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The Climate Innovation Forum’s high-level programme convenes climate leaders and innovators to accelerate action and close gaps in implementation, investment and innovation between COPs during London Climate Action Week.
Guildhall’s Great Hall will host the Forum’s full-day plenary bringing together visionary climate leaders from across business, government, finance, the UN, and civil society. They will share key announcements, innovative solutions and pioneering collaborations aligned with the Global Climate Action Agenda.
The opening segment will serve as a diplomatic launch for London Climate Action Week 2026, reinforcing its mission to harness the unique power of London for global climate action at this mid-point between COPs. Subsequent sessions will explore critical themes including energy, finance, resilience and AI, spotlighting the solutions and partnerships turning commitments into real-world progress.
Senior UK Government Representative to discuss harnessing the power of the UK for Global Climate Action.
Speakers will explore how international commitments are being translated into tangible action, the opportunities for global collaboration, and the steps needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Understanding behavioral change–from individual to multilateral levels–requires understanding how the human brain processes, interprets, and acts on information. Thoughtful consideration of what information to share, by whom, and when is critical to ensuring predictable behavioral outcomes–from community support of wind turbine installations to the multi-state signing of fossil fuel nonproliferation. Despite malicious and intentional disinformation campaigns against climate science and science more broadly, the global public want, deserve, and can handle the truth. This must come from trusted messengers, and it must be clear, timely, hopeful, and relevant to the intended audience. Applying these communication science principles at scale is the key to widespread perception and ultimately, behavioral change–and it is happening.
The Business Breakthrough Barometer is the annual pulse check on the global net-zero transition, developed by the WBCSD, Breakthrough Agenda, and Climate High-Level Champions. This session will unveil the findings of the 2026 Barometer, bringing together insights from leading businesses worldwide on the pace of progress, the actions already underway, and the critical priorities needed now to accelerate the transition and unlock investment at scale.
Concessional capital in blended finance funds enables private capital to flow into markets and sectors it would not otherwise reach. This session will feature new findings on how blended finance can be optimised to scale private capital mobilisation. The speakers will address the role of concessionality in mobilising commercial capital, and the instruments that can be used to achieve this.
Despite recent political and economic headwinds, the transition to a low-carbon, nature-positive, and more resilient economy continues to unlock new sources of growth and competitive advantage. This session will focus on how progressive organisations are responding to the geopolitical landscape and taking action on climate and nature to strengthen resilience, reduce costs, and open new revenue streams. Speakers will discuss:
With recent energy shocks exposing the vulnerabilities of fossil-fuel-dependent systems, scaling affordable, reliable, and low-carbon power is now central to energy security, economic resilience, and climate progress. This session will explore how firm clean power, storage, modernised transmission, smarter grids, demand-side flexibility, and digitalised electricity networks are being deployed at scale to create energy systems that are resilient, investment-ready, and aligned with climate goals. In this solution-oriented discussion, speakers will explore:
As the global energy transition accelerates, energy efficiency is emerging as the critical first step – the fastest, most cost‑effective way to reduce emissions, manage rising electricity demand, and strengthen energy resilience. In this fireside chat, we explore how efficiency is driving electrification and renewable integration, enabling smarter energy use before adding new supply, and supporting more decentralised, dynamic, and responsive systems. Grounded in real‑world innovation and collaboration the session will highlight how an efficiency‑first approach is already delivering measurable impact in an increasingly complex and energy‑intensive world.
This session will explore how transition finance can be scaled to deliver real-world impact, focusing on the critical role of sustainable products and services in translating capital into investable solutions. It will examine current global transition finance flows, key barriers and the commercial opportunity to drive long-term value and resilience.
Mobilising the trillions needed to deliver global sustainability goals requires innovative approaches to finance. This session will explore how public and private capital can be deployed strategically to unlock investment, with speakers sharing real-world examples that are delivering impact including:
As Washington, DC rolls back climate commitments, U.S. cities, states, and businesses are fighting to hold the line. In this session Gina McCarthy highlights that America’s subnational actors remain an impactful, committed force driving ambitious climate action on the global stage.
Despite growing focus on resilience, a huge gap in investment and implementation leaves billions of people, businesses, and financial systems at risk as climate impacts intensify. Moving from risk to resilience requires coordinated action, strategic investment and a deeper recognition of the role that nature and biodiversity play in stabilising economies and protecting communities. This session will explore how resilience can be strengthened and adaptation strategies can be embedded at speed and scale, with speakers discussing:
In this fireside chat, Hemant Ahlawat, Senior Partner and Global Co-lead of McKinsey Sustainability will explore the evolving drivers shaping climate action across companies, investors, and countries. Drawing on McKinsey’s latest research, the discussion will examine how competitiveness, capital allocation, energy security, resilience and technology are influencing decision-making and creating new pathways for decarbonization across sectors and regions.
As geopolitical volatility, climate risk, and rising demand for critical minerals reshape global trade, building supply chains that are both resilient and sustainable has become a strategic imperative. This session will explore how businesses are rethinking supply chains through circularity, resource efficiency, and risk diversification to navigate disruption while supporting the net-zero transition.
Speakers will discuss:
Digital technologies are rapidly reshaping the climate and energy landscape, enabling smarter systems, faster innovation, and more efficient use of resources across sectors. At the same time, deploying these tools comes with challenges, from energy use in data centres to infrastructure demands. This session will explore how organisations can harness AI, data, and digital infrastructure to deliver real climate impact while managing environmental trade-offs. Speakers will discuss:
With the Global Climate Action Agenda demanding real-world delivery at speed and scale, this address from the COP31 High Level Champion celebrates the global partnerships and initiatives turning bold pledges into tangible impact and calls on global climate leaders to accelerate implementation.
As climate and biodiversity agendas converge, the Nature Stage at the Climate Innovation Forum demonstrates nature’s emergence as a central climate adaptation and mitigation solution.
This stage aims to set the nature scene for the week, as it convenes global policymakers, corporates, investors, insurers and innovators.
The conversations will focus on transforming nature from a climate risk into a strategic asset.
The stage will case study practical solutions that are securing supply chains and unlocking scalable nature investment through market mechanisms.
Positioned at the intersection of climate, nature, finance and technology, the stage focuses on implementation, delivering measurable, investable and insurable pathways to a nature-positive economy.
We welcome globally recognised elders who will speak as mother earth to open the nature stage. They will bring the perspective of the land and ocean, to draw context to the discussions for the day.
Nature is emerging as a powerful pathway to deliver resilience at scale—protecting coastlines from sea-level rise, securing water and food systems, and stabilising critical biomes that underpin livelihoods. When designed and implemented effectively, these approaches generate substantial economic value whilst delivering competitive, risk-adjusted returns for investors. Drawing on insights from experienced practitioners, speakers will discuss:
As climate risks intensify across global food systems, the question is no longer whether to act but how to act with purpose. This fireside chat explores how Nestlé is embedding regenerative agriculture at the core of its business strategy, not as a sustainability add-on but as a deliberate approach to building long-term resilience across supply chains, communities, and ecosystems.
Following the panel on transforming climate risks into economic opportunities, this conversation goes deeper into what it looks like in practice. From soil health to farmer livelihoods, from risk mitigation to value creation, the discussion will unpack how regenerative approaches can deliver shared value for people, planet, and business, and what it takes to do this credibly and at scale.
Nature underpins over half of global GDP yet remains systematically undervalued – for every US$1 spent protecting nature, US$30 goes towards destroying it. Currently, too many financial institutions lack clarity on where scalable, investable opportunities for nature actually sit. However, Global Canopy’s The Little Book of Nature Business shows that nature-related opportunities are already emerging across real economy value chains and the World Economic Forum estimates that a shift toward a nature-positive economy could unlock over US$10tn in business opportunities and 395 million jobs. That shift requires a step-change in how capital is identified, structured and deployed across real economy value chains. Drawing on insights from The Little Book of Nature Business, speakers will explore:
Keynote: Introducing the Little Book of Nature Business
Discussion: Scaling the Nature Opportunity
Climate change is intensifying droughts, floods and water scarcity across the globe, turning water security into a critical strategic risk for businesses and societies alike. This fireside chat explores how working with nature—through ecosystem restoration, forest preservation, natural infrastructure and smarter land management—can help secure reliable water supplies.
Through case studies, this session explores how organisations can identify, assess, and manage nature-related risks using emerging frameworks and data tools. It examines how approaches such as the TNFD, combined with satellite imagery, geospatial data, and other nature-risk analytics, can help organisations map exposure across assets, supply chains, and geographies. Speakers will discuss:
This fireside chat explores how marine and coastal nature-based solutions are being structured to deliver climate and biodiversity benefits, whilst supporting resilient coastal economies. It will examine the role of public–private partnerships, policy support, and financial innovation in de-risking early-stage investments and enabling scale.
Nature-based carbon and biodiversity credits are increasingly recognised as essential instruments for mobilising private capital toward nature-positive outcomes. Yet the pace and scale of investment needed will only be unlocked when buyers, financiers and project developers share confidence in market integrity. This session examines how high-quality credit standards, transparent methodologies and long-term stewardship can create the conditions for durable, investment-grade nature finance — and what it will take to move from niche transactions to systemic scale.
Speakers will discuss
As companies face increasing pressure on supply chains—from climate variability to evolving regulatory expectations—nature is becoming a core business consideration, not just a sustainability issue.
This session will explore how leading companies are integrating nature and biodiversity into sourcing strategies, procurement decisions, and risk management frameworks. Moving beyond commitments, the discussion will focus on what it takes to translate investment into tangible outcomes that support supply continuity, cost stability, and long-term business performance.
Drawing on the experience of the Rimba Collective—bringing together companies including PepsiCo, Nestlé, Unilever and Procter & Gamble—the panel will examine how collective, landscape-level approaches can connect environmental outcomes with business value, and what is required to scale these models in practice.
A vision shared by the UK Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
As climate, biodiversity, and nature-related risks increasingly shape economic stability, effective collaboration between the finance sector and governments is critical to scaling investment in nature and building resilient supply chains and economies. This session explores the role of governments in creating the policy, regulatory, and financial conditions needed to unlock private investment in nature-based solutions. Speakers will discuss:
The Sustainable Finance Stage, hosted in partnership with UNEP FI, is a focused programme dedicated to accelerating the transition to a resilient, low-carbon, nature-positive and inclusive economy.
It brings together leaders from banking, investment, policy and development finance to drive practical, investment-led solutions.
Anchored in the shift from innovation to implementation, the programme focuses on how sustainable finance is moving beyond commitments to unlock real, investable opportunities.
In a context of evolving market conditions, rising capital costs and increased scrutiny on transition credibility, it explores how capital can be mobilised at scale to deliver bankable projects, manage risk and generate sustainable returns.
Key questions:
Financing the energy transition is becoming more complex amid higher interest rates, rising cost of capital, and growing pressure on energy security across the UK, Europe and globally. At the same time, the need to rapidly scale investment into clean, resilient energy systems has never been greater.
This session will explore how financial institutions and policymakers can mobilise capital at speed and scale, unlocking investment into renewables, grids, and enabling infrastructure while delivering risk-adjusted returns. With a focus on bankability and implementation, it will highlight the role of blended finance, transition-linked instruments, and de-risking mechanisms in accelerating capital deployment in today’s market conditions.
Key questions:
Emerging markets sit at the centre of the global transition representing both the greatest financing need and the largest opportunity to deliver sustainable growth. From energy and infrastructure to climate resilience and inclusive development, achieving sustainability objectives at scale will depend on mobilising significantly more private capital into these markets.
This session will explore how financial institutions, development finance actors and policymakers can unlock investment at scale by addressing structural risks, improving bankability and strengthening local financial ecosystems. With a focus on implementation and returns, it will highlight innovative financing models including blended finance, risk-sharing mechanisms and local currency solutions that can accelerate progress towards climate and sustainable development goals while delivering investable opportunities.
Key questions:
Country platforms have served as powerful mechanisms to mobilize public and private capital in support of the transition. At COP30, over a dozen countries announced their intention to launch country platforms. This session will feature the launch of new resources to support these countries and a discussion on the accomplishments of Brazil’s successful country platform as a concrete example.
Key questions:
Nearly half of global emissions come from how we make and use materials, products and food. Delivering climate action at scale requires a fundamental shift to circular, zero-waste systems.
Located at the heart of Guildhall’s reimagined Courtyard, the Circularity and Zero Waste Stage will convene policymakers, practitioners, investors and innovators to showcase circular models and sustainable waste management practices already moving from principle to implementation.
The stage arrives at a pivotal moment: building towards COP31, where the Presidency and High-Level Champion have committed to spotlight the role of zero waste and circularity, building on the recognition given to it in the first Global Stocktake.
The programme is shaped by three programme partners:
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which leads the global circular economy agenda, will lead a session on critical minerals and the materials powering the energy and digital transitions, examining how circular approaches strengthen supply-chain resilience and unlock new economic opportunity.
WRAP, whose work drives transformation across global food, textiles and packaging systems, will host sessions on accelerating the wider ’stuff’ transition, circularity as a driver of growth and tackling food waste at scale.
The Zero Waste Foundation, established in 2023 under the honorary presidency of Emine Erdoğan, will host a session anchoring the COP31 Presidency’s zero-waste and methane priorities, covering reuse at scale, the methane abatement opportunity in waste systems, and the policy and finance shifts needed to turn zero-waste pledges into delivery.
Together, the programme explores the policy and finance levers turning circular models into competitive advantage, and what implementation actually looks like at scale.
45% of emissions come from how we produce and consume. Circular economy approaches, based on the three principles of eliminating waste and pollution, circulating products and materials at their highest value, and regenerating nature, have a key role to play in tackling these emissions.
Critical minerals are central to delivering climate goals, underpinning the energy transition and a range of other sectors undergoing rapid transformation. With demand set to rise sharply, circular economy approaches offer a pathway to meet this growth while strengthening resilience, reducing environmental impact, unlocking innovation, and enabling economic diversification.
The opportunity is not theoretical: leading companies are already putting circular economy approaches into practice across products and value chains. Hear from market leaders how these strategies are being applied in real-world settings, and what it takes to make them work.
As momentum builds, how can the circular economy opportunity for critical minerals—and beyond—be translated into tangible progress over the next 12 months? This closing discussion will reflect on key priorities for leaders across business and policy, and the role global moments such as COP31 can play in accelerating climate action at scale.
Hosted by WRAP and Tesco
45% of all emissions come not directly from energy use but from stuff: the food and products we consume every day. This session looks at the arguments for supporting a transition to more circular resource use, from environmental impact to commercial and economic drivers to business resilience.
The discussion will explore why it is important for business to embrace a move towards a more circular economy, what leadership in circularity looks like and how businesses can support their customers to make the shift too.
Hosted by WRAP and Tesco
One third of all food produced is lost or wasted each year, generating nearly 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This session makes the case that reducing food waste is one of the most immediate and high-impact opportunities available to us throughout the supply chain and explores why, despite some progress, the issue needs to remain on the policy agenda.
We will discuss the policy and commercial enablers required and show examples of how tackling food waste can deliver across the board: cost savings and stronger margins for businesses, greater supply chain resilience, more money in consumers’ pockets, lower emissions, and measurable gains for nature.
Hosted by WRAP, The Global FoodBanking Network, World Resources Institute, and Ambition Loop
This session will address the urgency of accelerating towards zero waste and strengthening food security on the road to COP31.
Hosted by WRAP, Global FoodBanking Network, World Resources Institute, and Ambition Loop
From farm to fork, solutions to cut food waste already exist — the challenge now is scaling them. We will show how collaboration on tools, technologies and business models across the food system is unlocking value, accelerating impact, and driving change at pace. We will show how the organisations leading the way are making them work in practice, and what it takes to replicate and accelerate that progress across the food system.
The concrete actions needed from government, business, and society to deliver zero waste.
The Zero Waste Foundation was established under the auspices of Emine Erdogan to globalise Turkiye’s Zero Waste Project, a national model now recognised at UN level. As COP31 host country, Turkiye brings both the policy platform and the proof of concept.
Reuse systems are no longer niche. From packaging redesign to refill infrastructure, the mechanisms exist. What is still missing is the investment logic, the city-level enabling environment, and the corporate will to move beyond pilots. This panel interrogates the gap between reuse ambition and reuse deployment, with a focus on what finance and policy need to do next.
Organic waste decomposing in landfills is one of the largest and most under addressed sources of methane emissions globally. Zero waste systems can cut waste-sector methane by up to 95%. With the Global Methane Pledge targeting a 30% reduction by 2030, this session asks why waste-sector solutions are still receiving less than 2% of climate finance, and what it will take to change that trajectory before COP31.
AI Solutions Showcase
Hosted by: Climate Action Coalition
Overarching theme:
AI & the Energy Transition: Opportunity, Impact and Accountability
The rise of AI across society is one of the greatest challenges to the energy transition, with electricity demand for data centres and computing expected to increase significantly over the next decade and beyond. Yet AI also presents one of the greatest opportunities to reinvent and reimagine how to better produce energy and to reduce energy demand, through optimisation, digitisation of processes, greater efficiencies and machine learning. The inaugural AI Solutions Showcase is the first event at LCAW to bring to the stage some of those solutions that can make a significant difference in helping to accelerate the energy transition at the same time as reducing emissions and reducing costs. The showcase is the culmination of the work of the Climate Action Coalition’s AI Solutions Taskforce and will highlight the report’s recommendations in addition to providing a unique platform to highlighting how AI solutions can provide the answers to the challenges we will face for the future. The showcase will be divided into two key areas of focus- recognising that solutions can be found both across the AI energy ecosystem as well as delivering positive change in our wider energy systems.
Who will attend?
120 cross-sector leaders from business, finance, policy, and civil society, united by a shared ambition to accelerate the energy transition through AI-enabled innovation and collaboration.
For more information, contact us at info@climateaction.org
This opening session sets the scene for the event, framing the central question of whether artificial intelligence can deliver a net positive impact on the energy transition – and the conditions required for that outcome to be realised at scale.
This session will explore how AI is moving beyond experimentation into measurable, system-wide impact across energy systems and infrastructure, with speakers presenting real-world solutions and discussing:
