This week: Waste shortage, Arctic subsea cables, SVB's climate hit 

Welcome back. Sustainability really is on trend, despite the anti-ESG rhetoric. A quarter of Fortune 500 board appointees last year had sustainability committee experience, up from 14% in the prior year.  More companies are hiring Chief Sustainability Officers and the role is growing and evolving. With mandatory climate reporting just around the corner in many jurisdictions, businesses are getting serious about figuring out how to start delivering on their promises to reduce their climate impact, ideally in a way that is profitable.

The CSO's job of leading that massive business transformation means that corporate sustainability has evolved into a team sport.

The responsibilities are huge: Driving a transformation that decarbonizes the business while at least maintaining competitiveness; preparing climate reporting; estimating and reducing emissions up and down the value chain; tracking, influencing and exploiting government incentives and policies; understanding existing green technologies and monitoring emerging ones; choosing corporate climate metrics, setting targets and tracking performance. To name but a few.

The stakes are high: customers, investors, lenders and other stakeholders are watching closely and efforts to crack down on greenwashing are ramping up.

The context—including definitions, expectations and rules—is evolving quickly too.

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Oscar the Grouch is United Airlines' Chief Trash Officer, an apt pitchman for a new advertising campaign touting the environmental benefits of jet fuel made from waste.

But the “Sesame Street” character’s cynical worldview may be ideally suited to the airline’s campaign for another reason, writes Dieter Holger. The reality is that flying planes on sustainable aviation fuel—known as SAF—faces big hurdles: high prices and not enough trash.

The Arctic is one of the world’s last digital frontiers. Subsea fiber-optic cables, which carry over 99% of intercontinental voice and data traffic, have traversed most of the world’s oceans, but so far not the Arctic Ocean, historically limited by the region’s ice sheet, writes Isabelle Bousquette

As that ice sheet has started melting due to climate change, telecommunications companies have looked to the area—where Asia, Europe and North America are closer than they are at any other point on Earth—for a shorter, potentially more efficient route for data flows across the three continents.

Silicon Valley Bank was best known for its connections to software and biotech startups, but it also had niche businesses serving climate-tech companies. Ed Ballard reports on how the bank's collapse is affecting its climate-tech customers including low-carbon cement startup Sublime Systems and agtech Precision AI.  

Investors and executives say SVB stood out for lending to very early-stage companies, and some expect the bank's collapse to slow the pace of funding. However, others are more sanguine: Mark Carney, U.N. Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, told a British parliamentary committee he didn't foresee SVB's collapse having a material impact on the availability of capital for climate tech investing. 

• Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and the threat of other troubled banks are “a wake-up call” that the Fed’s rate hikes have consequences. It may be a blessing in the disguise of a bank run.
   
• Tech executives discussed the implications of the SVB collapse in a panel discussion at a CIO Network event. Watch the video.

• Retailers including Walmart and Whole Foods are pushing for lower prices from suppliers, leveraging their buying power now that supply-chain constraints have eased.

Larry Fink's annual letter doesn't include "ESG" but does that mean his stance on climate action is softening?  

Europe unveils its clean-tech plan to speed up permitting and boost access to critical materials in a bid to rival China and the U.S.

EV truck maker Rivian seeks to end its delivery-van exclusivity pact with Amazon after the retailer orders at the low end of its range.

BMW and VW are investing ever more money into EVs. Better brands have higher chances of making satisfactory financial returns

EPA proposes the first federal limits on forever chemicals in public drinking water to filter out substances that have contaminated the water supplies of millions.

The 17-year saga to build a transmission line from Arizona to New Mexico (Bloomberg)

A deep dive into Japan's stubborn gender pay gap (Reuters)

Check out the air quality in your city with the 2022 World Air Quality Report (IQAir)

Is 1.5 degrees Celsius still realistic? (Financial Times)

Reviews of Extrapolations, the climate change drama hitting Apple TV+ this week. (Hollywood Reporter, NYT, Bloomberg, Financial Times)

Report shows an abrupt decline of thick sea ice in the Arctic Ocean (Nature) 

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