Trump's anti-sustainability agenda comes to Eurozone
- Reference: 1760518814
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/10/15/europe_sustainability_canalys/
- Source link:
ESG has taken a significant backward step since Trump's administration took power in January. Diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments are being forgotten or watered down, and carbon emissions goals are being rewritten.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an illusion, but it soon might be [1]READ MORE
Against this backdrop and without namechecking the man in the Oval Office, Ben Caddy, senior analyst at Omdia, said it "feels like we've had a real paradigm shift on sustainability" – and not in a good way.
"It seemed like companies were really taking it seriously," he told an audience of tech suppliers at the Canalys Forums event in Barcelona. "For the first time, we were seeing companies appointing chief sustainability officers or even talking about sustainability and marketing it in their earnings calls.
"It was everywhere, but only for a few years. In the last 12 months, something seems to have changed, and sustainability has experienced somewhat of a total system crash."
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He added: "In the 2024 US election, obviously sustainability, ESG, especially DEI, became toxic political footballs thrown around in the American culture war, and in the aftermath of that election, vendors are terrified to even use that language."
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Just recently, investors were obsessed with green bonds, regulators fixated on disclosure and transparency around carbon emissions and energy use, and corporate staff paid close attention to their environmental footprint. Money still makes the world go round, and sustainability featured prominently in tenders for new contracts as governments and organizations sought to meet compliance obligations.
"If you didn't have a credible sustainability strategy, or if you weren't telling a sustainability story that resonated with the customer, you would be left out of critical deals," noted Caddy. "Many of you tied sustainability performance to executive pay. You even got validated science based targets."
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"But everyone wanted a piece of the sustainability pie, so people kind of started to [6]greenwash . They started to talk sustainability without even understanding it and doing it themselves."
Hyperscalers, as The Register has [7]highlighted before , began to emit "outlandish carbon reduction claims" that didn't hold up to scrutiny and hardware vendors stuck eco labels on their recycled packaging, he said.
Microsoft's carbon emissions have surged almost 30 percent since 2020 and Google reported a 48 percent climb since 2019. Amazon doesn't provide AWS-specific location-based data, so no one outside of the corporation is able to ascertain its total carbon footprint.
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This hype, or "greenwashing," served to "set sustainability up for a total failure when the pressure finally hit," and hit it has. Canalys polled suppliers downstream in the supply chain who claimed the single biggest threat to IT sustainability progress this year was geopolitical contention over sustainability itself.
"Hyperscalers' emissions are completely out of control, and they've lost control of the narrative," said Caddy.
Datacenters being constructed for AI training and inference are a major contributor to the challenges that Microsoft et al face. Carbon emitted by DCs is forecast to be [9]three times greater by 2030 than if generative AI had not been developed. And [10]more coal is being burned to power these facilities . Rising [11]electricity prices are also being blamed on datacenters.
Outside of tech, Barclays, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs have left the UN-backed Net Zero banking alliance, precipitating its recent collapse.
[12]AWS says Britain needs more nuclear power to feed AI datacenter surge
[13]White House bans 'woke' AI, but LLMs don't know the truth
[14]Euro businesses flummoxed by Scope 3 emissions
[15]Pentagon celebrates snipping 0.58% from defense budget in IT, DEI cuts
Caddy said: "There's been a complete change in sentiment, and that geopolitical pressure has started to run over to Europe as well. Anti-ESG politics in Europe have caused the EU to massively roll back the scope of its landmark corporate sustainability finance reporting by 80 percent."
Sustainability may be struggling to remain relevant for CIOs now more interested in agentic AI, security or the cloud, yet according to a poll of channel partners, sustainability is "critical" to their "financial resilience as climate change worsens" and it remains a key factor when selling to certain customers in government and the commercial sector.
Just because the "political pendulum swung the other way" does not mean the IT industry should ignore it as a financial and ethically sound practice, argued Caddy. "The hype has ended, and it's time to get the work done." ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/13/diversity_equity_inclusion_tech/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aO9wtqRtkfzOahuML6tc_gAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aO9wtqRtkfzOahuML6tc_gAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aO9wtqRtkfzOahuML6tc_gAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aO9wtqRtkfzOahuML6tc_gAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/31/microsoft_greenwashing_ai/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/22/datacenter_emissions_not_accurate/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aO9wtqRtkfzOahuML6tc_gAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/06/datacenters_set_to_emit_3x/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/10/datacenter_coal_power/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/13/ai_power_bills/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/16/amazon_nuclear_power_britain/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/white_house_wants_no_woke_ai/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/21/report_scope_3_emissions/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/11/defense_department_cancels_contracts/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: TDS
There's nothing wrong with DEI. In my experience, white, straight, native english speaking males are just as likely to be incompetent as anyone else.
The whole point of DEI isn't to hire based on race or sex, it is to hire based *only* on suitability for the role, and sadly, there seem to be a very large number of people unable to grasp this.
Re: TDS
Unfortunately you are wrong - that was the original concept as understood by most people, called "Equality of Opportunity", the best person for the job regardless of who they are. But DEI has gone beyond that now to mean "Equality of Outcome" - the best person for the job won't always get it, as the hirer needs to ensure they meet what some consider to be "arbitrary" quotas of minority representation
See this for an example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66060490
There's no easy answer, which is why many of the world's advanced economies are tying themselves in knots over trying to figure out the best way forward
Leave it to the future palaeontologists
We really bury our heads firmly in the sand for us to hide from the coming apocalypse.
In some new future geologic era, the newly emerged sentient beings will start digging up these fossilized heads from sand-become-stone and wonder why these heads were stuck upside-down in the sand. They will have wonderful theories about these creatures and certainly a well formed picture of how they went extinct.
Wow
This guy sounds like the unhinged loons we are happy to push away from our lives.
He added: "In the 2024 US election, obviously sustainability, ESG, especially DEI, became toxic political footballs thrown around in the American culture war, and in the aftermath of that election, vendors are terrified to even use that language."
DEI was a toxic political football before 2024, all Trump did was pop that toxic ball so it wouldnt keep being kicked about and used to attack people. It is deluded to suggest it wasnt a toxic political football in 2020 when Biden expressed his choice of VP and Supreme Court candidate as DEI hires. Both cases being a demonstration of how damaging DEI is and what poor choices they were. The 'sustainability' madness that moves from the good intentions to the hell of bureaucracy choking the life out of the economy wont be missed either.
Re: Wow
So what you're saying is that it's far better to have an abusive, misogynistic, lying, incompetent white male felon as president than anybody who might tick any diversity boxes?
Are there any grounds on which we can deport you to the US, to live out your remaining years in the anti-woke paradise that your orange god is busy creating?
Re: Wow
I think many will voluntarily move to the USA because the retards in Europe are shooting themselves in the foot.
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/climate-lunatics-in-hamburg-pass
Energy prices are getting so ridiculously expensive, not because of AI datacentres, but because of so-called green policies. Otherwise those energy prices would also be just as expensive in the US, right?
This is just normal "Gartner Hype Cycle" type stuff - we've moved on from the "Peak of Inflated Expectations", we're now in the "Trough of Disillusionment", and in a few years sustainability being integrated into products and services will simply become the norm, and we'll reach the "Plateau of Productivity"
Ideology alone can never beat reality. If being "sustainable" means your product or service costs twice as much, then your investors will eventually dry up and look elsewhere for returns...
I have to wonder why
God felt the need to invent the Ostrich.
And, yes I know they don't really bury their heads in the sand. They stick their beaks into the ground to turn their eggs. I have no idea why they turn them but, there they are.
Icon, because it's my way of burying my head in the sand or more likely, the bog when I meet huey!
Ishy
TDS
Is El Reg suffering from TDS?
Good riddence to DEI and the eco looks who didn't care about the planet any more than 'pro Palestinian' marchers wanted peace.
Many readers will have personal experience of people being appointed based on racial or sexual characteristics rather than merit. A return to sanity, not to mention fairness, morality and economic growth by treating all humans equally, is much to be welcomed.