Welcome back: At the end of last year, Coca-Cola was criticized for quietly dropping some of its climate goals. Yesterday, PepsiCo took a different approach and spoke to the Sustainable Business team about why the snacks and beverage company won’t be meeting some of its sustainability targets. See our interview with Chief Sustainability Officer Jim Andrew below. 

Also chatting with us this week was U.K. energy company Octopus, which, it turns out, has great plans for the U.S. and is not an energy company at all. Read on for more on this story and other sustainable news. 

But first, the GOP-led Senate voted yesterday to remove California’s ability to set its own tailpipe emissions standards, effectively killing the country’s biggest driver of electric-vehicle investment. The move nullifies a measure, adopted by 11 other states, banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. The House already passed the same resolution. Now it heads to President Trump's desk for his signature.

Meanwhile, EV owners and buyers and clean energy projects are some of the biggest losers after the House of Representatives passed a tougher version of Trump's expansive tax-and-spending package last night. The struggling rooftop solar industry faces a potentially fatal blow and solar stocks crashed on the news. One company lost more than a third of its market value.

In Virginia, an offshore wind development, one of America’s largest industrial projects that’s slated to cover 150 square miles of the ocean, stands as a test case into whether the offshore wind industry can survive under Trump, whose administration has set about dismantling the regulatory system designed to help such projects proceed.

But perhaps lessons can be learned from New York, where Trump wants to help fossil-fuel companies lay new pipes. Gov. Kathy Hochul said this week she would work with the administration on new energy projects that meet the state’s legal requirements. Her comments came after Trump reversed a stop-work order on a major wind project off New York’s coast, spurring speculation that a deal had been struck.

As companies face criticism for quietly undoing their climate pledges, PepsiCo is trying a fresh approach, WSJ Pro Sustainable Business's Clara Hudson reports.

The beverage and snacks giant this week cited a number of reasons why it won’t be meeting some of its sustainability goals. It pointed to external factors such as a lack of progress on recycling, EV charging infrastructure and grid modernization, as well as internal factors like business growth.

The company pushed back its goal to achieve net-zero emissions from 2040 to 2050 and is dropping its aim to cut virgin plastic from non-renewable sources as well as its goal to deliver 20% of all beverages through reusable packaging such as glass or plastic by 2030.

PepsiCo’s move follows criticism of Coca-Cola in December when it walked back some of its climate goals, including quietly unwinding a commitment to make 25% of its products with reusable packaging by 2030. 

In just 10 years, Octopus Energy has gone from being a startup run by a handful of whiz kids, to a global business with several thousand employees and a valuation close to $10 billion. It is now the largest household energy supplier in Britain, providing green power to more than 7 million consumers, WSJ Pro Sustainable Business's Yusuf Khan writes.

The strange part is that Octopus isn’t really an energy business at all. It’s a tech company that happens to focus on renewables, and its most crucial component—an AI platform called Kraken—is largely unheard of. Octopus co-founder and CEO Greg Jackson said the energy company was conceived in part simply as a means to test the capabilities of the Kraken platform. “We created Octopus as the ‘demo client,’” he said.

Kraken was built specifically with utilities in mind. It can be used to manage energy consumption in customers’ homes, balance grids when more or less power is needed for a community and it can track consumer use of new technologies, such as solar power or EV charging.  This week, Kraken announced that it was partnering with National Grid in the U.S. to act as the AI customer service and billing platform for 6 million customers.

BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard Group may have undermined competition in the coal industry by advancing a climate-change agenda on the companies the asset managers invested in, according to a government filing this week related to a lawsuit, the WSJ's Dave Michaels reports.

The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission submitted a brief on Thursday in a case filed last year by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other Republicans against the fund giants. The filing says their holdings of multiple companies in the coal industry—known as common ownership—could violate competition law.

The lawsuit said the institutional investors were big players in trade groups that wanted fossil-fuel companies to cut their emissions over time. That led to lower coal production—which led to higher prices.

Vanguard said that the complaint “contorts the law in a way that will hurt individual investors.” State Street said the claims are baseless. BlackRock said the notion that "coal companies conspired with their shareholders to reduce coal production is absurd."

Tell me what you think: Send me your feedback and suggestions at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com or reply to any newsletter. If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up here.

• Honda Motor to dial back EV investment. (WSJ)
   
• How Target boycotts affect Black-owned businesses. (WSJ)
   
• Meta buys 650 mw of renewable energy for data centers. (ESG Today)
   
• JPMorgan wants to be go-to banker for carbon markets. (Barron's)
   
• Lululemon taps ex-Nike CSO for senior sustainability role. (ESG Dive)
   
• U.S. hands victory to China in gutting green energy tax breaks, IRA architect says. (FT)
   
• China’s lithium city is a front line of the battery trade war. (Bloomberg)
   
• Britain is now the biggest funder of solar-geoengineering research. (Economist)
   
• What renewable energy buyers should know about proposed Scope 2 accounting changes. (Trellis)
   
• The hidden cost of your supermarket sea bass. (Guardian)

WSJ Pro Sustainable Business gives you an inside look at how companies are tackling sustainability. Send comments to bureau chief Perry Cleveland-Peck at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com and reporters Clara Hudson at clara.hudson@wsj.com and Yusuf Khan at yusuf.khan@wsj.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at wsjperry, clara-hudson and yusuf_khan.