The COP30 climate summit ran from November 10 to 21 in Belem, Brazil. The Amazon rainforest as backdrop. 190-plus nations. The usual cast of environment ministers, NGO delegations, corporate sustainability officers, and private jets.
This article was originally published on 13 November 2025 on The Brief at sebsauerborn.com.
I have a simple question: what has thirty years of COP summits actually achieved?
COP1 was in Berlin in 1995. In 1995, global CO2 emissions were around 23 billion tonnes per year. In 2025, they are tracking at a record high, above 37 billion tonnes. The trajectory has gone up, not down, for every single year that these summits have been held, with the sole exception of 2020, when a global pandemic shut down the world economy.
I am not making a political point about climate science. The science is what it is. I am making a point about the complete and total failure of a particular approach to a problem: international bureaucracy, political theatre, and non-binding commitments do not change industrial behaviour at scale.
What Does Change Industrial Behaviour
Technology changes industrial behaviour. Market incentives change industrial behaviour. Price signals change industrial behaviour.
Solar energy has fallen in cost by more than 90% in the last fifteen years. That is not because of COP summits. That is because of manufacturing scale, investment, and the ordinary workings of markets competing to find cheaper solutions.
Electric vehicles are following a similar trajectory. Battery costs have collapsed. Range has extended. The charging infrastructure, while still inadequate, is growing. This is happening because there is money to be made in it, not because a declaration was signed in Paris in 2015.
The energy transition, to whatever extent it happens, will be driven by economics and technology. COP is a sideshow.
The Costs Are Not a Sideshow
What is not a sideshow is the regulatory and tax burden that COP commitments generate for ordinary businesses and individuals.
The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, coming into full force in 2026, will impose carbon tariffs on goods imported from countries without equivalent carbon pricing. This affects manufacturing, steel, cement, fertilisers and more. It affects the competitive position of businesses operating across borders.
The EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive now requires large companies to report on their environmental, social, and governance performance with a level of detail that requires dedicated compliance teams. This is not free. The cost falls on businesses, and ultimately on consumers and shareholders.
The drive toward ESG investing has redirected capital flows in ways that have, in some cases, created energy shortages. Germany's rapid exit from nuclear power, driven in part by green political pressure, left the country dependent on Russian gas. When that gas was cut off after the invasion of Ukraine, German industry faced an energy crisis that is still not fully resolved. Industrial energy costs in Germany remain roughly three times what they are in the United States.
Climate policy without honest accounting of its economic consequences is not virtue. It is negligence.
What I Actually Think
I will say what I think, because I always do.
I believe the climate is warming. I believe human activity is a significant contributor. I believe some adaptation is inevitable and some mitigation is sensible.
I do not believe that the people attending COP summits, flying in on private jets and staying in luxury hotels, are serious about solving the problem. I believe they are serious about being seen to be addressing the problem, which is a very different thing.
I do not believe that driving European and American businesses into regulatory paralysis while China and India continue to build coal plants at scale achieves anything meaningful for the climate. It achieves the offshoring of emissions and the destruction of Western industrial capacity.
The answer is technology. The answer is markets. The answer is letting human ingenuity solve the problem, rather than letting political theatre pretend to solve it.
The Practical Implication
For my clients, the practical implication of the accelerating ESG and climate regulatory environment is this: the compliance cost of operating a European business is going to continue to rise. Substantially.
The most successful entrepreneurs I know are not the ones who positioned themselves perfectly in one jurisdiction and optimised for its rules. They are the ones who built structures that could move.
Build to move. Not to comply.
Work with Sebastian
If rising regulatory costs in Europe are affecting your business planning, there are legitimate, legal structures that give you more flexibility. Let's talk about what that looks like for your specific situation. Book a consultation.