Episode 32: Converting ambition into action: Lessons from London Climate Action Week 2025

The transcript highlights below have been edited for clarity. 

Mark Lee

Today we're going to delve into what happened the week of June 23rd at London Climate Action Week, 2025. It's been running for seven years, packed with representatives from the public and private sector as well as civil society. This year 45,000 people showed up in London for more than 700 events. By far the biggest London Climate action week ever. As an organization, ERM had about 50 people there and I have three of those folks who were on the ground in London last week with me today. In this episode, we're going to delve into some reflections on the event and we're going to explore some of the key themes that emerge particularly for business.

I want to introduce my colleagues who are with me and bring all of them into this conversation. Three folks like I said, farthest flung from me, and I'm sitting in California today at home, in the San Francisco Bay Area, is Linden Edgell, who is our Global Sustainability Director. She is back home already in Perth, Australia. Welcome Linden. Great to have you here.

Linden Edgell

Hi Mark, Andrew, Mathias.

Mark Lee

We have Andrew Probert, who is our Northern Europe Co Managing Partner at ERM based in the UK. And Mathias Lelievre who is our EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) Regional CEO. Welcome Andrew and Mathias.

Andrew Probert

Hey Mark, great to be here.

Mark Lee

Great to have all of you with us. I just want to give everybody a sense of what happened last week. I've been to COPS (Conference of the Parties), New York climate week, I’ve never been to the London event, but the scale of these can overwhelm. It's almost hard to figure out where the center of gravity is. You were all there, what did it feel like? Just give me a highlight, something that stood out, maybe the tone of the event. Linden, please set the stage.

Linden Edgell

Well, as you all might remember, a week to ten days ago, there was a lot going on in the world at the time we landed in London, but I found the whole week surprisingly upbeat. There was a really positive mood around London, not just because summer had arrived, but because of the energy everyone brought.

Mark Lee

Yes, it was a rather sensational weekend right before London and glad the event came off the way it did. Andrew, what was your sense of the feeling of the event?

Andrew Probert

From my perspective, Mark, I agree about what Linden said, there was a huge amount of optimism. I think if you look over the last few months, there's been a lot of headwinds in sustainability, a lot of companies publicly maybe scaling back on some of their ambitions or certainly what they're saying about it publicly. But what I was hearing on the ground was very different. I was hearing lots of companies who were staying the course, some were doubling down on their efforts. They might not have been making big public statements about it. But what I heard is that they were still fully invested into sustainably transforming their businesses and actually moving much more from the theoretical into the operational and beginning to deliver. Many of those are starting to realize the value that you can achieve by doing so. So yes, huge amount of optimism for me coming out of this week.

Mark Lee

This is all excellent news so far. Mathias, pressure is on you to fall in line with optimism, but you can say whatever you want. What was your week like?

Mathias Lelievre

Thanks, Mark. Look, it was a breath of fresh air and listening to all those great conversations, corporate leaders from around the world. I liked the format of so many events, they were pretty small scale, 20 to 50 people, massive networking and talking about the reality of this action that Andrew was referring to, the sustainability agenda is still very much moving. We had so many in-depth conversations, not high level, but really in-depth. What's going on for each company and everybody sharing. So that was really refreshing and very much needed at this time.

Mark Lee

Linden, there were 700 events and 45,000 people, that inevitably means everybody gets a slice of these macro sessions. In that mix, ERM ran about 10 events of our own. Can you give us a flavor of what elements seem to resonate with the participants at the sessions? What was the thread of conversations you found running through?

Linden Edgell

We had talked to our clients beforehand and said, what do you want? What would be of value to you during London Climate Action Week? And the message came back to us, which was: let's get specific. Let's really focus in on the topics that we're having real challenges with and we all need to collaborate with. Let's get into smaller rooms, so we can have conversations. Yes, we want to meet with some of our own tribe, but actually, could you help us meet other people? Either those up and down our value chain, our suppliers and our customers. And our peers in other value chains, in other sectors who may have things that we can share. So, we made a real attempt to make sure that we had different folks in the room who could benefit from that engagement.

We hosted 10 events, but we did it with partners because we also believe in collaboration. So, we worked with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development on a number of sessions, including on long duration energy storage, on the decarbonization of industrial heat, with the Natural Climate Solutions Alliance, we did one around nature and climate benefits in the climate markets. We also collaborated with the Green Finance Institute, where we have just written a paper about carbon dioxide removals in the UK. So again, we really believed that by collaboration, we can get different folks in the room, bringing those perspectives. But overall, it was about solutions. We might have had the first minute or two when we met each other over coffee going “well, this is a pretty happening world”, but pretty quickly, people got into solutions. I think that was the thread that I really picked up from the events we hosted.

Climate strategy in a shifting business environment

Mark Lee

Mathias, Linden referenced the events of the weekend prior to London Climate Action Week. If you're not tracking the calendar, that was the weekend that the US was bombing the nuclear facilities in Iran. And that's a reflection of the state of the world, where we have armed conflict, we have other types of geopolitical conflict, in the form of trade and tariff wars. It's a period of quite a bit of uncertainty in terms of where economies are going and even the shape of them. And do we agree how to run them, a testing of post war order if you will, and probably shifting of power in different directions. Those tensions go well beyond the political, we see the stresses and strains in society also. So, if this kind of volatility is the normal that we are all living in, then how did those circumstances shape the conversations that were happening in London last week?

Mathias Lelievre

I think everybody came with that understanding of a very challenging environment, very volatile as you describe it, Mark. I would add even the regulatory landscape is moving in continental Europe, not so long ago we had some massive changes in the rules. And so, this feeling of not knowing what the next day will come and the sustainability agenda being under attack, it was obviously as Linden said, the conversation starter. But we moved right away into, okay, what do we do about it? What is really not under our control and how do we make sure that we’re still progressing. I think what came out of that was a strong reinforcement of what we heard over the last few months, which is, it's not because we, meaning corporate leaders, talk less about it that it means we are de-prioritizing, somehow we are still getting things moving.

But it's less of a political conversation, if you will. It's more like an operational conversation, so really no-nonsense conversations. What are the things that really make sense because they are both compatible with the sustainability agenda and compatible with my business strategy. It means reprioritization if you will, of what are the two/three topics that are not changing, the North Star is set and it's all about making progress in the short term. And obviously climate is very high on that on that list.

Then it's about the conversation around managing the pace of the transition. Should I go faster? Slower? Adapt my pace of change of transformation to what I'm seeing or being just a bit in advance. At the end of the day, there's a few things that don’t change and the first one is that there's no silver bullet. The solutions are all different depending on the business context of each corporate. Everybody is advancing depending on where they come from, what is really important for them. Depending on if you are in the mining sector, the finance sector, the industrial sector, you have very different priorities, but everybody is still trying to make progress. For me what was really the highlight from last week in London was acknowledging the volatility and that very challenging environment. And on the other side, heads down get things moving very operational conversation.

Mark Lee

Somewhere in the early middle part of your response Mathias, you said something about finding solutions that work for sustainability and fit within the rest of the volatility. I think some of the conversations I've been drawn into lately have been about supply chains, which are affected by trade and tariffs and they are also affected by physical supply chain risk. I see companies going out and trying to find things they can work on that will help solve more than one of the big challenges that we're swimming around in.

Andrew, another building conversation feels like it's around financial quantification. That sounds like something business people should say, right? That if we're going to do this, we're going to put it in monetary terms. We're going to figure out how climate translates to the balance sheet. Then there is the challenge of actually doing that in a way that makes sense to stakeholders and investors. I know you have been doing some research with partners, including WBCSD (The World Business Council for Sustainable Development), on this and applying it with our clients. Can you explain what this looks like in practice and give us an example.

Andrew Probert

Happy to Mark, building on what Mathias was saying around the volatility at the moment and why this is critically important. I think we've seen historically, sustainability being seen more generally as a risk mitigant. I think physical climate risk is one of the most obvious ones, trying to understand the impact on our business and trying to quantify that. I think there was a brief period of time, maybe towards the tail end of last year, we started seeing maybe there is competitive advantages and how to understand where there is value creation opportunities. I think with the volatility that has come, probably since certain elections globally towards the tail end of last year, we're into a business resilience environment at the moment and to Mathias’ point, try to prioritize the areas they're going to protect value in the short term but create value in the long term.

In that regard, that prioritization, this is where the financial quantification becomes really important, because during the periods of volatility, allocation of resources of capital is really important. Making those decisions is really critical when you have scarce resources, human resources as well as financial resources. So, we've been working over the past year around how do we start to quantify the financial impacts and all of the relevant aspects of sustainability including physical climate risk, transition risk, but also looking at, to your point, supply chains, looking at human rights issues, understanding the overall impact on value of the business. How do we do that to prioritize the areas that are going to enhance in the short-term business resilience during this volatile period and then in the long term start to create and protect value.

We look at it quite holistically, I think if you look at certain levers you can understand maybe directly where there's the possibility of working out a financial impact. Let's take decarbonization as an example, here you can quite quickly move into, there's a direct energy saving that has a cost benefit to you. But actually for us, when you start looking a bit more holistically. You look at the dependencies, interdependencies and you realize that there's opportunities to protect revenue through that decarbonization if you sit within a supply chain. There's opportunities to create value through the same agenda, right? So if you're sitting within a supply chain or you're talking and engaging with us, with your own supply chain, there's opportunities for you to differentiate your products. We've done a lot of work around trying to ascertain which industries you can apply a green premium to certain products. We think that's probably fairly limited in reality, but what it does give you, and the business resilience, is the opportunity to protect existing revenue because companies themselves have got their own ambitions, their own targets, they're moving into action now as we heard all of last week. So if you can accelerate your energy transition, the opportunities to decarbonize, you've got the opportunity to protect revenue as well as to grow revenue. And then once you are able to quantify those impacts, if you can then start engaging with very critical parties of this, those allocators of finance, you've got the opportunity to actually be able to prove that there's value to be had within your business. The allocation of capital internally or externally gives them the opportunity to create value beyond what that business would be doing if it stayed as it was today.

Shifting from broad goals to measurable actions

Mark Lee

Andrew, the lack of green premium, but the opportunity to protect market share, does that mean it's just a defensive play? You hinted at maybe seizing new markets with this approach as well?

Andrew Probert

Absolutely, there is a protection piece, but obviously what we heard consistently across the whole week, and it varies slightly between B2B and B2C, but generally speaking people were still in this environment, and again, when you're in a slightly volatile period of time, when there's pressures on margins and resources, people want the best products, at the best price, that's delivered on time. If you can meet all of those three criteria, you're then into a period of differentiation. People still want, because of the target setting, to look at sustainability as one of those levers. So you have an opportunity in this environment, provided you still are able to produce the same product, maybe they're better quality. You've got the opportunity to start taking market share, where you can really differentiate yourself with a good sustainability story. And not just the story, but actually here's where the quantification comes into play. You've been able to quantify the impact of it, you can directly measure carbon footprint. You can directly point towards improvements in employee health and safety, etc. People want to buy into that, and if it really becomes a differentiator, they'll start shifting in towards you compared to your competitors.

But still in the current moment, price, quality, delivering, those are all the most critical things. Delivery is an interesting one, sorry to labor the point Mark, but this is where it comes into, when you're talking about supply chains but looking at the impact of your supply chain as a result of climate change. So, is the drought causing you an issue getting through the Panama Canal, because it becomes too expensive, or there are not enough slots, there's a drought, and you have to reroute, so that takes longer. What are you doing to start looking at your supply chain from that perspective? How can you increase business resilience and that's where it comes into this interdependencies. I think people increasingly now need to look one, two, three degrees beyond that direct impact, to really start to quantify the overall financial impact of climate change transition etc. on business.

Mark Lee

Mathias, Andrew kind of hinted at opportunities. The other way I'm thinking about opportunities is that as volatile as the current operating environment is, that's when things emerge, sometimes because everyone's off balanced and because things are so dynamic. Are you looking at this landscape right now? And bold enough to say that as messy as it is, this is a great time to be searching for opportunity? Can you see any, where would you point?

Mathias Lelievre

I'm going to make a bridge between what Andrew just shared and your question. Last week I was in a conversation and one of the business leader is operating in the B2B business and his clients are B2C client. So directly exposed to every consumers, every one of us. And he was saying that to participate now and answer his clients, he had to obviously show a trajectory of decarbonization that was SBTI (Science Based Target Initiative) compliant. He also shared that he had to increasingly be able to tell his clients what was the carbon content of the product he was selling and trace back the level of carbon byproduct if you will. He was making the comment that he was gaining market share, beating competition because he was able to be at the right price point, so no premium and better from a carbon content perspective. That's super interesting, because that's where you can quantify the value and then you can have a market share gain, all of the actions you took to decarbonize your business. And that's why, I am really very optimistic about the time we are experiencing and living because you know the reality of the actions are coming out. The reality of the ambitions, that are not just ambition and words on the poster, just people talking on stage, things are getting done with real climate impact. We're going to see the reality of that and we're going to see the winners and that's going to be really interesting.

Last week we had so many conversations around resilience in the sense of real value you could attribute to the fact that your energy supply chain was not only greener, but more predictable, and so you could model right away the economic benefits of that. We had conversations around how to adapt to the physical climate risk and the problem of some assets that cannot be insured anymore. And if you can insure them while you have a bit of a problem in terms of value of those assets in terms of debt and financing, so you know real, very concrete conversations around dollar value of some assets in some portfolio investments. We had some conversations around decarbonization implementation, energy efficiency program, 5-15 per cent less operating expenses, with some return on investment less than four years. Those were the conversations, and then obviously continuous massive amounts of money invested on onshore renewable and storage. A big theme of investment, so those conversations were very anchored, very real. They made me very optimistic because yes, it’s a challenging time but kind of a time of truth about who's serious in this game.

People-centred transition and global-local balance

Mark Lee

Linden, a different kind of impact and it's thinking about more of the communities and other stakeholders that are affected as companies work on their climate ambitions. One of the conversations we've been having inside ERM, and I know you participated in London was about localized approaches, thinking what happens when companies and investors really take the time to understand what's going on at local level. Which is of course where many climate, nature and other impacts tend to play out. Do you see that accelerating in the conversation? What's going on in that degree?

Linden Edgell

We've heard the term “Glocal”, global and local, on and off over the years, but it feels like one of those moments where it really has returned and why? Well, physical risks are playing out differently in different parts of the world. We have simultaneous droughts, floods etc. going on in different parts. We are also seeing real differences in the way governments are approaching policy regulation, tax incentives or disincentives, compliance, etc., and so you at that level it's very different . And then we have very different ways that societies are thinking about a future and indeed consumers and the choices that consumers are willing to make. So, if you're not tuned in, in every place that you're operating into those layers of things that are going on, then how can you possibly navigate this transition in a way that's effective to create the opportunity we've just heard of, to even think about the financial kind of quantification?

I think for me, just again talking to people from all over the world, we had quite a contingent from Asia in London for the first time. They were seeing opportunities everywhere. Their kind of view is that there are other parts of the world that are a bit distracted. That's the moment that we want to make sure we are there and we are providing for the market. We are in most companies supply chains somewhere in global entities, Asia is there and if we can at this moment differentiate ourselves as was described, then we will be there. So I think, yes there's that kind of global North star that Mathias talked about, but at an implementation level we very much need to be listening, engaging locally with stakeholders and building that into your transition planning.

Mark Lee

Linden, as soon as we get into the people and social aspect of climate planning, climate transition, we often end up talking about the just transition and how we ensure that the transition to net zero is inclusive, works for everybody, not just works for some. As much as that term has been part of the climate lexicon for a number of years, I don't know that everybody really knows what it means yet. Especially how business is supposed to get their hands around it, and I wonder if you can explain the term and how business is applying it in practice at this stage of our of our work on the climate journey.

Linden Edgell

I think you're right, Mark. In fact, that's why we are currently working on the business leaders guide to the Just transition. Which we will be launching at COP30 in Brazil later in the year. We're working on that with the WBCSD and co leading the Just transition working group. So we're trying to take that complexity and to think about how do we actually engage our business leaders on that topic. In fact, we spent three hours on Wednesday afternoon, with about 30 companies really working through this topic. To get 30 companies to commit to three hours on a hot Wednesday afternoon in London, you know that it's an important topic.

There's two things you really need to be thinking about, so as you're thinking about your transition plans and many companies are on this way. You need to be firstly thinking about what is going on for the people that you are dealing with. What are the climate change impacts that are affecting those people? That might be your employees who are facing hotter days at home with or without air conditioning, who are trying to get to and from work, perhaps in extreme weather conditions. Perhaps it’s your suppliers that are facing real obstacles trying to get through the Panama Canal or other things as well. Maybe it's the society, the communities in which you have your assets or that you're trying to sell into, who are facing increasing energy bills or other things and therefore their capacity to pay is different. So you need to understand, how is climate impacting those people today. So that's part 1.

Part 2 is how are the actions that you are taking as a company, and that might be mitigating actions or adaptation actions, how may they affect those same group of peoples? Again that might be your direct employers, it might be supply chain, it might be society working with or it might be other stakeholders. So, if you think about those two dimensions and you work through those different stakeholder groups in a very systematic way and in a very integrated way, you cannot be having those conversations in isolation. You need to have your HR team, procurement team, operations, people on the ground, the employees and the suppliers themselves. You need to be having those conversations and really factoring in what is going on otherwise you're going to have a blind spot.

In fact, one of the things that surprised me, a number of very large companies with significant physical assets, talked about the fact that their teams had done physical risk assessments at an asset level and completely forgotten about the people dimension. So they could tell you every which way that it may go underwater, or it might be hit by a hurricane or a cyclone. And when the social team said and have you thought about whether your employees could actually ever get to work, for all your supply chain to continue. At that moment there were these blank faces. Now what’s the point of a physical risk assessment when you haven't thought about some of those other components. So just transition is really at the base, thinking about that and there's a lot more to come. But I think people have to be in the middle, with climate and with nature.

Mark Lee

Mathias, you talked in some of your previous comments about implementation and almost figuring out the way to focus on the operational, even in this moment that we're living in. Sometimes when companies talk about what they can or can't do in terms of climate progress, they point to governments and civil society and say without that policy or without that to enable us, we can't move forward. Frankly right now that support is uncertain, we're seeing regulation move and sometimes conflicting directions, sometimes rolling back. We've recently done a survey which says people's confidence in civil society to drive the sustainable development transition is falling. How do companies strengthen their sustainability strategies and advance their goals without those external supports? Can they do anything about that, or is that just a risk they have to accept?

Mathias Lelievre

I think there's a family of actions that require some level of state support or public support. There are so many that do not require that support. So I would say first, we need companies to go for those items on the agenda that really intersect with the business strategy. If it's a cost reduction moment, why don't you go for those energy saving programs, why don't you find out if on site renewable production might actually be better than the current cost in some location. Let's try to be cognizant of the moment in which the broader business is leading. We prioritize from that perspective and as Andrew was mentioned, put dollar value on those items. Let's justify why the investment is the right one.

Two additional elements I'm thinking about. One, partnering and building the right alliances from a value perspective, not just alliance for alliance or partner or partner, but find somebody who can help you get things done, commit on the outcomes of those programs, find the people who are in the same situation as you when it comes to your supply chain, come together, find a solution. There are very concrete elements that they could reprioritize. Then the last piece, is really how do we reframe the narrative to account for volatility, value driven action and keep that North Star longer term action alive. How do you mix those three. Not so easy, but I think that's part of what's coming and what should be at the top of the agenda.

Mark Lee

I'm going to ask all of you to answer one more question. So often in the climate field, we're talking about the goals for 2030 or the goals for 2050. It's this very long term agenda. From London Climate Action Week, maybe the next biggest event on the agenda is the New York version of the same in September, and then Linden you already referenced COP 30 coming up in Brazil towards the end of the year. Keeping that long term goal in mind, that we want a low carbon just economy and transition to have happened by midcentury. Based on what you heard at London Climate Action Week, what are the things for companies to focus on in the next 6 or 12 months as we move through those next big events, to keep momentum moving or really to build more momentum such that those long-term goals stay in reach?

Andrew Probert

I remember an old colleague of mine, probably over 10 years ago said that data was the new oil and we were all kind of hoping it was true for several reasons. But for me, the focus of attention at the moment, there's a lot of pain points around collating data for sustainable reporting. The process it has to go through. There has been some pushbacks around some regulations around it. What it has done is identified this huge volume of data and insights that are now available to businesses that they've never had before. And for me, the next 6 to 12 months is around using all of these new data points to identify the risks, the opportunities, the interdependencies and the opportunity to not just build business resilience and the impact of climate change, the energy transition, etc. has on your business. But to be able to turn those into real value drivers. So how can companies look at what they now have available to them, and start being able to interpret all of these new data points, triangulate them with their business strategy and identify those opportunities to enhance their business resilience and create enterprise value. For me that's going to be the big focus in the short term.

Mark Lee

So, we've got to harness all of what's available to us right now. This would probably lead to a whole other conversation about maybe AI's power to help with some of that, but we'll leave it for another day. Linden, what's your look ahead?

Linden Edgell

It's around leadership and communication. There was a lot of discussion, I think Andrew referenced it at the at the top of the call, that there's a lot going on but people aren't necessarily talking about it. Now some are using the term green hushing to describe that, but I do think business leaders really need to make some decisions here, because if there isn't the conversation around, if there isn't those willing to stand up and talk about what's important across the sustainability agenda and why they are taking climate action, then there's a real risk that we are going to lose momentum. We've got all of the governments of the world are due to submit their NDC’s (Nationally determine contributions), effectively their country plans on climate. They're also supposed to be producing national adaptation plans this year, and NBSAPs (National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans), which are the sort of the equivalent in nature.

Now if business is not in there explaining to the government, why they want effective policy and why it's important and why that certainty for business is required, then in the absence of those voices talking about the progressive agenda, things will continue to recede. So I think business leaders need to find a way to really demonstrate the things that they need for the unlocks. We had Ana Toni, the CEO of COP30 with us on day one, and she very much talked about be specific. Tell us what the unlocks are from business side, then we can work with governments to actually address them at a level of detail. I think that's the message. What does that really look like so that we keep things moving forward and how are we going to keep articulating how business is willing to contribute, but we've got to be there in a leadership position.

Mark Lee

I think really interesting and something that's kind of bothering me these days, Linden. So I'm going to editorialize for one minute before I go to you, Mathias, and it's a sense that, the green hushing moment, if that's what we're in, is understandable on a bunch of levels as companies try to navigate shifting policy and avoid some of the backlash that is out there coming back on them. I think when we're in really complex societal transformations, visible leadership is required. It's not going to happen if everybody just goes off in a corner and quietly does their own thing, light under a bushel. We need to see some examples and we need to understand what's working across value chains. That will mean again, companies and other institutions figuring out what their narrative is in the climate transition and communicating it to others, both as a compelling business case and as some degree of inspiration an example, the whole gamut that I don't think we can all remain quiet for too long.

Mathias, your thoughts on what needs to be done in the next 6 to 12 months.

Mathias Lelievre

Really like the points that Andrew made, strengthening the foundation, particularly on data. My addition would be on what I was talking about around having a super strong focus, not to embrace everything, it’s too large and complex and super prioritization on places where you can show dollar value attached to the programs you want to run first, and that's the financial quantification. It's tough, it's never easy, some uncertainty. But how is that different from other things you do every day, it's not actually. So let's put some dollars around that and then find the right internal mechanism to convince because now you can take value and get things done, I think that’s the highest priority now.