Climate Week NYC, Part 2: Salvaging Sustainability in a Turbulent World

Part 1 of our Conference Chatter series on the Hub Live from Climate Week NYC 2025 looked at some of the candid ideas presented about sustainability vs. economic realities, equitable solutions, and the importance of bold leadership.

In Part 2, we'll look at the vital role of local solutions, partnerships, and innovation in building a sustainable future.

Solutions to Climate Change Must Rise from the Bottom

Climate change is a global challenge, but that doesn't mean that every solution should have a global application. Needs are local, not universal, and top-down solutions created by governments or global technology giants won't provide what regions, cities, and communities need to address their unique requirements.

President and CEO of the European Climate Foundation Laurence Tubiana emphasized that while the Paris Agreement might give the impression that the fight against climate change is globally homogeneous, involving local communities in a dialogue while looking for solutions is critical.

“It is about strengthening civil society, but even more, asking the citizens their views, opening the discussion about the future of the kind of development they want to see,” said Tubiana. “They want healthy conditions, they want a good relationship with nature, they want clean air. We have to build the coalition from the bottom.”

Tubiana said that while the Paris Agreement consultations included government, local authorities, civil society, and the financial sector, leadership will need to come from the communities on the ground that know the challenges.

“I don't think the leadership will come from [the government],” she said.

President and CEO of The Solutions Project Gloria Walton said that the communities most impacted by climate change know its costs and its consequences on their infrastructure and social cohesion, and that this should give them courage to be the agents of positive change. Like several other speakers, she also celebrated the economic opportunities sustainable solutions could provide for under-resourced communities.

“We need to move away from the silos and have more collaborative approaches,” said Walton. “What that means for government is thinking about what kind of muscle can we exercise that's really going to amplify what the role of government should be for its people. For our corporate leaders, let's seize the greatest economic opportunity of the century and scale equitable climate solutions that are going to power our new economies. For philanthropy, it's time to level up and double down on the communities that we know are winning and leading solutions that benefit all of us.”

Phoenix, Ariz., Mayor Kate Gallego said that many cities know their priorities and what they need to focus on.

“We are a hot desert city,” she said. “We want to make sure there's more capital going towards water management.”

Gallego said that once local governments know what their needs are and how to address them, they should embrace their authority to obtain what they need without waiting for the federal government to catch up, noting that her city has raised its own funding from local initiatives.

“It's a real point of pride for me that so many cities are exceeding their national governments in terms of achieving climate action goals,” said Gallego. “Many cities now are going directly to their voters for local funding.”

United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-Habitat Anacláudia Rossbach noted that our idea of what constitutes a community isn't limited to cities and towns. More than 1 billion people around the world live in informal settlements outside normal urban planning and without resources to improve infrastructure and quality of life. Understanding the needs of these communities requires the hard work of outreach, engagement, and dialogue.

“Many cities were able to map and recognize these global communities, embed them into the urban plans, and work on transformation by working with the communities,” noted Rossbach.

BCG Managing Director and Senior Partner Patrick Herhold said that dialogue with local communities can also provide significant financial benefit by acting as testing grounds for sustainable technology, since they can be great places to demonstrate proof of concept, improve the business case, and begin pilot projects for technology solutions that are not yet ready to scale.

“On the capabilities side, let's face it, a lot of the great energy technologies are not readily available at scale,” said Herhold. “But building locally with communities, schools, universities, etc., and saying, 'let's first start a pilot, let's get acceptance, let's scale this, let's get funding on board, let's work with local ecosystems,' that certainly has gained relevance even for the big players.”

Collaboration Based on Mutual Benefit

Whether environmental advocates like it or not, the fight against climate change will take place within the parameters defined by the capitalist framework that drives global economic growth, and it is crucial that our sustainability partnerships reflect that reality.

First Deputy Governor at Deutsche Bundesbank Sabine Mauderer emphasized the importance of recognizing that corporations are not NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), and that their first priority will always be profit for shareholders. This means the incentive to make them change their behavior as contributors to climate change is either to show them the cost of climate change to their businesses or to demonstrate the potential profit to be made from committing to net-zero.

“What I think in this regard is extremely important is that we talk to those that caused the emissions,” said Mauderer. “That is the conversation. It is important that negotiators negotiate about volumes and money that's needed, definitely, but at the same time, if you do not take care of those who caused the emissions and are in a dialogue, if there is a disconnect between those causing them and those that are receiving the climate risk, then it's difficult.”

With global priorities appearing to shift away from sustainability towards economic competitiveness, Roland Berger Senior Partner Diego Ibarra said that the situation is more complex than it might appear. Berger said that the green initiatives that are being dropped are those that have higher risk profiles, technology that is unproven at scale, or infrastructure gaps. On the other hand, many other initiatives are accelerating, especially when they make commercial sense and have strong business cases, partnerships, and well-understood risks.

Ibarra said that companies that are successful with their green initiatives are getting three things right.

• A strong business case that makes economic sense.

“Environmental sustainability is not enough,” he said. “The solutions need to be economically sustainable. That means at a minimum a break-even, and specifically you need to achieve the weighted average cost of capital for that business in that market. Short of that, those initiatives will be short-lived.”

• Governance and leadership support from across the organization.

While C-suite support was once considered the most important element of success for an initiative, now it also requires buy-in from support functions and operations.

“You need to involve early the people that need to make the change on the ground,” said Ibarra. “The business case really helps clarify that and makes sure that everybody is aligned to the value proposition early on.”

• Partnerships are the new leadership.

Ibarra sees partnerships as perhaps the most important element for the success of corporate sustainability initiatives.

“Those companies have acknowledged that no matter the size or market share, no matter how vertically integrated they are, they won't be able to drive change or de-risk executions by themselves [unless] they are willing to engage early in strategic partnerships to share their risk and rewards.”

Climate Change Necessity Is Mother of Invention

Climate change is an evolving challenge. It seems as though new impacts and potential disasters arise each day, and our ability to find solutions to each of them becomes overwhelmed.

Technology needs to keep pace with this challenge, but it requires support and a fertile innovation environment to succeed. At the same time, climate change could be a catalyst for some of the world's most innovative technology solutions.

McKinsey and Company Senior Partner Mark Patel noted that while many of the stories in the news cycle might make it appear as though climate change is moving down the list of global priorities, not everything is bad news. Instead, Patel said we are moving from a monolithic global approach to a more localized one in which regions and companies are innovating on their own to solve their unique problems, citing the growth of electric vehicles in China compared to their slowing progress in the EU as one example. He also noted that the green technology industry is at the forefront of creating a new industrial model in which the time from conception to go-to-market has been drastically reduced, meaning disruptors in green technology can potentially move much more quickly than they ever have before to create a real impact with their solutions.

Trane Technologies President Donny Simmons discussed his company's approach to removing carbon emissions from the atmosphere as part of the “Gigaton Challenge” to reduce 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its customers' carbon footprint by 2030. Trane began that journey in 2020 and has already achieved 237 million metric tons of carbon reduction.

He also discussed the way in which sustainable innovation based on customer solutions and operational efficiency can be a significant contributor to a successful business strategy.

“If you look over the last five years of our product portfolio,” said Simmons, “the efficiency of the product that we serve with our customers is 70% more efficient. That's tremendous. So, the ROI is there for us as a company. Our shareholder return over the last five years is 286%.”

Executive Chairman and Founder of Fortescue Andrew Forrest discussed the concept of “real zero,” which he described as an approach that differs from net zero by encouraging companies to simply stop burning fossil fuels instead of relying on carbon credit offsets.

“I just want to warn companies across the world: relying on the word 'net' and buying credits, when you know that they're mostly fake, when you know that they make very little difference, that's going to be an issue,” he said.

Forrest said that sustainable solutions like solar, wind, and batteries are becoming cheaper, and that while his own mining company is a prominent carbon emitter today, its goal is to stop burning fossil fuels entirely by 2030. He says that the best economic solution is not to be distracted by carbon credits, but simply to stop burning fossil fuels.

Innovation doesn't simply emerge from the minds of genius leaders and entrepreneurs. Instead, it is usually born from understanding customer needs and getting to know their priorities and requirements through discussions and research. Innovation for the sake of innovation provides no benefit for anyone, but innovating to help customers achieve their sustainability goals will provide benefits for both business and customers alike.

Chief Sustainability Officer of the Estée Lauder Companies Nancy Mahon said that voice of the customer (VOC) insights are critical to help ensure that products designed for sustainability not only help the planet but also meet customer needs.

“Eighty percent of the environmental footprint of a product is determined in its creation,” said Mahon. Estée Lauder uses its VOC work to ask customers if they want products to have sustainable attributes, which they then build into the products right at the beginning of the design process.

Diego Ibarra said that the key to embracing sustainability as a growth driver and not simply a cost center is to engage early with customers and get to know what they need and how to deliver it in a sustainable way.

“Start having that conversation … to discover how your customers value sustainability,” said Ibarra. “I don't mean picking up the phone and saying, 'I have a great product, how much more are you willing to pay for it?' It's more about, 'Help me understand what are the sustainability attributes you value and that your customers' customers will value.' That will help you understand how to provide those targeted offers.”

Final Thoughts

A big part of the fight against global climate change will take place within the confines of global capitalism. As global economic growth becomes more volatile and new technology solutions rewrite our expectations of what our financial future might look like, it will become more important to harness the creativity, energy, and insights of the world's corporate technology innovators.

Many of the speakers at Climate Week NYC 2025 discussed the necessity of financial viability to ensure the success of sustainable innovation. Despite what naysayers might think, there is significant profit to be made from the green economy, and while it might require new economic models and ways of thinking to uncover how to achieve that, doing so will provide benefits for our communities, our businesses, and our planet.