Kanata Advisors

Greenhushing Is Not a Thing You can't speak to a sustainability professional or attend a sustainability event today without hearing about "greenhushing". And this is not coming out of the blue, according to a recent Harvard study, roughly half of the S&P 100, STOXX Europe, and Fortune 500 companies analyzed are downplaying their sustainability-related activities. The effect is even more pronounced among companies that have maintained or expanded their sustainability programs, where only 16% have publicly reaffirmed their commitments. (https://lnkd.in/gfCq7CWp). However, what many call greenhushing is simply the absence of greenwashing. The idea that companies should trumpet sustainability goals and plans at every turn is the anomaly. A generation of ESG/sustainability practitioners matured during an era when constant promotional messaging became the norm. Now that firms are pulling back on PR, the resulting quiet feels abnormal. Companies that manage climate risk, engage employees, and use energy and natural resources efficiently do not need aggressive marketing campaigns or slick PR to prove it. This is simply good business. The results should appear in better financial returns, lower business and reputational volatility, and higher valuations. Firms can report sustainability progress the way they report financials: clearly, consistently, and primarily through their integrated annual reports, without the fanfare. The next phase of credible sustainability is about performance, not promotion. Set targets, measure progress, and disclose results with the same rigor as financials. Let boards, investors, and customers judge the work by outcomes and verified data, not by volume of messaging.

🚨 Upcoming Webinar Alert 🚨

Q Insight –Lucky 13th Edition!   Happy to share the latest edition of Q Insights: https://lnkd.in/ervgTYkd Key Highlights: ➡️ Cover story: An amazing interview with Robert Smith, Founder and CEO of Dazzle, on how his platform connects companies with on-demand sustainability talent, a curated network of vetted freelance experts for speed, flexibility, and quality. ➡️ Q Intelligence: Market still early, of 400+ verified providers on KanataQ, ~23% serve 1–10 clients, 36% serve 11–50, 29% serve 51–200, only 11% have 200+ → lots of white space for growth. 🚦 Solutions Signals: ➡️Greenly | Certified B Corp (KanataQ listed) launches EcoPilot (AI-driven carbon accounting). ➡️ EcoVadis rolls out Worker Voice Connect (anonymous grievance reporting). ➡️Worldly acquires GoBlu to link chemical usage with ESG data. ➡️Class 3 Technologies raises seed to scale climate-risk platform for buildings. 🗺️ Finally check our KanataQ October 2025 Ecosystem Map covering 398 solutions over 13 master sustainability solutions categories, along with average pricing for each category. Huge thanks to Ardit Naka and KanataQ’s editorial team for curating another outstanding edition. Your tireless efforts and amazing work are truly appreciated.

Upcoming webinar: The Do’s and Don’ts of AI-Powered Sustainability 📅 Featuring Lorraine Spradley Wilson, Founder and Strategic Advisor at Blue Horizon Economy, Nawar Alsaadi, FSA, SIPC, Founder and CEO of Kanata Advisors, and James Phare, CEO and Founder of Neural Alpha, creator of Responsible Capital. Our speakers, in conversation moderated by Max Mizzi, will dive into what sustainability professionals need to know about integrating AI tools into their workflows, including the ever-important and pressing questions about leveraging AI in a socially- and environmentally-responsible way 🌱 Join us to look at key steps to take in the first 100 days of any new solution, common pitfalls to avoid, and strong examples of tool adoptions by industry peers. See you there 🔗 https://lnkd.in/etFGhbQj

The Sustainability Solutions Big Crunch Is Here! Consolidation in the sustainability solutions space continue to accelerate. And we are starting to see it with KanataQ listed solution providers buying each other! Since September, we have had two such instances with KanataQ listed Position Green buying KanataQ listed Greenomy | Part of Position Green, and KanataQ listed Diginex [NASDAQ: DGNX] buying KanataQ listed Matter. The enactment of a plethora of sustainability-related regulations around the world in the early 2020s, combined with a surge in ESG investing post-Covid gave birth to hundreds if not thousands of sustainability solutions providers around the world. As a matter of fact, 80% of the 400+ sustainability solutions listed on KanataQ were created between 2018 and 2024, with the peak happening in the 2022 to 2024 time frame, mirroring tightened regulation (CSRD, EU Taxonomy, ISSB) and the digitization of sustainability reporting (we will have more to say about this in an upcoming KanataQ industry report). The pullback in sustainability regulations in Europe, combined with a US broad sustainability retreat, has cooled demand growth, lengthened sales cycles, and pushed buyers to rationalize their sustainability spending. This in turn has created a meaningful imbalance between the availability of sustainability solutions and the need for them, that’s driving a much-needed market consolidation But the above is only part of the story, there is also a new emerging dynamic, namely, the rise of native AI solutions that are increasingly taking share from both traditional sustainability consulting and dedicated sustainability software solutions. This shift is not simply about feature parity or better user experience. It is about automation that materially lowers compliance cost, compresses reporting timelines, and links operational data to financial outcomes. As a result, buyers are moving from many point tools to a few platforms with credible AI, auditable data lineage, and strong integration into ERP, PLM, and procurement. Single use case products that cannot prove hard ROI within one budget cycle will struggle to survive without a partner or an acquirer. I expect the Big Crunch to run for the next two to three years, with a steady cadence of tuck-ins and scale combinations. The end state is fewer platforms that cover disclosure, carbon, supply chain, and assurance, surrounded by specialist tools that win where depth truly matters. Providers should decide now whether to expand into a platform with real interoperability and open schemas, or to double down on a defensible niche and partner widely. The market is consolidating because customers are demanding clarity, reliability, and value. KanataQ will continue to monitor these developments, and help bother buyers and sellers find the right fit. For more such insights, create your FREE KanataQ Account today: https://kanataq.com/

Q Insight –12th Edition   Happy to share the latest edition of Q Insights: https://lnkd.in/gJD3VzW6   This edition starts with a highly insightful look at the lead to profile views ratio at KanataQ. This analysis is based on 18,000 profile views and 6000 sales leads on KanataQ. The analysis reveals that Governance & Accountability, Sustainable Finance, and Social & Human Capital solutions enjoy the highest lead/profile views ratio, meaning users viewing solutions within these categories are most likely to email, book a meeting, or check the provider's website or LinkedIn profile.   In the interview section, the CEO of Socialsuite, Seth Forman, explains how the company is redefining sustainability and impact management through its AI-driven double materiality platform, designed to help companies meet CSRD and IFRS requirements efficiently. SocialSuite replaces costly, one-off consultancy projects with an accessible, scalable software solution that reduces time and costs by up to 80%! Seth and his team have built a truly world class offering at SocialSuite, read what he has to say, there is much to learn about what makes a standout company in this field.     On top of the above, we also highlight exciting updates from KanataQ-listed providers: Diginex [NASDAQ: DGNX], Novata, Sunhat and ECO-OS, among other key news and developments within the sustainability solutions space.   Huge thanks to Ardit Naka and KanataQ’s editorial team for curating another outstanding edition. Your tireless efforts and amazing work are truly appreciated.

📊 Clean Data Before Clever Tools Automation and AI have become the new frontier in ESG reporting - promising to cut manual work, boost accuracy, and deliver insights in seconds. But if the data feeding those systems is flawed, automation doesn’t fix the problem - it scales it. From analyzing 10+ buyer and vendor interviews and recent marketplace activity at KanataQ, one pattern stands out: Companies are prioritizing data validation, integration, and standardization before they even start evaluating AI-powered ESG platforms. Why this matters: • Some regulations now require over 1,000+ auditable data points. • 63% of ESG teams spend more time fixing data than analyzing it (Workiva & PwC, 2024). • Bad ESG data adds 5–10% to compliance costs (Gartner, 2025). Where things often go wrong: • Manual entry errors and inconsistent units (kWh vs MWh). • Department silos: finance, HR, and ops using non-aligned baselines. • Missing supplier data and untracked assets. What leading companies are doing differently: • Automating validation rules before analytics, cutting reporting errors by up to 70%. • Using anomaly detection to separate false trends from real incidents. • Assigning data owners per department, improving completeness by 30–40%. The takeaway: Before you automate reporting, fix the foundation. Clean, validated ESG data doesn’t just reduce risk - it enables faster insights, better compliance, and more confident decision-making. 👉 Explore hundreds of ESG & sustainability platforms on kanataq.com with built-in data validation, anomaly detection, and governance capabilities, so your analytics start clean and stay credible.

Sustainability Will Prevail An excellent opinion piece on FT by Florian Berg at MIT. Here is a key excerpt: «The number of companies reporting on climate change has grown dramatically over the past decade. According to the Carbon Disclosure Project, that number was 4,968 in 2014, 8,361 in 2019 and more than 22,400 in 2024. Similarly, in regulatory filings, US public companies continue to discuss the climate risks affecting their business and their record on decreasing carbon emissions. In particular, the number of firms that mentioned the acronym ESG — environment, social and governance issues — in their annual 10k regulatory filings for the 2024 fiscal year was 30 per cent, climate change 47 per cent, and sustainability 52 per cent. At the same time, more asset managers are using ESG data as part of their evaluation of portfolio companies. This trend is evidenced in the statistics on the revenue received by ESG providers over the past decade. Their revenues rose from $245mn in 2016, to $525mn in 2020, to $1.56bn in 2024 according to Opimas. MSCI, for instance, grew sales of ESG and climate data from $357mn in 2024 to an annualised rate of $384mn in the first half of 2025. Roughly one-third of this revenue comes from the US. Notably, 48 of the world’s 50 largest asset managers incorporate MSCI’s ESG and climate data into their investment processes. More directly, the assets held by global sustainability funds rose significantly over the past decade. As reported by Morningstar, these have risen steadily to $3.5tn in the second quarter of 2025.« ---- I strongly believe that the challenges facing the ESG and sustainability space today will result in a more nimble, impactful and mature corporate sustainability and sustainable investing industry. Those who think the clock can be turned back to a world void of accountability are literally tilting swords against carbon busting wind turbines!