From Climate Week to CleanAI: Signals of a Decisive Decade

By Kate Costaris, Associate, ESG Global Advisors

Already this fall, ESG Global has attended back-to-back gatherings at the center of the global sustainability conversation, including New York Climate Week, Toronto Climate Week, and the CleanAI Summit. Across countries and sectors, a common theme emerged: we are entering a decade defined not just by disclosure, but by deployment.

1 | From Standards to Strategy

At New York Climate Week, discussions around the new ISSB standards underscored the maturation of corporate sustainability. Emmanuel Faber remarked that “the risk of fragmentation is likely behind us.” For the first time, global alignment feels within reach, yet companies are now grappling with significant headwinds, how to align ROI and sustainability, how to turn disclosure into decision-making, or how to disclose in the face of different and sometimes contradictory regulations.

Panels featuring John Deere, Vale, and Olam Agri highlighted the shift from reporting on climate to integrating climate into capital allocation. John Deere’s approach, embedding climate within its enterprise risk process, captured the mood: climate is no longer a standalone risk; it is a financial one. And more importantly it can also be an opportunity.

This integration marks a turning point where governance, assurance, and financial materiality are converging.

It was also energizing to reconnect with Rachel Ziemba of Ziemba Insights, whose insights on global policy and finance reinforced the link between disclosure, geopolitics, and sustainable capital flows. It served as a reminder that climate strategy is inseparable from economic strategy.

2 | Nature, Oceans, and Regeneration: Expanding the Sustainability Frontier

Beyond climate, nature-related risks and opportunities took center stage through the TNFD launch, Unlocking Investment for Ocean Resilience panels, and Anthesis’ Regenerate to Accelerate: The Business Imperative for Climate & Nature Integration discussion. Together, these signaled that biodiversity, oceans, and land use are fast becoming board-level issues.

At the TNFD event, the Taskforce released its first status report, marking a turning point in how companies and investors measure dependencies and impacts on natural capital. With CDP set to introduce oceans reporting by 2026, speakers emphasized that nature disclosure is no longer a parallel track to climate; it is its complement.

The Unlocking Investment for Ocean Resilience panel pushed this further, highlighting how blue-economy investment is moving from philanthropy to mainstream finance. Speakers discussed blended-finance mechanisms and new vehicles such as marine legacy funds and regenerative reef infrastructure that treat ocean resilience as investable natural infrastructure. The takeaway was clear: capital markets are beginning to price in ecosystem resilience.

Meanwhile, the Anthesis panel reframed agriculture and procurement as climate-solution levers. Representatives from Heinz and Campbell’s demonstrated how de-risking agronomic systems through soil-health programs and farmer innovation grants can simultaneously enhance productivity and cut Scope 3 emissions. “We can’t decarbonize without restoring the ecosystems that sustain supply chains,” one speaker noted.

Together, these sessions expanded the ESG conversation from emissions to ecosystems, embedding regeneration, biodiversity, and ocean health within the financial architecture of sustainability.

3 | Reframing ESG as Resilience

Beyond frameworks, the dialogue evolved toward resilience as the new currency.

Sessions hosted by EY and Impax Asset Management explored how investors are re-pricing risk in a world of systemic shocks, from wildfires to flood-driven supply chain losses. The framing of ESG as resilience investing felt more pragmatic than ideological, emphasizing capital allocation toward adaptive, future-ready businesses rather than those that simply disclose well.

As one speaker observed, “It’s not complicated, it’s complex.” That nuance, accepting uncertainty as a permanent market condition, seems to define this next phase of sustainable finance.

4 | Toronto Climate Week: Capital Meets Deployment

In Toronto, the narrative shifted from standards to capital deployment.

Panels such as From Term Sheet to Impact by Tom Rand of Arctern and EY’s Four Futures illustrated how investors are now seeking proof points, projects that convert commitments into measurable outcomes.

Speakers emphasized the importance of structuring financing that rewards outcomes, not outputs, from milestone-based capital to blended-finance models that de-risk first-of-a-kind technologies.

It was clear that Toronto is positioning itself as a bridge between policy ambition and private-sector execution.

5 | CleanAI: The Energy and Ethics of Intelligence

The CleanAI Summit in Toronto captured a powerful intersection, positioning AI as both a climate solution and a climate stress test.

With more than $50 billion invested in CleanAI ventures since 2025, the field is scaling fast. Yet the energy burden of AI training remains a central paradox: the same algorithms accelerating clean-tech discovery also strain the grids that power them.

Speakers from Radical Ventures, Congruent Ventures, and Alectra Utilities described this as the next industrial challenge, powering intelligence sustainably. From decentralized solar microgrids to AI-enabled grid optimization, the opportunity lies in transforming data-center demand into climate infrastructure rather than competition.

Perhaps most inspiring were Indigenous and community-focused perspectives. Dana Tizya-Tramm reminded audiences that for many northern Indigenous communities, energy transition is not a theoretical exercise: “Climate change isn’t an issue, it’s our lived reality.”

The future of CleanAI depends as much on community ownership, inclusion, and ethical design as on hardware efficiency.

6 | The Signals Ahead

Across three weeks and two countries, six signals stood out:

1. Community as Infrastructure – Trust, local ownership, and data equity underpin every credible climate and nature solution.
2. Integration over Isolation – Climate data is moving from the sustainability report to the CFO’s dashboard.
3. Resilience over Reputation – ESG narratives are being recast in risk-management language.
4. Deployment over Disclosure – Investors want implementation, not just alignment.
5. Clean Compute – AI efficiency and renewable-power integration will be the next sustainability frontier.
6. Nature as Capital – Ecosystem and ocean resilience are being recognized as material assets, shaping funding models and corporate risk registers.

Closing Reflection

From Wall Street to Bay Street, the message was consistent: climate action now sits at the core of competitiveness.

The decade ahead will reward organizations that view sustainability not as reporting compliance but as strategic coherence, aligning governance, capital, data, and purpose.

At ESG Global Advisors, we left these sessions energized by what comes next: a future where climate ambition and digital intelligence work in tandem – enabling stronger decision-making, resilient business models, and value creation that is both sustainable and measurable.

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Disclaimer: AI contributed to the creation of this article, but it was guided, reviewed and fact-checked by ESG Global’s human experts. Please note that the content and material provided in this article is for general information purposes only. It is not to be taken or relied upon as legal advice and should not be used for professional or commercial purposes. This article is intended to communicate general information about relevant sustainability matters and reporting requirements as of the indicated date. The content is subject to change based on evolving regulatory reporting requirements.