That fact was reinforced yesterday when I called around for reaction to the Trump administration’s termination of the 2009 “endangerment” finding that gives the Environmental Protection Agency a legal duty to regulate six greenhouse gases that threaten human health. “This is a pattern we’ve seen swing back and forth in Washington,” one manufacturing leader told me. “We can’t plan around election cycles.”
So let’s hear from Saleh ElHattab, the CEO of Gravity, a software platform that helps companies measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions while cutting energy costs. Business is booming for reasons other than regulation. “Industrial buyers have the most razor-thin margins in the world,” he told me yesterday. “If you have an HVAC system that can be optimized, or we’ve detected some antiquated assets or opportunities for financing to get something that’s 90% more energy efficient, that’s good for business.”
And now there’s AI. While there’s legitimate concern about the energy needs and impact of data centers, AI can also be a catalyst in reducing pollutants. I recently spoke with Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas, whose platform helps customers run their fleets, factories and other physical operations more sustainably by connecting hardware in the field to the cloud. “Many execs don’t know what’s possible,” Biswas told me, noting that digitized operations mean even small changes can cascade to make a significant dent in emissions, safety and the bottom line. “It’s becoming table stakes.”
Amid the blows to science and regulation—and there have been many—the business case for sustainability remains strong.
