Regulatory Hurdles and Reluctance

However, as Kenny explained, the path to circularity is fraught with challenges. Many of these challenges are logistical. Regulatory hurdles—like those introduced by Brexit—can make the movement of materials between regions cumbersome and costly, with shipping companies now reluctant to carry partial loads. Additionally, there is often an internal reluctance within companies to embrace change. As Kenny noted, some companies continue to crush and dispose of brand-new parts instead of redistributing them simply because their systems and incentives are not set up to consider anything beyond immediate bottom-line impacts.

Interestingly, Kenny also talked about the surprising disconnect between company messaging and internal capabilities when it comes to sustainability. He shared an anecdote from an industry trade show where many companies displayed sustainability slogans prominently, but when asked about specific sustainability initiatives, their representatives struggled to give coherent answers. This highlights a gap between ambition and action that many industries must bridge if circularity is to be taken seriously.

The Importance of Collaboration: Industry, Governments, and Individuals

True circularity requires collaboration. Governments have a role in this—by encouraging the adoption of more circular processes through regulation and incentives. But, as Kenny pointed out, regulations alone are often insufficient and can be slow-moving. Businesses must lead the charge, embracing circularity not just as a compliance issue, but as a competitive advantage and a core aspect of their operational ethos.

For instance, we’re seeing promising examples of cross-industry collaboration. The European Union’s new Circular Economy Action Plan is pushing for tighter requirements on manufacturers to design products that are easier to reuse, repair, and recycle. Companies like IKEA have started offering take-back services, refurbishing old furniture to be resold or reused, rather than ending up as waste.

How Circularity Can Make a Difference

The benefits of circularity go beyond reducing waste. It can enhance supply chain resilience by reducing dependency on virgin materials and mitigating the risks associated with resource scarcity. Circular practices can also improve companies' financials by creating secondary revenue streams—such as selling excess stock rather than paying to dispose of it—and by enhancing their brand's reputation among increasingly environmentally conscious consumers.

Component Sense’s work is a great example of circularity in action. By helping companies redistribute excess components, they’re not only preventing waste but also helping smaller companies access parts at a lower cost, thus democratising access to materials that might otherwise be financially out of reach. This "one company's waste is another company's gold" mentality is foundational to circularity.

A Path Forward: Make Sustainability the Default

Kenny also touched on the idea of making sustainable choices the default in procurement systems—whether it’s by tweaking ERP settings to prefer sustainable suppliers or by embedding sustainability metrics directly into decision-making processes. Imagine if an MRP (Material Requirements Planning) system automatically prioritised components that were already in circulation over new ones, leading to immediate reductions in resource use. Such systems aren't yet widespread, but they represent the kind of forward-thinking approach that will help us achieve greater circularity.

In our conversation, Kenny was adamant that the circularity journey doesn’t have to be complex: “Let’s just do the easy stuff first. It’s common sense.” We can start with simple actions, like ensuring companies’ excess stock doesn’t end up in landfills. From there, we can move toward more comprehensive solutions that involve the entire supply chain, making sustainability and circularity the baseline, not the exception.

Conclusion: Common Sense Solutions for a Sustainable Future

Circularity in industry is not a pipe dream; it’s achievable with common sense and collaborative effort. By focusing on reducing waste, redistributing resources, and embedding sustainability into everyday decision-making, we can collectively make a significant impact. As manufacturers, governments, and consumers, we all have roles to play in making this vision a reality.

To hear more insights from Kenny McGee on how circularity is transforming the electronics supply chain and learn about his journey building Component Sense, check out the full episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. Listen and subscribe to stay updated on the latest sustainability strategies reshaping industries around the world.

Photo credit Robert Scoble on Flickr 
Blog post first posted on TomRaftery.com

The Mining Industry's Next Frontier: Digital Transformation

The mining industry sits at a complex juncture, squeezed between the urgency of global energy shifts, an evolving set of regulations, and the growing mandate for sustainability. With all this mounting pressure, digital transformation doesn’t just seem relevant—it’s indispensable. Mining—an industry that has literally built the foundations of our world—must innovate, evolve, and adapt to not only support our collective march away from fossil fuels, but also to help usher in a sustainable energy landscape.

Recently, I had an illuminating discussion with Joe Starwood, Microsoft's Worldwide Mining Industry Leader. Joe—a seasoned geologist with more than a decade at Microsoft—outlined some of the seismic shifts currently reshaping the mining industry. From the steady march away from diesel to electric trucks, to the adoption of AI, real-time data analytics, and cloud technologies, it’s evident that digital initiatives are pushing the sector towards new heights of productivity, safety, and resilience.

But let’s not mistake digital transformation for a trending buzzword. This isn’t some superficial makeover; it’s a foundational re-engineering of mining as we know it. We’ll break down why this transformation is mission-critical, pull in real-life examples, and unpack what resilience really looks like in an era defined by energy transformation.

Moving Away from Diesel: A Case for Electrification

Diesel-powered machinery, the long-time backbone of mining operations, is facing a formidable adversary: electrification. Take Fortescue Metals Group, one of the globe's major iron ore players. They guzzle roughly a billion liters of diesel every year, and now they’re committed to eliminating it, swapping over to electric mining trucks. This isn’t just about optics—this is about fundamentally shifting towards sustainability, embracing environmental progress, while battling the complexities and cost of change.

Mining outfits are increasingly supplementing their power sources with renewables like wind and solar. Fortescue's bid to electrify its machinery, including its trials and tribulations with hydrogen, showcases the gritty determination in the industry to adapt and evolve. The impact here isn't just confined to boardrooms and office floors; it stretches out into the mine itself, shaking up the basics of day-to-day fieldwork and remolding the traditional mining ecosystem.

What’s even more intriguing? The technologies developed in this electrification quest may have far-reaching effects beyond mining. Imagine electric cement mixers, or perhaps even battery-powered logging trucks. Heavy industries everywhere could soon be riding the wave of tech advances first proven in remote mining operations—mining fields acting as industrial tech incubators.

Digital Transformation Beyond Green Energy

Electrification might be the most visible change, but what’s happening behind the scenes—in IT and OT (Operational Technology)—is arguably more transformational. Joe underscored how integrating OT (the tech that drives physical operations) with IT is unlocking vast amounts of previously untapped value. The blending of these systems enables mining companies to not just react but to get ahead of issues, moving into predictive and even prescriptive territory.

Consider predictive maintenance. Through sensors and AI, potential mechanical failures are flagged before they happen, slashing unplanned downtime and extending machinery life. Rio Tinto and BHP, two titans in the field, have seen tremendous savings through these AI-driven approaches—millions of dollars preserved by making operations smarter and more resilient.

And then there’s the cloud. Though initially a laggard compared to other sectors, mining has made huge leaps in adopting cloud tech. The benefits are massive: mining companies now have real-time dashboards of multiple geographically dispersed sites, enabling management to make unified, data-backed decisions with unprecedented speed.

A Cultural Shift: The People Factor

Digital transformation isn’t just a technology game; it's a culture shift—and that is no small feat. Joe emphasized how mining, in its essence, is about people. Adopting tools like AI and cloud computing is not just about systems and infrastructure—it’s about embedding a culture of constant innovation, across every level of the workforce.

This cultural transformation also has its challenges. Finding and keeping talent with digital skills has always been tough in mining, but those companies that rise to meet this challenge are reaping immense rewards. By forging partnerships with tech giants like Microsoft, mining companies are tapping into cutting-edge tools and ongoing training, effectively bridging the skills gap.

Remarkably, these digital transitions have also led to unexpected social outcomes. MinSUR, a Peruvian mining firm, and the fourth largest tin producer in the world, used video analytics for water treatment—ensuring environmental safety while maintaining community trust. Such practices prove that responsible innovation goes beyond compliance; it enhances a company’s license to operate and fosters genuine community relationships.

Real-Time Data Analytics: Staying Agile in an Uncertain World

Commodity prices fluctuate. Supply chains disrupt. Everything’s in flux. The ability to access and interpret real-time data can mark the line between triumph and disaster. Companies investing in digital tech are better poised to adjust on the fly—to optimize resource allocation, adapt processes, and make forecasts that stick closer to reality.

Joe spoke of Ketametal, a mining equipment manufacturer, as a shining example. They envisioned an Industry 4.0 factory, leaning heavily into cloud solutions and real-time OT data. The resulting efficiency gains not only propelled their internal goals but also enhanced their ability to meet customer demands with agility.

The Way Forward: Metrics, KPIs, and Continuous Improvement

As mining companies keep advancing along the digital trajectory, focusing on metrics that showcase business value becomes vital. This isn’t about implementing new tech for novelty's sake. It’s about real, tangible problems—solving them, capturing emerging opportunities, and delivering genuine value.

Increasingly, mining companies face pressure to provide "climate-smart" minerals, driven by government policies linked to energy transitions. Meeting these demands requires advanced digital tools for transparency and traceability—ensuring that production is both maximized and compliant.

The future belongs to those who can leverage digital maturity to meet unforeseen challenges—turning raw data into actionable insights, minimizing risks, and nurturing relationships with partners, customers, and regulatory bodies alike.

Conclusion: The Importance of Leading with Value

Digital transformation in mining isn’t a superficial endeavor. It’s about strategically aligning technology with a company’s core drivers of value. Whether reducing emissions, boosting safety, or pushing for greater efficiency—every step along this digital journey brings forth tangible outcomes for mining companies and for the communities that live and work around them.

If you’re intrigued by these ideas and want a closer look, I encourage you to check out the full interview with Joe Starwood. Additionally, take a moment to explore this insightful infographic on modernizing SAP: 'Power Greater Productivity with SAP on the Microsoft Cloud'. It’s a fantastic resource that highlights how integrating SAP with Microsoft Cloud can enhance productivity in mining and beyond. 

The path to digital maturity in mining isn’t without its hurdles, but the rewards—ranging from operational excellence to a more sustainable planet—make every effort worth it.

First published on TomRaftery.com. Photo credit Beyond Coal and Gas on Flickr

With Donald Trump’s recent election as U.S. president, social media is at a pivotal juncture. Users are fleeing platforms like Twitter—driven by algorithmic control, centralised ownership, and politically charged atmospheres. Enter Bluesky: a platform offering transparency, control, and user empowerment.

Bluesky aims to put power back into users' hands. As more people escape traditional social media monopolies, Bluesky is gaining momentum as a fairer alternative. Recent studies highlight the need for safer social media environments, noting that toxic interactions on platforms like Twitter deepen polarisation. Consequently, journalists and serious news organisations like The Guardian are abandoning Twitter for platforms that align with their values.

Key Features of Bluesky

Bluesky's open-source algorithm gives users control over their experience. Feeds are curated content streams based on user interests, which users can create themselves, making it easier to discover and connect with topics that matter to them. For instance, I created a Feed to highlight supply chain-related posts on Bluesky—check it out here. And renowned climate scientist and communicator Katherine Hayhoe's Climate Science, Impacts, and Solutions Feed is another great example of user-curated content.

Bluesky also runs on a federated network, avoiding centralised control. Users can set up their own servers, ensuring freedom and resilience against manipulation. This model makes Bluesky un-buyable—no single entity can change its trajectory. Unlike ad-driven platforms, Bluesky operates as a Public Benefit LLC (PBLLC), focusing on public good over profit. There are no advertisements or targeted tracking—user experience is the priority.

Bluesky vs. Twitter

I joined Twitter in 2007. I loved the platform and used it extensively, making friends and contacts while discovering and sharing content. Watching what has happened to Twitter over the last two years since Elon Musk took over has been horrifying.

I've tried Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky, but Bluesky stands out with the greatest potential to replace—and even surpass—Twitter. Bluesky’s careful design, emphasis on user empowerment, and resilience against centralised control set it apart.

When I recently returned to Bluesky, I discovered Starter Packs. These are curated lists of recommended accounts around specific topics, making it easy for new users to get started and for communities to grow. Anyone can create Starter Packs (here is one I created of Climate Podcasters on Bluesky), which means there are endless possibilities for connecting with others who share your interests. They were a revelation for me. I quickly found and followed people with shared interests, and my feed suddenly came alive with engaging conversations. People started following me back, and that’s when Bluesky really clicked for me.

Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the platform has seen a severe decline in trust and usability. Users are disillusioned by the rise in hate speech, political weaponisation, and the suppression of critical topics such as climate change. Content moderation has become inconsistent, while erratic leadership decisions have resulted in abrupt verification changes and the introduction of paywalls for previously free features. Twitter’s opaque algorithm amplifies sensationalism and divisive content, turning the platform into a toxic environment that many now describe as a 'hellscape.'

In contrast, Bluesky offers a decentralised model that prevents any one person from controlling the platform. Users enjoy external media freedom, with the ability to link longer video clips via external players, and no link suppression, meaning crucial information can be shared without restrictions. Community input drives Bluesky’s user-centric development, focusing on transparency, user control, and safety.

This all goes a long way to explaining the chart below from the Financial Times showing the recent rise in the use of Bluesky, while people are abandoning Twitter.

Bluesky vs. Threads and Mastodon

Bluesky offers distinct advantages over Meta’s Threads and Mastodon:

Compared to Threads, Bluesky stands out with its open algorithms. The transparency allows users to understand and control how content is prioritised, unlike Threads' opaque system. Users also benefit from user-controlled feeds, allowing for more autonomy in content curation.

Bluesky’s decentralised network provides more user ownership compared to Meta's centralised ecosystem. As a PBLLC, Bluesky prioritises user privacy, whereas Threads is part of Meta, a company often criticised for its data privacy practices.

When it comes to Mastodon, Bluesky has been more successful in driving adoption due to its user-friendly interface and higher engagement rates. Mastodon's complexity and fragmented nature have been barriers to entry for many users, while Bluesky offers a more streamlined experience. Features like Starter Packs and user-curated Feeds make it easy for users to dive into relevant content and quickly build community engagement. These aspects make Bluesky accessible for new users while still providing depth for those seeking richer engagement.

Bluesky's Safety and User Empowerment Features

Bluesky goes beyond traditional platforms with its comprehensive safety and empowerment features. Users have multiple tools at their disposal to create a respectful and user-controlled environment. For instance, Bluesky offers user-driven reporting, where content violations are reviewed by both human moderators and automated systems, ensuring a fair evaluation process. Users can also create moderation lists to block or mute accounts, collaboratively shaping a cleaner feed.

The platform encourages self-labeling of posts, particularly those containing sensitive content, promoting responsible sharing. Reply controls further enhance user empowerment by allowing authors to decide who can respond to their posts.

Another important feature is the Nuclear Block, which completely severs connections between users, ensuring that blocked individuals cannot view posts even if they are quoted elsewhere. This, combined with the ability to mute specific words or phrases, allows users to curate a comfortable digital experience.

Automated moderation tools also play a role, flagging potentially harmful content for review, while preferences can be synced across devices to ensure a consistent experience. Bluesky’s focus on decentralisation, safety, and user empowerment truly allows people to shape their digital experience—a stark contrast to platforms like Twitter and Threads, where control is often limited or obscured.

Join the Movement

Bluesky is growing fast. Explore Starter Packs, find your community, and watch real-time growth here: Live User Count.

If you want an experience where you control the narrative rather than being shaped by algorithms, join Bluesky. Together, we can create a better way to engage.

Check it out, bring your curiosity, and join the change.

And don't forget to follow me on Bluesky here.

This article was first published on TomRaftery.com

The world of business is shifting under our feet, not only because of economic trends or new technologies. Increasingly, the focus is on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles and how they can transform an organization from being just a business to a force for sustainable, positive impact. ESG isn’t just a buzzword or a box-ticking exercise; it’s the key to ensuring long-term viability and prosperity in a world facing pressing challenges—from climate change to social inequalities.

In this week's episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Joanne Flinn, Chair of The ESG Institute, about what effective ESG adoption really means for companies today. Joanne’s insights were fascinating, especially for those of us committed to sustainable practices. This blog post explores some of those lessons and looks beyond them to make the case for why ESG is so vital, both for organizations and for society as a whole.

Why ESG Now? Setting the Context

ESG practices aren't optional add-ons for companies anymore—they are a necessity. In an era where customers, investors, and governments are all demanding more transparency and accountability, businesses need to recognize that sustainability and social responsibility are integral parts of their operations, not side projects. For instance, studies have found that companies that prioritize ESG are seeing tangible benefits. McKinsey reported that strong ESG performance can correlate with a reduction of up to 10% in operating costs, and Harvard Business Review has highlighted that companies with more robust ESG strategies enjoy a lower cost of capital. These are metrics that directly impact the bottom line.

However, ESG isn't only about cost reduction or avoiding regulatory pitfalls. It's about building resilience. Think about how we’ve collectively experienced global shocks in the past few years—from pandemics to extreme weather events, not to mention shifts in consumer behavior driven by the climate crisis. Businesses that had ESG principles embedded into their operations often weathered these storms better. By addressing environmental risks, understanding their societal impact, and fostering good governance, they built a more robust capacity to adapt and thrive.

Learning from Leaders: Joanne Flinn’s Journey

Joanne Flinn's journey to becoming the Chair of the ESG Institute is itself an embodiment of what ESG can mean at both personal and corporate levels. As we discussed on the podcast, Joanne began her career in sectors that were far from green—big IT consulting, financial services, and business transformation. But the pivot she made, from business optimization to sustainability, reveals the emerging consensus: you can't talk about a profitable future if it ignores environmental or social factors.

Joanne’s personal insight was this: ESG is not about greenwashing or doing good for PR purposes. It’s about integrating new values into the DNA of a business. During our conversation, she emphasized how ESG leadership requires moving from optimizing for singular outcomes like profit to taking into account a broader array of stakeholders, including communities and ecosystems. Her experience working with major organizations to help them accelerate their sustainable transitions highlighted how forward-thinking leaders today are transforming entire sectors—not with grand gestures, but with consistent, impactful changes over time.

Breaking Down ESG: Practical Applications

A significant point that Joanne made was the idea of ESG Readiness Profiles. Companies often get stuck because ESG seems overwhelming—where do you even start when the subject feels as wide as the planet and as complex as human society? The answer is to start somewhere. ESG Readiness Profiles allow companies to evaluate themselves and create roadmaps for action. Businesses need to identify whether they are observers, pledgers, compliers, or transformers when it comes to ESG. It’s this kind of clarity that allows companies to develop manageable, actionable plans that evolve over time rather than overwhelming themselves with unattainable goals.

To illustrate: consider IKEA, one of the major companies with an advanced ESG strategy. IKEA has moved from pledging to sustainable sourcing to a transformative approach that embraces circularity. By designing for reuse, reducing waste, and setting ambitious renewable energy goals, they’re showing what it means to not just comply with ESG goals but to leverage them to innovate, enter new markets, and enhance their value chain. This isn’t a fringe trend—firms that engage deeply with ESG principles often uncover opportunities to create entirely new revenue streams.

ESG Goes Beyond Carbon

One of the areas that is frequently misunderstood is the idea that ESG is just about reducing carbon footprints. Certainly, carbon reduction is crucial, but Joanne pointed out that ESG is about much more. It’s about rethinking entire ecosystems. Methane reduction, water conservation, ecosystem protection—these are parts of a more holistic approach that understands our shared dependency on natural resources. For example, consider the concept of biodiversity. Often viewed as an abstract environmental term, biodiversity is increasingly recognized as foundational to business resilience: a World Economic Forum report recently noted that over half of the world’s GDP—an estimated $44 trillion—is moderately or highly dependent on nature and the services it provides.

Companies also need to pay attention to the social dimension of ESG. In Singapore, Joanne saw firsthand the implications of extreme heat and its effect on productivity and health. Social and governance issues, from worker well-being to regulatory compliance, are just as crucial as environmental considerations. The fact is that sustainability can only succeed when it’s inclusive—meaning that the human element, employee welfare, community support, and governance, are front and center.

Lifting the Standards of Business

A particularly resonant metaphor that Joanne shared was how the game of rugby transformed for the better by lifting its standards—banning dangerous neck tackles to protect players. Businesses today need to take similar steps. ESG principles are essentially a lifting of the standards for how we conduct business. It’s a way to minimize harm and build a healthier, more equitable future. Far from being a burden, these standards are enabling companies to attract top talent, appeal to increasingly conscious consumers, and build more resilient supply chains.

At the end of the day, adopting ESG principles is not a one-time transformation—it’s an ongoing journey of improving, adapting, and rethinking how businesses operate. And that’s not just good for shareholders; it’s good for everyone.

Where to Go From Here

The full conversation with Joanne Flinn is filled with actionable insights and in-depth analysis about how companies can approach ESG today, and how these practices can ultimately lead to a thriving, sustainable future. If you're interested in exploring how ESG can be embedded into the very DNA of your business, and how doing so can be a meaningful differentiator for you in this changing world, I highly recommend you give the podcast episode a listen.

Let’s commit to creating a cooler, greener, and fairer future—together.

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