2025 – Sustainable Business and Finance

Sustainable Business and Finance

Billionaire Elon Musk plans to use Starlink technology to create AI data centres in space.
Writing on X (formerly Twitter) Musk said Starship could deliver 100GW/year to high Earth orbit within 4 to 5 years “if we can solve the other parts of the equation”.

“100TW/year is possible from a lunar base producing solar-powered AI satellites locally and accelerating them to escape velocity with a mass driver.”

It all sounds a bit “sci-fi”, right from the playbook of space visionary Gerard K. O’Neill, author of The High Frontier, perhaps? But Musk and SpaceX plan to connect data centres in orbit by scaling up next-generation Starlink V3 satellites connected through high-speed laser links to form a decentralised computing network.

What’s driving this is the need to power the increasing computational demands of the disruptive artificial intelligence technologies fast transforming business and economies.

AI data centres suck up a great deal of electrical power. This is one reason why nuclear power is back in vogue to reduce the need for more fossil-fuelled electricity grids. But nuclear comes with a very large price tag.

The beauty of putting AI data centres in orbit is that they are powered by continuous sunlight and cooled by radiating their heat into deep space. Their protagonists predict space-based data centres would use less energy, zero fresh water, and far lower emissions than their terrestrial counterparts.

Others have joined the race. Starcloud co-founders Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden, and Adi Oltean built a working prototype in just 15 months, making history by launching a satellite with an NVIDIA H100 into orbit — the first time a GPU that powerful has ever operated in space.

It all sounds so simple and perhaps it is.

CarbonBrief reports data centres are very geographically concentrated, both in terms of their global distribution and within leading countries. Today, nearly half of their electricity consumption takes place in the US, 25% in China and 15% in Europe, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

It’s still a first-world problem.

Data centres are now responsible for just over 1% of global electricity demand and 0.5% of CO2 emissions, according to IEA data. The world is entering what the IEA describes as a “new age of electricity”, in which the electrification of transport, buildings and industry drives a surge in demand for power.

It’s only in recent decades that solar-powered grids have become run of the mill along with electric and hydrogen powered vehicles — so this is very possible.

Problem is, this is all at a margin.

We’re now in a world where the very idea of national sustainability is an issue. Indigenous people rioting at COP30 in Brazil are at the sharp end.

As we report today, significant New Zealand businesses are wedded to doing their part to address climate challenge.

But the Government is now under fire for taking its foot off the pedal when it comes to prosecuting the need to make deeper inroads towards “net zero” carbon emissions.

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts has the unenviable challenge of fronting the Government’s position against charges of back-pedalling by his Labour opponent Deborah Russell and incisive academic analysis on that score.

The emissions trading scheme is not a busted flush but it is increasingly looking more logical to have a simple carbon tax.

Sustainability is a relatively simple concept in the business world. Perhaps we should be thinking more broadly than how it relates to climate emissions.

In a thought-provoking article, Alex Worker raises the question of the sustainability of farmers’ incomes in a Kiwi food producing industry increasingly subject to foreign takeover. If our farmers become price-takers and miss out on substantial profits accruing to international owners where does that leave the economy longer-term?

Fonterra remains a New Zealand-owned co-operative. But other firms are increasingly passing to 100% outside control or into mixed ownership.

There are other vulnerabilities.

The management of New Zealand’s freshwater resource is critical and that has yet to play out so all interests are taken into account.

Energy security is another area where confidence has eroded. Escalating electricity prices have sparked the closure of a number of manufacturing plants in Nelson and the Central North Island. Natural gas supplies are running down.

The Government has yet to comprehensively address this.

Overshadowing these domestic concerns are the challenges to ESG (environment, social, governance) norms in a world where national security has been challenged by the invasion of Ukraine.

European stock exchanges have kicked the traditional definition of ESG investing to the curb, rebranding it as “energy, security and geostrategy”.

That’s the upshot of the determined political push under way to boost European defence companies and reduce Nato’s reliance on US armaments after the Trump administration savaged the region for not spending enough on its own security.

What’s at stake is not small bikkies.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen believes the EU could mobilise up to ?800 billion ($1.55 trillion) to strengthen its defence industry. There are also opportunities for Kiwi companies like Dawn Aerospace, with its dual base in the Netherlands and New Zealand.

Some key climate influencers are now recalcitrants.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates now says that while climate change will cause serious harm, it will not lead to “humanity’s demise”, and the global strategy should shift its focus to other areas like disease control.

Formerly a leading proponent for carbon emissions reductions, Gates now argues climate change is not going to wipe out humanity and past efforts that strive for achieving zero carbon emissions have made little real progress.

In the United States, BlackRock founder and CEO Larry Fink has also shifted emphasis.

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with US$12.5 trillion assets under management as of 2025.

In his latest letter, Fink’s prior focuses on sustainability, climate change, and diversity, equity and inclusion were notably absent as he pushed for more energy production and the expansion of nuclear power.

Fink’s new themes are all about energy pragmatism and stakeholder capitalism.

Tell that to the COP30 protesters.

Fran O’Sullivan
Executive Editor

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