This week, we're digging into the energy transition and what it means for businesses, especially mid-market manufacturers and brands.

This podcast highlights that while the clean energy transition is undeniably accelerating globally, with huge growth in renewables, it's also facing significant challenges – think geopolitical shifts, economic volatility, and tricky, fragmented regulations.

For companies, ESG, or Environmental, Social, and Governance factors, are now central to strategy, but mid-market firms are particularly squeezed; they feel customer demand and regulatory pressure but often lack the resources of giants. Navigating this means tackling immense physical realities, from scaling up electric vehicles and heat pumps to managing grid capacity and finding critical minerals. The key takeaway? Despite political noise and complexities, inaction has a rising cost.

Companies are finding they must adapt strategically, focusing on what genuinely impacts their business value, managing risks, ensuring compliance with mandates (especially international and state-level) and investing in data. It's a call for pragmatic, evidence-based action.

Sources for this piece include: Original analysis by Third Partners, "5 things to know about the energy transition in 2025," by IMD.org, and "Ten physical realities the energy transition must tackle," by McKinsey Global Institute.