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From net zero to resilience and risk
The language around corporate climate action has shifted.
Not the action itself.
The language.
According to BSI's 2026 G7 Net Zero Temperature Check, 61% of G7 businesses have changed how they communicate their net zero ambition in the last 12 months, reframing sustainability initiatives around resilience, efficiency, and risk management rather than environmental impact. BSI calls this "climate-coding": the practice of presenting the same work in a different business context, one that resonates better in boardrooms under cost pressure and political scrutiny.
It would be easy to read this as a step backwards, but it isn't. The underlying pressure has hardened, not eased.
The same BSI research found that 74% of businesses view the risks of not transitioning as greater than the risks of acting, and 69% increased their net zero activity in the last year. Verdantix data from their 2025 Global Corporate Decarbonization Survey tells a similar story: more firms raised or extended their climate targets in the last year than reduced or dropped them. What's changing is the vocabulary companies use to justify action internally, not the direction of travel.
For procurement and sustainability teams, this matters for practical reasons. If the business case for supply chain decarbonization now needs to be made in terms of energy cost stability, supply security, and regulatory risk rather than environmental ambition, the evidence base must shift with it.
The commercial case has arrived
For years, supply chain decarbonization was framed primarily as a compliance or reputational obligation. That framing has given way to something more concrete.
BSI found that cost savings are now the single strongest driver of net zero action across the G7, cited by 27% of respondents, ahead of competitiveness (21%) and customer and policy demands (19%). Separately, 76% agreed that net zero progress could strengthen energy security, a finding that lands very differently after two years of energy price volatility than it would have in 2019.
PwC’s Third Annual State of Decarbonization Report reinforces the supply chain dimension: the share of companies with formal supplier decarbonization requirements rose from 51% in 2023 to 76% in 2025. This is a commercial shift, driven by buyers incorporating emissions performance into supplier relationships. Suppliers without credible data or reduction programs are beginning to feel the impact.
The CDP's analysis of Extreme Weather Risk adds a further dimension, estimating a return of up to $21 for every $1 spent on climate risk management. That figure won't survive every CFO's scrutiny, but the direction of travel is clear. Decarbonization programs that were once justified based on future regulatory exposure are increasingly justified by present-day cost, risk, and competitive positioning.
A regulatory floor that fractured
To date, the most significant regulatory development of 2026 is the fragmentation of the global regulatory landscape into genuinely different regimes, and what that means for organizations operating supply chains across multiple geographies.
In the EU, the floor has risen. Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) certificates are now required for 2026 imports across steel, cement, aluminum, chemicals, and fertilizers, with the first surrender deadline in September 2027. Alongside that direct cost exposure sits a second kind of pressure: the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) frameworks, both of which require companies to disclose how climate and broader sustainability risk; carbon costs, water availability, and nature dependency, could affect their financial position.
The CSRD’s first reporting wave covered roughly 11,700 companies previously under the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), a number the Omnibus revision has since cut from an expected 50,000 down to roughly 5,000, though Scope 3 obligations remain mandatory for those still in scope. Meanwhile, ISSB disclosure standards are now fully mandated across 21 jurisdictions representing 60% of global GDP, with a further 15 in consultation.
In the US, the picture is almost inverted The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has moved to scrap its climate reporting requirements. California's SB 261, which would have required climate risk reporting from large companies, is paused, though SB 254 still requires verified emissions disclosure by 2027. CDP data suggests corporate climate action in the US continues, driven by investor pressure, customer requirements, and long-term energy economics. But the regulatory driver has been considerably weakened.
One supply chain, three regulatory realities
For supply chains that span both contexts, and most global programs do, this divergence creates a new kind of complexity.
A procurement team at a European manufacturer faces hard regulatory deadlines. Its North American counterpart faces voluntary frameworks and customer pressure. Suppliers in India, Vietnam, and China are operating under their own emerging requirements, with India notably accelerating investment in decarbonization in response to CBAM's direct financial exposure on its steel and aluminum exports.
But the divide goes beyond regulation.
The EU’s tightening requirements are backed by parallel investments in the infrastructure that makes compliance achievable: hundreds of billions of euros committed to wind, solar, and grid decarbonization that lower the carbon intensity of the energy supply manufacturers draw on.
In the US, the reverse is underway.
Federal disinvestment from renewables makes it harder for manufacturers and suppliers to reduce emissions even where they want to, regardless of whether a regulatory requirement exists. And many still want to, for reasons that go beyond climate ambition alone. General Motors, which reached 100% renewable electricity across its US operations in 2025, points to long-term renewable contracts that insulate the company from energy price volatility and reduce its dependence on imported energy. It’s operational resilience, driven by cost and risk.
The practical implication is that no single regulatory lens is adequate for managing a global supply chain. Programs built around EU compliance alone will miss the commercial dynamics driving change elsewhere.
Programs that assume the US has stepped back from climate action entirely will underestimate the investor and customer pressures still operating there.
From reporting to action
The third major shift in 2026 is less about regulation and more about what organizations are discovering once their programs reach a certain maturity.
Verdantix's 2025 Global Corporate Decarbonization Survey found that the most important decarbonization goal for companies over the next 12 months is building better connections between corporate sustainability strategy and initiatives at the operational level, cited by 37%. Improving reporting capability came in at just 4%. The question has moved from "how do we measure this?" to "how do we actually change it?"
The Scope 3 Peer Group's May 2026 Tools Intelligence Report captures the same tension from a different angle. Of 128 buyer respondents, 43% are actively searching for a new or replacement Scope 3 tool. The most sought-after capability, by some distance, is automated data collection and validation, followed by decarbonization roadmaps and predictive forecasting. Reporting capability, which drove most first-generation tool purchases, is no longer a differentiator.
Organizations that invested early in supplier engagement are discovering that data collection, while necessary, wasn’t sufficient. The programs making real progress have moved from gathering supplier emissions numbers to using them, to guide prioritization, shape supplier conversations, and drive operational change at the facility level.
That gap between data and action is where most programs are currently stuck. And closing it is where supplier programs will either stall or start delivering.
