Simon Jessop
Simon Jessop reports for Reuters on how the global financial system and major companies respond to climate change, nature loss and wider environmental, social and governance pressures. He leads a team that focuses on sustainable finance, connecting climate policy, development banks, investment flows and corporate behaviour to the costs and risks of the energy transition. His coverage sits at the intersection of environment and capital markets, tracking who pays for climate action and how quickly money moves.
Climate finance and development banks
Jessop’s core focus is climate finance: how much money is committed, where it flows, and whether it matches the scale of rising climate costs. He explains the architecture of climate funding in accessible terms, breaking down the roles of governments, multilateral development banks, private investors and philanthropies in paying for emissions cuts and climate adaptation.
In his coverage of global climate summits, he follows headline pledges through to the detail of new targets, timelines and instruments, and shows how they interact with debt burdens and fiscal constraints in poorer countries.
His reporting on multilateral development banks tracks record lending figures alongside the gaps that remain.
One recent piece details how the world’s major development banks pushed climate financing to a record total, while warning that targets for low- and middle-income countries are at risk after changes in one of the largest lenders’ goals. Another examines why these institutions struggle to attract sufficient private money into projects designed to curb emissions or cope with their impacts, highlighting obstacles around risk-sharing, deal structures and investor incentives. Across these stories, he treats climate finance as a test of credibility for international climate efforts rather than as a technical sidebar.
Jessop also follows broader reform debates around the global financial system. In coverage of high-level summits on development bank reform, he reports both on political wins - such as progress on long-promised climate finance targets and debt deals - and on the disappointment of countries pushing for deeper change. He draws out how proposed reforms, new lending packages and sovereign debt restructurings feed back into the ability of vulnerable states to invest in renewable energy and resilience.
His work in this area links diplomacy directly to balance sheets and project pipelines.
Sustainable investing and fund industry scrutiny
A second strand of Jessop’s work follows the sustainable investment industry and the pressure it faces from markets and regulators. He covers the rise, stalling and reshaping of sustainable funds, focusing on how product launches, closures and rebrands reflect investor sentiment and regulatory scrutiny.
In a recent piece, he reports that only a handful of new sustainable funds have been launched during the year, as weak performance, client withdrawals and tighter rules prompt asset managers to close products or rethink how they market sustainability. The story centres on how managers respond when environmental promises no longer align with returns or oversight.
Jessop tracks accountability mechanisms around climate claims in finance, such as investor campaigns and audit oversight.
In one report, he covers investors urging the UK’s audit watchdog to probe a major bank’s climate accounting, detailing concerns over how climate risks are reflected in financial statements. The focus is on the mechanics of scrutiny - who asks the questions, which disclosures matter, and how regulators could respond - rather than on broad rhetoric about greenwashing.
This gives his stories practical value for anyone following how environmental risks are embedded in mainstream financial regulation.
Beyond straight news, he contributes deeper dives into investor reactions to changing climate policy. An analysis piece on an overhaul of EU carbon rules, for example, explores how investors see potential opportunities even as pollution plans tighten, showing that policy shifts can have both compliance costs and upside for certain strategies. Across this sustainable investing beat, his reporting joins policy, fund flows and the evolving language of ESG into a single view of how capital responds to environmental constraints.
Corporate climate risk, nature loss and supply chains
Jessop’s coverage extends from financial institutions to corporates, with an emphasis on climate and nature-related risks to business models and supply chains. He reports on companies that face sustainability challenges in areas like fast fashion, highlighting how growth strategies intersect with concerns over environmental impact and labour practices. In a focus piece on a large online retailer’s prospective listing, he writes about why going public will not by itself resolve scrutiny of the company’s sustainability record, framing the listing as another moment when investors must weigh financial prospects against ESG concerns.
Nature loss is a recurring subject in his work.
One report relays warnings from a UN biodiversity official that companies and financial institutions are not moving fast enough to address nature-related risks, despite the threat they pose to profits, economic growth and global supply chains. Jessop sets out concrete examples of how firms underinvest in analysing biodiversity impacts and dependencies along their supply chains, and how upcoming global negotiations are meant to shift this behaviour. His focus keeps nature in the same frame as climate: a material risk that needs to be priced and managed by boards and investors.
He also covers climate impacts as economic events.
In a story on the expected hit from a “super” El Niño, he reports warnings that African economies could face losses of tens of billions of dollars, connecting weather phenomena to trade, agriculture and fiscal stability. Coverage of climate-themed weeks and industry gatherings shows how extreme heat and other visible impacts sharpen calls from business and finance leaders for faster action. These pieces tie physical climate risk to investment decisions and corporate planning rather than treating them as separate environmental news.
Energy transition deals and infrastructure
Jessop writes about the energy transition through the lens of large-scale deals and projects, paying close attention to their financial structure and revenue expectations.
In his coverage of an agreement between NatPower and Tesla, he reports on plans to build 25 gigawatt hours of battery storage in Italy and Britain as the first phase of a programme aiming to exceed 100 GWh of capacity. The story sets out projected construction costs of $4–$5 billion and potential revenues of more than $15 billion over 20 years, showing how storage infrastructure is financed and monetised.
He situates the deal within a broader European push to ramp up battery projects that can balance intermittent renewable power, linking technology choices to grid stability and investment returns.
Across this strand of his reporting, Jessop treats renewable energy and storage as financial assets embedded in complex agreements, not just engineering projects. His pieces outline the role of trading technology, long-term contracts and regulatory frameworks in shaping the economics of new infrastructure. By connecting energy technology, climate policy and financing models, he shows how the environment beat overlaps with corporate strategy and capital allocation.
Taken together, Jessop’s work presents the environment as a financial story: about who funds climate action, how institutions and companies manage nature and climate risk, and which projects are built to underpin the transition. He combines data on funding flows and policy commitments with on-the-record voices from development banks, UN officials, investors and corporate leaders, producing coverage that is both tightly sourced and grounded in the numbers.
His beat centres on sustainable finance, but his lens is broad enough to capture the links between climate, biodiversity, infrastructure and the global economy.
4 more environment journalists.
Abby Wallace
Abby Wallace covers where energy, climate and politics meet, with a focus on how net zero, power markets and extreme weather affect people and institutions. She is an energy and climate reporter at POLITICO, covering U.K. energy policy, climate targets and the transition from fossil fuels. Her subjects include government and opposition debates over net zero, decarbonization, support schemes, infrastructure, public spending and climate adaptation. She also reports on energy companies, household bills, labor standards, supply chains and corporate accountability. Her work connects technical policy choices to jobs, competitiveness, public services and voter sentiment. She uses polling, expert voices and political analysis to examine public attitudes and government response to extreme weather. Before POLITICO, she worked on the companies desk at the Financial Times and the business news desk at Insider. She has also freelanced on politics, business and climate.
Adam Fulton
Adam Fulton is a digital news producer focused on fast-moving global stories where environment, conflict and politics meet. He works on the Guardian’s Australian operation, using rolling live blogs to cover geopolitical crises, climate-linked disasters and wars with clear structure and context. His Middle East coverage, including the Gaza peace plan, tracks tension between political messaging and on-the-ground realities, tying leaders’ statements to military movements, diplomatic reactions and humanitarian reports. His disaster reporting, such as on Nepal–Tibet floods, links rising tolls and missing people to infrastructure damage, rescue strain and cascading environmental threats. His Ukraine war blogs treat resource scarcity, especially water and energy, as strategic factors and track how infrastructure damage shapes the conflict. A former entertainment and arts reporter and senior editor at major Australian newspapers, he applies careful pacing and narrative arcs to collaborative, time-stamped live coverage.
Alec Luhn
Alec Luhn is an environment reporter whose work follows climate change at its extremes, frontiers and human consequences, often reporting directly from places where warming, instability and displacement intersect. He covers climate, conflict and migration, showing how abstract climate trends turn into risks for communities, infrastructure, health and preparedness. He reports for New Scientist on climate breakdown, extreme events, El Niño, limits of models, melting glaciers, warming seas and adaptation to heat, mixing scientific explanation with lived experience. A defining strand of his work is reporting from remote icy and mountainous regions on Arctic sea ice loss, permafrost, polar bears, pollution and fragile ecosystems. He has a long record on conflict and security, including the Skripal poisoning case. His reporting appears in New Scientist and major international outlets, with work across print, digital, audio and television and recognition from climate and journalism awards.
Amy Lyall
Amy Lyall is a regular contributor to The Connexion, and her work stands out for turning French rules, services and the built environment into clear, usable advice for everyday readers. She covers housing, energy use, resident obligations and the practical steps behind things like getting air-conditioning approved for flats. Her beat also includes national and local schemes, insurance and legal conditions for lending a car, mobile network coverage, mosquito-borne diseases, water filters, fruit harvests and emergency drones with defibrillators. She writes news, practical guides and magazine-style features, using plain language to explain technical topics and official systems. She also writes explainers on French words and phrases and occasional culture pieces on unusual sites such as Maison Picassiette.