5 Sustainability Predictions for 2025 — And What These Mean for Businesses
2024 had its struggles, but a lot of positive changes could come in 2025.
In many ways, 2024 felt like a step backward for environmental and social progress.
For one, regardless of your political views, it's hard to argue that the re-election of Donald Trump at least signals a warmer embrace of fossil fuels, which are the number one cause of climate change. The SEC's climate disclosure rules also look to be on pause indefinitely, if not dismantled.
Persistent inflation has also been a challenge, such as with some consumers prioritizing affordability over sustainability.
And overall, emissions continued to climb globally, rising by a projected 0.8% compared to 2023, according to the Global Carbon Budget (GCB).
While more progress is needed on global efforts toward a more sustainable future, 2024 still had a lot of positives. For example, emissions did decrease by 0.6% in the US and 3.8% in the EU, according to GCB. A slew of state and local environmental ballot initiatives also won, despite the change in direction at the federal level.
And overall, demand for sustainable solutions is not disappearing. Nearly-two thirds of consumers consider sustainability a top-three factor in purchasing decisions, according to Simon-Kucher.
Corporations also still face regulations such as climate disclosure rules in California and Europe. 2025, for example, will be the first year of reporting under the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which could affect large U.S. businesses, similar to how GDPR has had global reach.
So even though 2024 may not have been a banner year for sustainability, businesses would be wise to still prioritize it next year.
Yet as a Bain study finds, "it isn’t effective for companies to market 'sustainability' as a single concept or to target consumers as a monolithic group. Businesses need to understand what different consumer segments are after on a category-by-category basis."
With that in mind, consider the following five sustainability predictions for 2025 and what that might mean for different types of companies and consumer segments: