Published on 21/05/2026
Europe warms up 2 times faster than the rest of the world, according to the latest Copernicus report
Europe is warming up twice as fast as the global average, warns the Copernicus Institute. In Turkey, temperatures exceeded 50 degrees for the first time last year. Farther north, in Norway, another record was set: 21 consecutive days at 30 degrees in July. "What is important in this report is that it shows all of Europe is affected by the impacts of climate change—no region is spared," states climatologist Françoise Vimeux.
The consequence of these heatwaves is the decline of snow cover and staggering figures. "The snow-covered area at the end of winter 2025 is the third smallest ever recorded," continues Samantha Burgess. "More than 1.3 million km² less than the average—this loss of snow is equivalent to the combined area of France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria!" The Mediterranean Sea, meanwhile, experienced its second hottest year on record, with an average surface temperature of 21.35°C. This figure was 1.03°C above average, following the 2024 record (21.50°C). The phenomenon is now recurring: "Over the past three years (2023–2025), the entire Mediterranean Sea has experienced at least 'strong' marine heatwave conditions, and at least half of the basin has faced 'severe' or 'extreme' conditions. Both the intensity of marine heatwaves and the affected area have increased," reports Copernicus.
The year 2025 was the third hottest year ever recorded globally, with temperatures 1.47 degrees higher than in the pre-industrial era.
Sources: Copernicus, FranceInfo, Al Jazeera
The Amazon reveals its first visual identity created from the curves of its river
It is a vast, rich, and diverse territory... but until now, it had never spoken with a single voice. The Brazilian Amazon now has its first unified visual identity, designed to enhance its presence on both national and international scales.
Instead of creating a logo in the traditional way, the creative teams chose to draw inspiration from the territory itself. Using real coordinates and satellite images, they analyzed the curves of the Amazon River and its tributaries. From this work, a complete alphabet emerged, with each letter extracted from the natural shapes of the rivers. This radical approach reverses the usual design process by transforming a landscape into a visual language.
Beyond the image, this identity aims to concretely support the region's development. It includes a "Feito de Amazônia" (Made in the Amazon) label, intended to highlight local products, expertise, and initiatives. Designed as a lever for tourism and the bioeconomy, this brand aims to increase the Amazon's visibility while supporting the communities that bring it to life.
Source: Creapills
Switzerland has reduced its domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 27% since 1990.
In just over 30 years, from 1990 to 2024, Switzerland reduced its domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 27.3%, according to the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). The building sector recorded the largest decrease compared to other sectors. In total, Switzerland emitted 40.1 million tons of CO2 equivalents in 2024, approximately 0.5 million tons less than in 2023, based on the Swiss greenhouse gas inventory published in April. The inventory will be submitted to the UN Secretariat on Climate Change.
For the first time, the inventory includes negative emissions produced by industry, amounting to 705 tons of CO2. As part of a research project by ETH Zurich with the company Neustark, a few tons of CO2 were captured for the first time in a biogas plant and permanently stored in recycled concrete, explained a FOEN spokesperson. The company provided the FOEN with the necessary data for reporting in the inventory.
The inclusion of negative emissions is provided for in the climate reports of countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and is open to all countries, the FOEN clarified. To date and "to our knowledge, no other country has reported negative emissions in its greenhouse gas inventory under the Paris Agreement," the spokesperson emphasized.
Source: RTS
SEC tells US Court of Appeals it plans to scrap climate reporting rules
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sent a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals, informing it of its plans to “reconsider” the corporate climate disclosure rules introduced by the Commission during the Biden administration. In this document, the SEC said that it plans to reconsider the rules through a “notice-and-comment rulemaking” process, which the Commission had initially attempted to avoid by requesting that the court issue a ruling on the legality of the rules, after it had also withdrawn its defense of the rules against legal challenges. The court denied the SEC’s request in September 2025, ordering the Commission to either reconsider the regulation through ordinary rulemaking procedures, or to renew its defense of the rules in court.
The climate reporting rules were adopted by the agency in 2024, under prior Biden-appointed SEC Chair Gary Gensler, establishing for the first time requirements for public companies in the U.S. to provide disclosure on climate risks facing their businesses, plans to address those risks, the financial impact of severe weather events, and, in some cases, greenhouse gas emissions originating from their operations.
In its letter to the court, the SEC outlined its rationale for reconsidering the climate reporting rules, highlighting “concerns that the Rules exceed the Commission’s statutory authority and the costs of the Rules outweigh their benefits.” The SEC confirmed that it does not intend to defend the rules, and that it has submitted a new proposed rule titled “Rescission of Climate-Related Disclosure Rules” to the U.S. federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
A one-degree global warming leads to a 20% drop in global GDP
Adrien Bilal is the winner of the 2026 Best Young Economist Award. His work focuses on the economic impact of global warming. In an article co-authored with Diego Känzig, he demonstrates that an additional one-degree increase in global temperature results in a decline of around 20% in global GDP. This finding is based on climate science and goes beyond just local temperature factors: "Climate science explains that climate change is an extremely profound transformation of the climate system. And it doesn’t necessarily have everything to do with whether it’s hot where you are today. So, we tried to incorporate these ideas into economic analysis, which led us to this figure of over 20% GDP loss per degree of warming."
Beyond leveraging climate science, Adrien Bilal integrates new mathematical tools into economic research on global warming, which had previously been relatively lacking in mathematical rigor.
The 10 most influential sustainability companies of 2026
- Some companies in the list: Danone, Xylem, Veolia
- Sectors: Food & Beverages, Industrials, Water Management
- Clover ratings: 5/5, 5/5, 4/5
TIME editors launch the TIME100 Companies: Industry Leaders lists, an expansion of the TIME100 Most Influential Companies issue that dives deeper into 20 sectors to look at the companies shaping their industries. These are some of the most influential companies in sustainability of 2026. In the top 10 companies listed by TIME are also the methane monitoring company GHGSat, Watershed, presented as a corporate sustainability champion, Blueland, involved in curbing microplastics, Nuton, for more sustainable copper, PADI, that turns divers into stewards, Overstory for an innovative wildfire prevention, and the textile recycling at scale Circ.
Dairy cattle account for about 8% of human-caused methane emissions, mainly through cow burps and manure. “We have a clear mission: to provide healthy food to as many people as possible,” says Nathalie Alquier, chief sustainability officer of Danone, the world’s largest yogurt maker. In line with that mission, Danone announced in 2023 it would reduce its methane emissions 30% by 2030—and nearly achieved that goal at the end of last year. The Paris-based company, which operates in more than 120 countries, drives sustainability in partnership with its more than 60,000 dairy-farmer suppliers around the world. For instance, Danone equipped 6,500 small dairy farmers with biodigesters that turn livestock waste into renewable biogas and organic fertilizer. In 2025, Danone became the world’s largest B Corporation, and for the past five years, it has received CDP’s highest environmental score (Triple A), given to less than one-tenth of 1% of companies.
Because of aging infrastructure, up to 60% of treated water can sometimes be lost before it even makes it to customers' faucets. Xylem helps utilities preserve this stressed resource by developing digital monitoring systems that detect leaks, and solutions to disinfect and reuse wastewater. Since 2019, the company says its projects have collectively saved 3.7 billion cubic meters of water and enabled the reuse of 18 billion cubic meters—enough to supply water to 350 million people annually. Recently, Xylem’s work has grabbed the attention of data center developers. As part of Amazon’s “goal of returning more water to communities than it uses in its data centers,” in 2025 the tech giant helped fund the deployment of Xylem’s real-time water monitoring software platform, Xylem Vue, in Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico. Those projects are expected to save more than 1.3 billion liters of water each year.
One of the world's largest water services companies is removing the "forever" from "forever chemicals." Toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), linked to cancers and other illnesses, linger in the environment and can accumulate in the body. In 2025, French firm Veolia flexed its global leadership in PFAS treatment by opening a massive plant in Delaware that filters PFAS from water and incinerates it to break the bond between fluorine and carbon, one of the strongest in chemistry. The plant filters 114 million litres per day, delivering cleaner drinking water to more than 100,000 residents. Now the company, which treated more than 7.6 billion cubic meters of water last year, is on track to have more than 100 PFAS water treatment sites across the U.S. in the coming years. Veolia is now targeting €1 billion in revenue from mitigating micropollutants by 2030.
Source: TIME
Meta employees protest against mouse tracking tech at US offices
- Company: Meta Inc
- Sector: Technology
- Clover rating: 1/5
Meta employees distributed flyers at multiple U.S. offices in May to protest against the company's recent installation of mouse-tracking software on their computers. The flyers, which appeared in meeting rooms, on vending machines and atop toilet paper dispensers at the offices, encouraged staffers to sign an online petition against the move.
"If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them, things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus," said Meta spokesperson Andy Stone. The pamphlets and the petition, citing the U.S. National Labor Relations Act, said: "Workers are legally protected when they choose to organize for the improvement of working conditions."
Source: Reuters
Ford repurposes EV battery capacity to launch new energy storage business
- Company: Ford Motor Co
- Sector: Automobiles
- Clover rating: 4/5
Automotive giant Ford announced the official launch of Ford Energy, its new battery energy storage systems (BESS) business, aimed at providing BESS solutions for utilities, data centers and large industrial and commercial companies in the U.S. The launch of the new business follows plans by announced by Ford last year to launch a new BESS unit after rationalizing its U.S. EV-related assets and product roadmap due to lower than expected demand, with the new business enabling the company to repurpose some of its existing U.S. battery manufacturing capacity to meet growing demand for dispatchable energy storage driven by data center growth, increasing renewable energy capacity, and grid resilience requirements.
The new BESS business unit’s operations will span the full range of battery cell manufacturing activities, from electric coil production to assembly of modules and containers, in addition to providing sales and service support. BESS systems will be assembled in Ford’s repurposed battery manufacturing capacity in Glendale, Kentucky. The company said that it aims to deploy at least 20 GWh annually from the new business, with initial deliveries to customers planned for late 2027. Ford has announced plans to invest approximately $2 billion to scale the business over the next 2 years.
Source: ESG Today
Renewable energies produced more electricity than coal in 2025, a first in history
The annual report by the think tank Ember shows that the installation of renewable energy sources enabled meeting a significant rise in global electricity consumption in 2025. For the first time in a century, the share of global electricity generated from renewable sources (34%) surpassed that produced from coal, the most greenhouse gas-emitting energy source (33%). And for only the fifth time since the beginning of the 21st century, electricity production from all fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) saw a slight decline (−0.2%).
The seventh edition of the Global Electricity Review, published in April by the London-based think tank Ember, demonstrates that the spectacular growth of solar and wind energy continues globally, reshaping the energy system. This report comes as the sector faces an unprecedented crisis triggered by the war in the Middle East, highlighting the economic and sovereignty risks tied to dependence on oil and gas, alongside climate risks.
Sources: Le Monde, Carbon Brief