You can't cancel sustainability: A government perspective

As we progress through pivotal times in global geopolitics with ongoing conflicts, elections, government changes and trade wars, repeated messages I see resonating across media and leadership networks since 2024 are:

• Legislation is being watered down
• Subsidies are being cut
• Campaign promises are disappearing
• Targets are being reconsidered
• Projects are being delayed or stopped

In short, they're cancelling Sustainability.

Let me get this straight: You can't cancel Sustainability. Sustainability is bigger than a person, a company or a country: it will outperform and outlive us. The train has left the station.

So what is happening then if it's not the cancelling of Sustainability?

We've seen the United States Government cancel major wind projects with TotalEnergies and RWE, reaching settlements to have them reinvest the money into traditional fossil fuel projects. At the same time, the administration has significantly reduced sustainability subsidies, many of which were introduced or expanded by the Inflation Reduction Act, such as credits for residential renewables, clean electricity development and building energy efficiency.

In theory it should have become less financially attractive to install renewables, so much so that "the renewables are cancelled". But the very same administration's own figures are projecting continued record or near record growth of solar, with the combined share of solar and wind power increasing from 18% in 2025 to 21% in 2027.

Why? Because even without the subsidies it makes sense.

The United States, like every other country, needs energy to fuel the economy. Even with the movement from manufacturing to technology, we see the development of AI bringing new demand. As energy demand continues to stay strong and generation assets continue to follow their life cycle, the country is installing new electricity generation and storage capacity at record rates.

Solar power makes up 51% of the planned 2026 capacity additions, followed by battery storage at 28% and wind at 14%. Natural gas is only around 6 GW of the planned 86 GW for 2026, with oil and coal plans essentially being negligible.

Yet the market continues to choose renewables because when you install utility scale capacity, you don't only look at the politics of the day. You consider the lifetime value.

Renewables just make sense: from profitability and from risk management.

On the financial side it's one people generally understand: where it goes wrong, where countries, companies and people try to cancel sustainability, is by focusing on the short term rather than long term. Sustainability is by definition all about "sustaining" this continuous value creation over longer horizons.

In this case renewables concentrate much of their cost upfront, but once installed the continuous operational costs are low due to having no ongoing fuel costs.

On the risk management side, when you install solar or wind capacity your exposure to several long term risks is reduced compared to fossil fuels:

• Less exposure to fuel price volatility as they have no ongoing fuel purchase
• Less exposure to construction timeline risks, particularly for solar, due to shorter and more modular build times
• Less exposure to water shortage risk as wind and solar PV require little to no water in operation
• Less exposure to the combination of extreme heat and water shortage as cooling water isn't required for normal operation
• Less exposure to international geopolitical fuel supply risks as there is no continuous requirement to import fuel once installed
• Potentially less exposure to single point of failure risk as generation can be more decentralised
• Less exposure to transition stranded asset risk as they are better aligned with long term decarbonisation pathways and face lower exposure to future carbon constraints
• Energy supply intermittency, which famously has been a factor not to choose renewables, can increasingly be mitigated through combining renewables with storage, grid interconnection and demand flexibility

Moving away from the United States, we see in other countries there's still a race to the top with renewables installation.

In China a record breaking 452 GW of renewable capacity was added in 2025 alone, 21% higher than 2024, resulting in approximately 2.34 TW of renewable capacity. Renewables supplied approximately 38% of China's electricity in 2025.

Likewise in the EU the trend is clear, with the EU having generated approximately 47% of its electricity from renewables in 2025.

So we still move in the direction of sustainability even if it's slower than we could have been moving or slower than we need to move in order to meet 1.5C temperature increase.

With regards to simplifications of the CSRD and CSDDD laws, which are often cited as an indicator of Sustainability dying, it must be noted that these laws which increase sustainability transparency and responsibility are still there and were previously not there.

Many major companies that remained in scope already prepared themselves on time for the initial requirements and have large supply chains which they enforce requirements upon even though the companies in those supply chains may be out of scope because, for instance, of being smaller in size. The desire for transparency is not just coming from legislation now but also from customers at each stage of the value chain.

At the time the EU began debating reducing the scope and requirements of CSRD, other leading economies like the UK, Singapore, Australia, Japan and China were literally developing and beginning to introduce or mandate their own sustainability disclosure frameworks, often aligned with the ISSB standards.

Additionally, looking only at CSRD and CSDDD in the EU is misleading. The EU has advanced obligations to responsibly govern environmental impacts whilst enabling green growth through the introduction and further development of several other regulations such as the EU Deforestation Regulation, Packaging & Packaging Waste Regulation, Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and Right to Repair Directive.

Globally, governments talking about ESG may be less popular as some commentators suggest. Sustainability may have become an elitist terminology. But practically the choice of words doesn't stop the progress because Sustainability is integrated into key parts of policy that are seen as important:

• National Security: The US-Iran war and Russia-Ukraine war have demonstrated that energy and raw materials supply are diplomatic weapons affecting countries far beyond those directly conflicting, with sustainable responses such as efficiency, circular economy, electrification and renewables being seen as critical responses to empower National Security.
• Economic Resilience: Extreme Heat and Water Shortages are causing economic disruption, with notable recent examples such as record low water levels in the Rhine resulting in logistics by boat being reduced, affecting industrial companies due to increased freight costs. Low water levels in the Danube have also disrupted nuclear generation in Romania and Hungary, contributing to tighter electricity supply and higher energy costs.
• Public Safety: Wildfires, Floods, Extreme Heat and Pollution causing deaths, injuries, illness and damages are increasingly becoming a topic for governments as communities, emergency response services and insurers deal with the effects and call for better environmental management.

In the US, it's true that the EPA has had a major reorientation of its role, described by itself as "the biggest deregulatory action in US history"; yet EPA civil enforcement cases reached a nine-year high in 2025, while pollution penalties, remediation commitments and settlements are running into billions of dollars.

Even when one claims that EPA has been cancelled, it hasn't removed the environmental consequences and the resulting liabilities.

Whilst the cancelling noises we hear focus on developed economies, there's little mention of the Global South, in particular Sub Saharan Africa where attitudes and consequences are fundamentally different.

For these countries sustainability is not a nice to have reporting exercise; it's directly about development, energy access, fiscal resilience, food security and infrastructure.

For instance, the Strait of Hormuz closure caused fuel and fertiliser shortages. Whilst developed countries paid higher prices, governments in several developing countries in Asia and Africa alike were forced to implement emergency measures to increase efficiency or domestic production or otherwise absorb the shock.

In many countries renewables such as solar present the lowest cost source of electricity and one of the fastest energy source implementation pathways to enable economic development whilst also having a low environmental impact and providing greater energy security.

Given that developing countries often have less infrastructure and harsher environmental conditions to start with, the effects of unsustainable actions can be severe: for instance air, water and soil pollution leading to disease and death.

Developments in these countries also cannot simply be separated from developed economies. Developed countries still rely on developing countries for much of the natural resources that fuel their own economies whilst also profiting from exporting into those developing countries.

In addition, currently more than 80% of the world population lives in developing countries, with these developing countries generally also having higher population growth rates than developed countries.

Most of the world is thus outside of the "is sustainability dead?" bubble of the West.

To conclude, individual governments can indeed "cancel sustainability regulations and communications" but they can't cancel the world we live in, with its sustainability risks and opportunities continuously increasing.

They can cancel a subsidy. They can repeal a regulation. They can abandon a target or stop using the word ESG. But they can't cancel energy demand, resource constraints, pollution, extreme weather or geopolitical dependencies.

They can choose not to acknowledge or act to mitigate risks and exploit opportunities, but that doesn't make sustainability disappear.

You can't cancel Sustainability.

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