Competitiveness, resilience and scaling solutions: Reflections from Climate Week NYC
29 September 2026 - Climate Week NYC showed how climate action is increasingly being discussed through the lens of competitiveness, resilience and growth. James Cole and Ursula Woodburn reflect on the key themes that emerged from New York.
Last week heads of state met in New York for the 81st UN General Assembly and what was Secretary-General António Guterres’ final edition. He used it to call on every country to design a fossil fuel roadmap and set clear timelines.
The tone Guterres tried to set was that the climate agenda is now about implementation and cooperation. Though the US president's remarks highlighted continuing differences of opinion on climate action and the role of multilateral institutions in addressing global challenges.
Reflecting that focus on implementation, the UN Climate Summit launched a Global Grids Accelerator, starting in Africa and Southeast Asia, where more than 2,500 gigawatts of renewables await grid connection.
A critical minerals initiative intended to help producer countries retain more economic value and jobs was also launched.
At a side event, the UK’s former prime minister, Gordon Brown, and 100 former heads of state and government called for the UN Charter to be updated to cover climate change, women's rights, global south disparities and Artificial Intelligence.
During Climate Week NYC, a global convening moment that takes place alongside UNGA, cooperation was also a recognisable theme as businesses, investors, academics, policymakers and innovators gathered across the city.
The focus on corporate sustainability has notably changed, perhaps even for the better. There were fewer discussions centred on new commitments and positioning and more conversations grounded in resilience, competitiveness, supply chains, collaboration and implementation.
This reinforces the central argument of CISL's latest paper, Making Markets Fit for the Future, which argues that scaling sustainability solutions requires building the market infrastructure around them, demanding coordinated action from businesses, policymakers, investors and civil society.
Climate Week itself continues to grow, but what stood out most was the determination to focus on practical ways to accelerate progress.
Climate Week’s opening ceremony set the tone. From resilience and energy security to competitiveness and growth, speakers repeatedly framed climate action not simply as an environmental imperative, but as an economic one.
UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband argued that recent geopolitical shocks had exposed the risks of dependence on imported fossil fuels, reinforcing the case for investment in clean energy, electrification and grid infrastructure.
Similar themes were echoed by Iceland's Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, highlighting how climate, economic resilience and energy security are becoming increasingly intertwined.
Place-based action also featured strongly, echoing CISL's own work on collective leadership, from country-level platforms in Africa to Cambridge City Climate Leaders Group and Living Lab approach.
At Goals House, we joined Ezgi Barcenas of L'Oréal, Rebecca Boudreaux of Oberon Fuels and Joseph Ssentongo of the Global Innovation Fund to discuss how solutions scale, drawing on CISL's accelerator partnership with L'Oréal. Oberon's pivot to sustainable propellants for the beauty industry demonstrated how policy can create markets for more sustainable solutions, while corporate willingness to pay an initial green premium helps de-risk innovation and bring it to scale.
L'Oréal panel: James Cole joined Ezgi Barcenas of L'Oréal, Rebecca Boudreaux of Oberon Fuels and Joseph Ssentongo of the Global Innovation Fund
Equally important were policy discussions convened by CISL and its partners. At a CLG UK roundtable hosted with Cambridge spin out and deep-tech scale-up, Neutreeno and UK Government representatives, discussion focused on how businesses can stay competitive in an increasingly fragmented trade and global landscape and the need for stable policy frameworks that unlock long-term investment and reward the front-runners. Looking ahead, CISL’s CLG UK are participating in the COP31 Business Forum Electrification and Energy Transition Working Group, alongside organisations including WMBC and Electrify Now, helping to develop policy recommendations and an electrification action plan for the COP31 Presidency.
Roundtable hosted by CLG UK, with Cambridge spin out Neutreeno & UK Government representatives
Similar themes emerged during a CLG Europe and B Team business leaders' roundtable with European Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra. The strongest message was that Europe's transition is increasingly being understood as a competitiveness, resilience and strategic-independence agenda.
Climate policy, industrial strategy, energy security and economic growth are becoming increasingly intertwined, as geopolitical shocks reinforce the case for clean energy and reduced dependence on imported fossil fuels. Electrification was frequently cited as one of the clearest examples of where competitiveness, affordability and resilience can align.
European Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra at a roundtable hosted by Ursula Woodburn, CLG Europe.
© European Union 2026, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Businesses were not calling for weaker ambition, but for predictable policy frameworks that support first movers, unlock investment and accelerate implementation.
Across these discussions there was a consistent message: the challenge is increasingly not innovation, but scale. Whether the topic was electrification, industrial decarbonisation, nature restoration or circularity, participants focused on the market conditions, infrastructure and policy certainty needed to accelerate deployment.
Food systems also provided an important reminder that not every challenge is equally mature. While climate and energy transition pathways are increasingly well understood, food and agriculture remain deeply place-based, shaped by diet, culture and competing land-use pressures, with far less agreement on the route forward. Yet here too, the challenge is increasingly about creating the conditions for solutions to scale. CISL is actively developing a Food Systems Resilience Accelerator to address this issue.
One of the clearest messages from Climate Week was that climate policy is increasingly being discussed through the lens of competitiveness, resilience and economic security. Countries that can align climate ambition with industrial strategy, clean energy and investment will be best placed to attract capital, accelerate innovation and build the industries of the future.
The real test now is what happens after New York: whether governments can translate this growing consensus into the policy certainty, infrastructure investment and market frameworks needed to accelerate implementation at home, and how that ambition is reflected in international forums, including COP31 in November.
James Cole is Executive Director, Chief Innovation Officer, CISL
James has spent over 15 years working at the intersection of business, sustainability, innovation and entrepreneurship. As part of CISL’s senior leadership team he works across business policy and finance initiatives building the capacity of leaders, and leading institutions, to drive systemic change for global sustainability. In 2022 he launched The Canopy - CISL’s incubator, accelerator and workspace in central Cambridge, to activate an international community of impact-led startups, entrepreneurs, investors and innovators.
Prior to CISL he worked at Friends of the Earth developing innovative products, business partnerships and alliances to support environmental campaigns. He previously founded a digital media startup, held various senior commercial partnership development roles at Vodafone UK, and set up sustainable agriculture projects in the Peruvian Andes. James is a Non-Executive Director and Trustee of international partnership building NGO, The Partnering Initiative, and of regional sustainability charity, PECT - The Peterborough Environment City Trust. James holds a first degree in Rural Estate Management and a Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development from Forum for the Future & Middlesex University.
Ursula Woodburn is Director CISL Europe, CLG Europe
Ursula is Director of CISL’s Europe office and the Corporate Leaders Group Europe. Through her role she supports CISL’s work on systems change and leads the work across CISL’s Europe office, in particular driving corporate support for a climate neutral, nature positive and sustainable economy. She also leads CISL engagement with the We Mean Business Coalition, in particular around EU policy and its links to international policy and work with the Green Growth Partnership, which creates a common space for governments, businesses and parliamentarians to collaborate in support of a greener EU economy.
Ursula joined CISL from Weber Shandwick Brussels, where she led the sustainability practice. She previously worked in the European Parliament and for an environmental NGO and brings more than 18 years of Brussels public affairs and strategic communications experience across energy, climate and transport sectors.
Ursula has a Masters in Development and Governance from the University of Antwerp and studied Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent an official position of CISL, the University of Cambridge, or any of its individual business partners or clients.