The world in impact, 2024/25
Four of the most significant news
stories in the world of impact and sustainability during the last year
AI AND CARBON
In a year of remarkable AI developments, one of the most remarkable came in January, when little-known Chinese start-up DeepSeek published an open-source language model that it said had cost less than $6m to train. That’s a fraction of the cost of models like ChatGPT – and yet it outperformed them on many standard benchmarks.
Even if the real cost of DeepSeek was probably much higher, this was seen as a significant breakthrough. The possibility of achieving similar or better levels of model performance with substantially less compute undermined all the perceived wisdom around AI economics (which spooked markets).
But it was also a potentially significant step forward in terms of another big AI downside: its carbon footprint. Lower compute means lower emissions – which hopefully makes it more likely that we can use AI to tackle our greatest challenges without destroying the planet in the process.
BETTER DISCLOSURES
In March 2025, regulators across the EU, UK, and Asia-Pacific region introduced sweeping ESG fund naming and climate risk disclosure rules, to curb greenwashing and improve transparency. In Europe, for example, under the European Securities and Markets Authority’s new rules, funds could no longer use ESG or sustainability-related terms in their names unless at least 80% of their assets aligned with stated ESG or sustainability objectives. Sure enough, a large number rebranded or dropped these terms.
This year has also seen a push for greater transparency at national level. At the recent COP, over 190 countries signed a strengthened version of the Paris Agreement, which requires annual progress reporting and stricter accountability mechanisms. The hope is that these enhanced disclosures will standardise sustainability claims, make it easier to distinguish the good actors from the bad, and ultimately accelerate progress towards decarbonisation.
RENEWABLES SURGE
This summer, official figures were released showing that renewable energy accounted for more than half of the UK’s total electricity generation in 2024 – the first year this has ever happened.
The record high of 143.7 terawatt hours generated by renewables in the year (more than half of which came from wind energy) provided 50.4% of total UK electricity, up from 46.4% in 2023. If we also add in nuclear (14.25%), low-carbon sources accounted for about two-thirds of all electricity generation – while the share generated from fossil fuels fell to 31.8%, down from 36.7%.
And this transition is not confined to the UK. Think tank Ember said in October that in the first half of 2025, renewables overtook coal as the world’s leading source of electricity. The driving force behind this global surge continues to be China, which in 2024 added more solar and wind capacity than every other country in the world put together.
THE BETTER FUTURES FUND
In July, the UK Government announced that it was allocating £500 million to the Better Futures Fund, with a stated aim of supporting up to 200,000 children and their families over the next decade. Critically, it will do this by paying for outcomes successfully achieved by outcomes-focused programmes, like those that Bridges' specialist team has been coordinating for more than a decade.
This is an important step for the sector. At £500m – and the Government hopes this will be matched by other impact-driven funders (including local government and philanthropists), taking the total to £1bn – this is the largest fund of its kind in the world. This not only serves as a public endorsement of the outcomes-based approach to programme design and delivery, but also as a welcome long-term commitment towards outcomes-focused procurement. Hopefully it will serve as a template for similar initiatives in other countries.
