Patch

Back from a long week of NYCW panels, so naturally here are some reflections nobody asked for: The CSO role is getting both narrower and wider. Narrower because there's less room for the aspirational: big pledges and glossy narratives have given way to a tighter focus on material outcomes for the business. Wider because anything that looks remotely like sustainability (AI policy, data centre growth, investor questionnaires) now ends up with the CSO. The ones doing best are translating everything into risk, including nature: water, soil health and critical raw materials only reach the leadership agenda once someone prices losing them. The most effective internal carbon prices didn't ask for new money. They reframed an existing budget line, a much easier conversation with a CFO. It also matters more now that SBTi v2 is asking companies to declare an ongoing emissions responsibility tier from February 2027. All that’s left to decide is the tier: Engaged, Advanced or Leadership. Each comes with its own price per tonne and share of emissions covered – in other words, an internal carbon price. Market-based instruments for Scope 3 agri value chains have moved from "if" to "how". SBTi v2 now allows them once direct decarbonisation is exhausted, and the GHG Protocol's draft Actions and Market Instruments standard lands in December. The rules are becoming clearer but the vocabulary isn't: activity pool, sourcing region and supply shed were used interchangeably all week. None of that is slowing interest though. Insetting has moved firmly onto the radar of food, beverage and apparel companies that a year ago might have defaulted to offsets. Data centres ran through almost every session. AI queries are getting more efficient, but there are so many more of them that the total footprint keeps growing. Averaging emissions per-query isn’t fooling anyone. CSOs need model- and site-level emissions data, and very few can get it. The bigger shift may be local: water, electricity bills and noise are turning data centres into a community issue, and social licence is starting to matter as much as the carbon. Finally, it's encouraging to see frameworks that reward climate action rather than calling it out. The Exponential Roadmap Initiative, with Oxford Net Zero and Race to Zero, is working on scoring companies against the five pillars of its Exponential Business Playbook, from cutting their own emissions to scaling solutions, financing the transition and shaping policy. SWEEP and Mirova's Climate Contribution Framework does similar across three pillars: footprint reduction, climate solutions and climate finance. Recognising progress will do more to accelerate action than a damning Guardian article ever could. If you're working through any of this, Patch's Climate Strategy team can help. Thanks to everyone who joined Rebalance, and to the Patch events team for pulling it all together. Action shots from Rebalance and Rebalance in Action below, as the name demanded.

The team just wrapped up another fantastic climate week and Patch's fourth Rebalance summit. The energy in the room was the highest its ever been. The sustainability role has changed a lot since our first Rebalance last year. Teams built around reporting and comms are now taking on supply chain instability, volatile energy markets, geopolitical pressure, and the physical buildout of AI. In many companies it has become a risk and procurement job. The CSOs I talked to aren't fighting that. They're leaning into it and are getting a real say in company strategy. That leverage comes with a higher bar. If sustainability wants to continue to elevate itself within the enterprise, it needs to mature. That means: - A competitive process every time they spend their company's capital. - Costs you can explain line by line to your CFO - Partners whose governance and incentives can pass a board's audit committee None of this is exotic. It's how every other enterprise team operates, sustainability is just earlier on the maturation curve. At Patch, we're working on making that rigor cheap enough that there's no excuse to skip it. But the push has to come from the executive that leads the function. The video shows the energy better than I can. Thank you to our co-host ServiceNow, and to everyone who spent their Monday afternoon with us.

On Monday, Patch and ServiceNow hosted Rebalance, our executive CSO summit during Climate Week. A few things came out of the room that are worth sharing. The CSO title is shrinking while the work grows. US public companies had 193 CSOs this year, down from 216. The first drop since 2011. And yet, 80% of CSOs said their budgets were flat or up. And 42% said headcount for sustainability work is growing across the business, compared with 28% inside sustainability teams. The work is moving into procurement, risk and product, and the CSO is more and more the person who connects those decisions. On AI, the group was realistic. Each unit of AI is getting more efficient, but total compute demand is growing faster. So the useful questions are about governance, the carbon built into new infrastructure, and aiming AI at hard problems. On scope 3, waiting for perfect data has become its own kind of delay. The companies making progress ask less of their suppliers and make sure the change pays off for the supplier too. Thank you to Burgess Scott Davis, Caroline Corbett-Thompson, Shea (Shafaq) Jameel, Amy White, Lyndsay Harris Kyei, Josh Parker, and Joe Speicher for being so candid. And thank you to Hossein Nowbar for your closing remarks. If you'd like the full recap, send me a note.