Climate Week NYC 2024: Key Takeaways

Climate Week attracted more than 100,000 attendees, industry leaders, policymakers and experts to the week-long event held last week in NYC. The Sugaright Sustainability Team was in attendance to listen, to learn, and to share our sustainability actions.

No one is interested in vague corporate climate commitments anymore; prove you’re making tangible progress toward decarbonization or hit the road.

Sugaright shared its engagement with GHG Emissions Data Collection and Target Setting at a workshop held by Supplier Leadership on Climate Transition (Supplier LoCT). The platform allows sustainable companies to learn, collect data, and set SBTi goals. The companies in attendance agreed that supporting suppliers was important to reach decarbonization targets through joint actions.

Mandatory Disclosures Prove to Be a Driver for Change

Many speakers agreed that the European Union’s climate disclosure rule—known in shorthand as CSRD—would act as a game changer. The regulation requires companies that do substantial business in Europe to disclose not only financially material information about how climate change affects their operations but also the ways that their operations materially affect the environment.

Alternative Energy Sources Will Be the Ultimate Solution

The old-timers reminded their audiences that the greatest strength of the US is our ability to be innovative when necessary. If companies and states want to be carbon-free, they must invest in alternative energy sources like nuclear, solar, geothermal and wind. And they are, and they will.

Texas was given as an example of change. The state has doubled its renewable energy in the past few years. Why? Because solar and wind are now cheaper in that sunny state than fossil fuels.

The Dallas Sugaright Refinery is now the first US Sugar Refinery to be run by 100% Renewable Energy. Thank you, Texas!!!

Climate Risk Mitigation is Driving Investment in the Energy Transition

Wall Street is beginning to recognize it can profit from climate solutions and is putting real money into the sector. The biggest driver, all agreed, is the accelerating pace of climate change itself. It is in the commercial interest of businesses and their lenders to avoid the worst consequences of climate change by moving forward on decarbonization.

Fourteen financial institutions said on Monday they would back the goals set during negotiations at the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference last year to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050 through lending, project financing, bond sales, and other means. Amazon and Microsoft are already investing in nuclear-powered data centers. More will certainly come.

Learning Drives Action

Innovation, Sustainability, and Customer Focus are at the core of Sugaright’s business. The lessons and learnings of Climate Week offer a pathway to a healthier planet.