This year’s Climate Week in New York, alongside IETA’s North America Climate Summit, offered a clear view of where corporate decarbonisation is heading and where buyers can act with confidence today. Across CEBA sessions, investor-facing panels, and market deep dives, three threads kept reappearing: procurement must be de-risked, disclosures must be decision-useful, and data must travel cleanly across systems. In a crowded week, these were the signals worth keeping.

From strategy to execution

At CEBA’s member forum the conversation was refreshingly pragmatic. Buyers are recalibrating toward portfolios that mix long-term instruments with near-term impact. Traditional PPAs remain central for companies with the balance sheet and load profile to match tenor and risk. Yet many are right-sizing exposure by complementing PPAs with unbundled EACs, GO and I-REC strips, and shorter structured options to maintain progress while markets and internal approvals catch up. The shared objective was resilience: keep Scope 2 momentum visible quarter by quarter, while larger assets move through diligence, interconnection and financing.

What this means for a buyer: treat procurement as a curve, not a point. Lock in foundational positions where you can, then maintain coverage and optionality with diversified certificates and forward strips. A portfolio approach reduces timing risk and communicates continuity to internal stakeholders.

Disclosures that investors can actually use

Panels hosted like the one by Agendi moved past slogans to the mechanics of climate reporting. The direction of travel is clear. ISSB and TCFD concepts are informing rules in California and the EU, and the market is converging on a small set of expectations: align risk to cash flows, show governance, quantify Scope 1–3 with defensible methods, and explain variance over time. The most credible reports are folding sustainability into the financial narrative, not publishing it alongside. Assurance is moving from a nice-to-have to a natural extension of investor relations.

What this means for a buyer: build your energy procurement story the same way you would a capital allocation memo. Link instruments to exposure, explain why a PPA here and a certificate strip there, specify the controls on data quality, and prepare for limited assurance. The question is no longer if climate information is investment-grade, but when yours will be.

Speed without theatre

A recurring theme at the week’s workshops was friction at the enterprise edge. Startups spoke candidly about pilot projects that stall between enthusiasm and execution. Corporates described internal handovers that add six to twelve months before decisions land. The way through is not more theatre. It is operational clarity, credible measurement, and well-chosen partnerships that shorten cycles without inflating claims.

What this means for a buyer: ask vendors for the simplest path to measurable outcomes in the next two quarters, then scale. Scope 3 initiatives benefit from the same discipline. Prioritise supplier cohorts where data can be gathered and verified, use consistent methodologies, and be transparent about baselines and limits. Progress compounds when definitions are stable.

Markets that are maturing, not pausing

IETA and NACS sessions confirmed what many suspected. Compliance systems are deepening and aligning, voluntary markets are tightening around quality, and Article 6 is moving from concept to frameworks with real accountability. Aviation’s CORSIA and state leadership in North America are reinforcing the signal that carbon markets will remain part of corporate pathways, provided integrity standards are met. Data interoperability matters here. Certificates, claims, and audits must move smoothly across registries and reporting systems. Buyers are asking for fewer platforms, fewer spreadsheets, and a single chain of custody for evidence.

What this means for a buyer: choose market instruments that can be traced, audited, and defended. Ask how issuance, retirement, and claims will be documented against your ledgers and reports. If an instrument improves decarbonisation optics but complicates assurance, it will cost you time later.

PPAs, certificates, or both

A useful rule emerged during side-room discussions. If your primary objective is cost and hedge value, look to procure EAC strips on a multi-year period or if you’re able to withstand the long-term risks of 15 year or longer contracts, VPPAs or PPAs could be a better fit. If your objective is coverage, speed, and geographic breadth while maintaining the same tracible impact that comes with longer term arrangements, prioritise EACs, GOs, and I-RECs with transparent provenance and quality screens. Most programmes will need both. The art is phasing. Many buyers indicated near-term actions in October and November to secure 2025 coverage while 2026–2028 assets are evaluated.

What this means for a buyer: time your instruments to your objectives. Fix what you can fix quickly. Build what must be built carefully. Report both with the same precision.

Assurance is becoming the default

The week also underscored that assurance is not only about avoiding greenwash. It is about trust between functions. When risk, finance, sustainability, and investor relations share a single view of data lineage and control, internal debates shorten and external conversations improve. Auditors will not solve strategy, but they will clarify signals. That is valuable in a noisy market.

What this means for a buyer: assume your disclosures will be read by people trained to reconcile numbers. Organise your energy data so that it can be assured with minimal translation. You will move faster when you do.

A Swiss perspective

At Nvalue we take a measured view. Markets reward clarity, not volume. Instruments are tools, not ideologies. The best programmes are rigorous, calm and repeatable. Our role is to help buyers assemble portfolios that are defensible today and adaptable tomorrow, with documentation that travels cleanly from procurement to reporting. It is less about promising the perfect system and more about delivering progress you can account for while the system continues to mature.

The path ahead

Climate Week and NACS did not produce a single answer, and that is healthy. They did clarify how buyers can cut through the noise.

• Build a portfolio, not a headline.
• Tie instruments to risk, cash flows, and disclosure.
• Demand data that can move from meter to audit.
• Use assurance to speed decisions, not slow them.
• Act in quarters and plan in years.

If you are preparing near-term coverage while designing longer-dated positions, we can help you do that with precision. If you are aligning procurement with ISSB-style reporting and upcoming state or EU rules, we can help you make the controls as strong as the claims. And if you simply need a clearer map of options for PPAs and certificates across geographies, we will give you one that is useful on Monday morning.

Pragmatism and credibility remain the edge. The market is ready for both.