27 June 2025 - CISL's Chief Innovation Officer, James Cole, reports back from a busy week in the capital.
This week a record number of leaders from business, finance, government, academia, and civil society came together for London Climate Action Week with keynote speeches from UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, and an appearance from Prince William in support of his Earthshot Prize.
The University of Cambridge was well represented via Cambridge Zero and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). We hosted events and convened academics, business leaders, banks and innovators, and led conversations around the science and practical action in the real economy.
At the start of the week, CISL’s Corporate Leaders Group convened over 100 leaders at a Business Leaders’ Summit in Westminster, where the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, delivered a strong call to action:
“This is the economic opportunity of the 21st century... we’ve got a responsibility to be hopeful and to be determined and to recognise that we’ve come a long way. Yes, there are challenges and, yes, we’ve got a long way still to go, but we can absolutely do it.”
At a time when the global consensus on climate action feels increasingly fragile, and ahead of an important global climate summit (UNFCCC COP30) in Brazil in November, this felt like an important moment for London – and Europe – to signal its seriousness about delivering climate action alongside economic competitiveness.
However, we were reminded that climate is a global challenge with no single global solution. “If we want the global transition to happen, we should break the silos between the North and the South. Because climate transition has no flag” - that was the powerful message from Hakima Elhaité, Chair of the Private Sector Pan African Alliance, on a panel James moderated at the start of the week on climate tech innovation, and how we can deliver impact at scale.
Across many events involving innovators, academics, investors and businesses, the message was clear – we have a lot of the technology we need to meet net zero by 2050, but we need more focus on implementation and storytelling to bring people along. Easier said than done in the context of economic and geopolitical turmoil. However, the range of solutions presented should give even the most contrary reason for hope – from making electric motors vastly more efficient, to retrofitting homes, to cost parity technologies to provide low carbon heat to major industries – to low carbon biobased materials for clothes and packaging.
So what’s stopping us? A big focus was on how we tell the story of climate change and inspire urgent action, balancing the ‘truth’ as we see it with a motivating message for citizens and businesses alike about a positive future we can build together. AI predictably was a hot topic of conversation – with many applications for climate action from early warning systems for wildfires, to smarter planning for mobility systems and infrastructure planning - alongside concerns at the water and energy demands of data centres.
Another focus was how to unlock the finance – including via public private partnerships, to fund the transition.
CISL’s Centre for Sustainable Finance brought together leaders from across the finance sector in a series of events to explore how financial systems need to shift to enable private capital to support the transition. Topics included how to accelerate blended finance for Emerging Markets and Developing Economies; the roles and expectations of asset managers in advancing initiatives for promoting transition finance and how banks, insurers, and the government can support healthy, efficient and resilient homes.
But overarching all the conversations was the need for radical collaboration. Mobilising academic research, private sector capital and the market shaping reach of the private sector to transform our economies and markets to deliver a just, inclusive, and scalable climate transition. From developing ‘circular economy’ for critical raw materials that will power the low carbon electric revolution, to working in specific systems and sectors to scale new technologies and build partnership to enable them.
A new partnership between the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and global cosmetics brand L’Oreal came with a $100m investment commitment from the company to scale sustainability innovations within its business and beyond – from energy to water to packaging. Applications are open now for global innovators to apply to the programme and run pilots with the company.
For a climate conference, nature rose high up the agenda. The UK’s biodiversity net gain law is seen as world-leading, whilst countries like Japan are seeing serious commitments from business to measure and damage their impact on nature. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity commitments to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 do seem to be filtering into national efforts, investor mandates and corporate strategy.
Cambridge has played a key role here in engaging the finance sector, informing corporate strategy and capacity, fostering ‘nature positive’ innovation, and contributing to the scientific evidence base, not least through the work of the Conservation Research Institute and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative.
All in all, we left the week feeling positive – not that the world is on the right path, but that there are smart people with credible solutions, and that the climate transition has moved from global commitments into a period of action; that business and finance are willing to act – when governments are clear and supportive – but we have the means, if we have the will.
