The latest sustainability policy and regulatory news
The week that was
The UK and EU parliaments are back after the summer break and already mired in difficulties and disagreements. While the EU has been preoccupied with trade, UK politicians continue to argue about the future of North Sea oil and gas.
UK Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch started the week with a vow to “maximise” the extraction of North Sea oil and gas should her party win the next general election.
Speaking at the Offshore Energies UK conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, Badenoch declared Labour’s ban on new oil and gas licences in the North Sea threatens energy security and increases bills.
Environmental groups and other political parties have disputed both claims.
UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association chief executive James Alexander declared the “basin carries the twin risks of soaring decommissioning costs and asset stranding worth billions, while further drilling will not bring down energy bills”.
Tessa Khan, executive director at campaign group Uplift, compared “dwindling” reserves of oil and gas to “a piñata at the finish of a kids’ party — it doesn’t matter how many times you hit it, you’re not going to receive much more out of it”.
UK energy minister Michael Shanks utilized the conference to reaffirm the government’s commitment to transitioning the North Sea economy away from fossil fuels and towards renewables and carbon capture, but added that “oil and gas will continue to play a crucial role for decades to come”.
Person in the news
This week, the European Commission presented the EU-Mercosur trade agreement for sign-off by member states after more than a quarter of a century of nereceivediations.
The proposed deal would reshift duties on 91 per cent of the bloc’s exports to the four Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) to a total of more than €4bn. For food products more sensitive to increased competition, such as beef and cheese, the EU would offer increased quotas.
EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič staunchly deffinished the benefits of the deal for all parties, but campaigners expressed concern over the lack of focus on potential environmental impacts and implications for the EU Deforestation Regulation.
Šefčovič has also been in the news this week for building a last minute intervention to stop the commission issuing a penalty against American tech giant Google for its search advertising practices, as US President Donald Trump continues to threaten the EU with tariffs.
The decision follows the president’s announcement last week that countries with digital regulations that negatively impact US companies would face tariffs.
Digital regulations join a growing list of EU laws being examined or watered down to appease the US. Last week, details emerged revealing the EU-US trade agreement included concessions on corporate sustainability regulations.
Europe
After last month’s unprecedented wildfires, which scorched an area nearly six times the size of Ibiza, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced a 10-point plan to prepare the countest for the climate crisis. The “state pact” calls for a civil protection agency to co-ordinate crisis responses, along with measures aimed at advancing climate adaptation, reforestation and climate-resilient forest management. The proposal will be presented to the French and Portuguese governments and the European Commission to assess opportunities for collaboration.
The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group has announced it will hold a series of sessions to gather further feedback on its draft simplified European Sustainability Reporting Standards. Feedback from the sessions will support the group’s consultation on the standards, which was launched last month and scheduled to run until September 29.
Following a meeting of cabinet ministers in Toulon on August 29, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz have committed to enhance bilateral co-operation on energy policy. As part of the Franco-German Economic Agfinisha, the countries declared they will consider introducing joint policy proposals to amfinish the EU’s energy rules to ensure “non-discrimination among all net zero and low-carbon energy technologies” in achieving European climate tarreceives. They also pledged to strengthen cross-border energy infrastructure, co-operate on nuclear power, and work toreceiveher on reforms to the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism during the 2025 review.
Meanwhile, the commission has launched a call for evidence on technical requirements under the EU CBAM. It wants input on how carbon emissions embedded in covered goods should be calculated, requirements to align CBAM certificates with the free carbon allowances granted under the EU Emissions Trading System, and rules for recognising carbon prices paid outside the EU. Feedback is welcome until September 25.
The European Council has agreed its position on proposals to simplify the Common Agricultural Policy, which aims to ease the regulatory burden for farmers. The council backs a number of the commission’s proposed modifys, including limiting on-the-spot checks, increasing the financial support offered to tinyer farmers, and simplifying conditionality requirements. It also proposes to offer member states greater flexibility when evaluating the performance of partially organic farms against certain environmental standards, while also allowing them to pay higher advances of CAP funding to assist farmers facing unexpected shocks, such as natural disasters. The proposed amfinishments will be nereceivediated between the council and European parliament, which is working on its own position, before a final agreement can be reached.
Italian chocolate company Ferrero has renewed and expanded its partnership with Save the Children and government agency the Italian Cooperation on a programme to enhance protections for children and combat child labour in cocoa-farming communities in Ivory Coast. The project, which builds on a 2017 initiative, aims to address child labour through measures such as better access to education and healthcare, upgrades to birth registration systems, improved nutrition and livelihoods, and support for women-led enterprises. It will run until 2030 with around €20mn in funding.
Elsewhere, a number of EU energy ministers met in Copenhagen to discuss the bloc’s energy indepfinishence and the phaseout of Russian oil and gas. During the talks, which launched on Thursday and run until the finish of the week, ministers are expected to consider ways of expanding the bloc’s energy grid and the deployment of decarbonisation technologies to assist the EU achieve its tarreceive of climate neutrality by 2050.
Fashion retailer H&M Group and supermarket chain Aldi South Group have joined a list of more than 200 businesses and investors — including French energy company EDF, UK-based Vattenfall and asset manager Allianz — in urging policybuildrs to preserve the core of the EU’s sustainability framework. The joint statement, now backed by 475 signatories, provides recommfinishations for simplifying the bloc’s sustainability and due diligence rules, as per the omnibus proposals, without threatening long-term sustainability and competitiveness.
UK
The Met Office confirmed this week that this summer has been the hottest on record. The UK’s mean temperature from June 1 to August 31 was 16.1C, 1.51C above the long-term meteorological average. A summer as hot or hotter than 2025 is now 70 times more likely than it would be without human cautilized greenhoutilize gas emissions, added the analysis.
The UK-headquartered Science Based Tarreceives initiative has released the first draft of its Power Sector Net-Zero Standard. The framework provides guidance for companies in the power sector to set near and long-term net zero tarreceives. The proposed standard is open to public consultation until November 3 and will be reviewed by an expert advisory group.
Zack Polanski has been elected leader of the Green Party in a landslide victory on a ticket of “ecopopulism” and a promise to link social and environmental justice.
The UK government has announced £12.6mn for farmers for research and development as part of the Farming Innovation Programme competition.
French energy company EDF has extfinished the lifespan of two large-scale nuclear power stations by 12 months. The plants in Heysham and Hartlepool, in the north of the UK, will continue generating until March 2028. The government welcomed the news as it pushes for more nuclear.
UK-based financial industest groups have published responses to the Financial Reporting Council’s June consultation on guidance for organisations reporting to the UK Stewardship Code 2026. The FRC’s stewardship codes outline how asset managers and owners should invest responsibly on behalf of UK savers, including by accounting for risks such as climate modify. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants welcomed the draft guidance but called for more specific details in certain areas such as employment practices, while UKSIF declared it would like the guidance to set higher standards for investor stewardship.
US
The Department of Justice is continuing to fight New York’s climate superfund law, which mandates that certain oil and gas companies pay the state for climate adaptation measures. Vermont, Maryland and California are also at various stages of implementing “polluter pays” laws. In a motion for summary judgment, the DoJ is urging a federal judge to strike down the law, claiming New York has overstepped its authority and is “trampling over federal law in the process”.
The governors of New York, Massachutilizetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey issued a joint statement on September 1 calling on the Trump administration to uphold all offshore wind permits already granted. However, two days later, a court filing revealed that the administration was working to withdraw a permit for the New England Wind 1 and 2 offshore projects near Nantucket, Massachutilizetts. State governor Maura Healey informed reporters that the shift “builds no sense”.
A group of more than 85 climate experts has published a 439-page report criticising a US Department of Energy paper that questioned the scientific consensus that climate modify is a threat to the world. The scientists declared the Trump administration’s energy department “exhibits pervasive problems” by cherry-picking data, misrepresenting prior scientific findings, and is ultimately “either misleading or fundamentally incorrect”. Environmental groups sued the DoE over the report in August regarding concerns around transparency.
A federal appellate judge has sided with the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency over its freezing of federal climate grants. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin cancelled $20bn worth of Joe Biden-era grants upon taking office earlier this year, and the expected recipients quickly sued the agency. The EPA issued a statement declareing the funds “belong to hardworking American taxpayers”.
The California Air Resources Board has published draft guidance for its climate reporting framework SB 261, which will be effective from January 1 2026. It clarifies a number of matters and provides reporting companies with a checklist commensurate with the Tinquire Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures’ four pillars: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and tarreceives. The CARB declared these are recommfinishations and do not establish new mandatory requirements beyond those already in the statute.
Africa and Middle East
Zimbabwe has put forward proposals for rules establishing a National Climate Fund as part of the countest’s climate modify management bill. The initiative, which aims to support projects related to climate modify and emergency response, will be largely financed by carbon market revenues.
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