Rachel Delacour, Co-founder and CEO of Sweep explains why sustainability will be key to business as the US-Iran conflict continues to impact global energy supply.

Price spikes and volatility now define the business operating environment. Any company treating this as a temporary disruption is making a mistake. The businesses that will come out ahead are the ones that use sustainability data to survive a war economy.

 Navigating a volatile energy market

The most immediate impact of the US-Iran war has been on oil markets. Roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which means every escalation raises fears of supply disruption. Traders now actively price in geopolitical risk, making every military action a market lever. The escalation of fire exchanges over the weekend of July 11th led to a price spike the following Monday, and Brent Crude Futures advanced 5.3% to $80 per barrel while West Texas Intermediate Futures were last seen 5.3% higher at $75.18. This directly affects businesses that depend on fuels and energy to function, such as airlines and cement, but also industries with operations tied to shipping, such as food and agriculture. Earlier this month, PepsiCo shone a light on the growing business impact as it warned of higher commodity costs, with rising packaging and logistics fees adding pressure to margins as tensions push up energy prices. To face continuous, unpredictable changes, CFOs need to take steps to compensate for mounting energy bills, rising transport and packaging costs and disruptions across supply chains.

Operating with fragile supply chains

The Strait of Hormuz carries around a quarter of global seaborne oil trade. Many multinational companies source raw materials, chemicals, and industrial inputs from suppliers whose logistics depend on Middle Eastern shipping routes. From delayed shipments to higher freight costs to direct attack, the giant Maersk decided to divert ships to more secured routes, even if it meant additional costs. It said that the disruption will put a pricing burden on its customers ranging from small businesses to multinational conglomerates. Some companies will be able to absorb the rising costs. Many can’t. They are therefore forced to develop new supply chain management strategies, including diversifying suppliers, increasing inventory buffers and redesigning logistics routes. Japan’s largest oil refiner ENEOS Holdings was reported to seek alternative suppliers from other regions to reduce exposure to the conflict and potential disruptions. This is a clear example of a new procurement strategy because of geopolitical risk. The era of optimising solely for cost is over. Supply chain leaders need to identify critical dependencies, select regional suppliers and strengthen relationships with strategic partners for the greatest commercial impact.

Using existing data to inform your resilience strategy

Most companies already have the intelligence to address these issues. But they built it for the wrong reason. Over the past few years, regulation pushed companies to map their emissions, supplier by supplier, to meet the EU’s CSRD requirements, the UK’s new sustainability reporting standards, and similar frameworks landing across Australia and Asia. That mapping exercise started as a compliance task. In reality, the impact is much larger. It forces companies to audit exactly where their operations actually depend on the outside world. French telecommunications company Orange is a clear example. Orange reports that Scope 3 emissions account for more than 80% of its carbon footprint. The company has identified 40 priority suppliers, representing around 60% of emissions linked to purchasing activities, and is working with them on decarbonisation plans. Separately, Orange’s Group EBITDAaL rose by 3.8% on a comparable basis in 2025. The same pattern is true with industrial manufacturers mapping their supply chains for CSRD, who then used that exact same framework to spot which of their inputs ran through a handful of chokepoints, Hormuz among them, long before this conflict made front-page news. Compliance and business resilience are the same exercise, but most companies haven’t connected them yet.

What boards should do now

Companies must stop treating sustainability data and operational risk data as two different systems answering to two different teams. They’re one dataset. Put the same supplier and Scope 3 mapping your CSRD or UK SRS teams built in front of your risk committee this quarter, not next year’s audit cycle. Ask a specific question of it: which five suppliers or routes carry the most exposure if the Strait of Hormuz sees another 10-day closure. If the answer takes longer than a week to produce, that’s the finding. In a conflict with no fixed endpoint, the companies that treat their sustainability data as real-time operational intelligence, not a compliance filing, are the ones who will still be standing when this one finally, actually ends.