London Climate Action Week (LCAW) 2026 took place during a record-breaking heatwave that disrupted infrastructure and strained public health systems. The environmental conditions reinforced the urgency of translating climate ambition into action for the 75,000+ participants gathered at 1,000+ events.  

In ERM's pre-LCAW blog, we described the structural shift we see unfolding. Sustainability has moved from a parallel, aspiration-led agenda to one that is embedded in business strategy and value creation. Across sectors, there is clear recognition that sustainability is most impactful when it shapes decisions on capital allocation, operations, and the management of energy, water, and supply chains. 

At the same time, companies are confronting an execution challenge. As sustainability is more deeply integrated, the gap between aims and actual implementation becomes more visible and more consequential. Closing that gap is central to maintaining competitiveness and delivering business value, demanding greater focus on operational decisions, practical solutions, and measurable outcomes. 

As businesses work to bridge the execution gap, decarbonization efforts are becoming more operational, focusing on Scope 3 and value chain engagement plus increased urgency around scaling clean energy. Simultaneously, energy efficiency is re-emerging as a critical lever to manage demand, reduce cost, and accelerate delivery. In parallel, AI and high-quality data are moving to the core of decision-making, enabling greater visibility and control across increasingly complex systems. 

Finance and adaptation are emerging as closely linked priorities, the importance of which was brought into sharper focus by the extreme weather conditions experienced during LCAW. Companies are embedding climate risk and resilience into financial and operational decision-making, shifting investment toward actions that protect assets, maintain continuity, and strengthen long-term performance.  

ERM was at the center of LCAW discussions, hosting more than 15 events with partners including NatCap, the International Fertilizer Association, GSK, and SAP. Building on our pre-event blog, here we revisit four themes that shaped the 2026 event. 

Theme 1: Accelerating clean energy and electrification as pathways to secure, affordable energy systems 

LCAW reinforced the message that clean energy is not only a climate imperative, but also central to energy security, organizational resilience, and cost management. For fossil-fuel-importing regions such as Europe, recent supply shocks and geopolitical volatility have accelerated the move toward more diversified, domestically-anchored energy systems.  

Electrification is a key lever in this transition. During LCAW, more than 100 companies called on governments to make it an economic priority.  

At the same time, electrical infrastructure has become a defining constraint, with modernization and expansion of grids, transmission operators, and storage emerging as essential enablers (see our blog Power play: Why TSOs must think beyond grid expansion for a net-zero power system).  

Mobilizing finance will be critical to scaling clean energy solutions. Events led by financial institutions such as the London Stock Exchange and the Green Finance Institute explored how to channel capital to infrastructure, emerging technologies, and transition pathways, underscoring the need to bridge the gap between available capital and investable opportunities. 

ERM engagements at LCAW illustrated how clean energy transition plays out in practice. Companies are juggling multiple trade-offs as they balance decarbonization, affordability, and reliability. Short-term tensions between energy security and cost are real and vexing. Yet the longer-term trajectory shows that scaling renewable power supports lower-cost and more secure energy systems. 

One of ERM’s LCAW roundtables on energy, food security, and geopolitics underscored how tightly linked energy systems and economic resilience are. Volatility in natural gas markets, for example, directly affects fertilizer production and therefore supply chains and affordability.  

For more on how ERM helps clients manage clean energy and electrification electrification challenges, visit our Energy Transition page. 

Theme 2: Decarbonization and energy efficiency remain central, with Scope 3 rising in importance 

Decarbonization and energy efficiency offer immediate sources of operational and strategic value, with Scope 3 emissions and value chain engagement growing in importance. 

Industrial heat illustrates both the scale of the opportunity to decarbonize supply chains and its complexity. As a major source of emissions across supply chains, industrial heat has proven difficult to address due to  fragmented supplier bases and limited access to scalable low-carbon solutions. However, rising energy costs and better technologies are strengthening the business case, positioning clean heat as both a decarbonization and cost lever. 

Initiatives such as the ERM, Secaro, and AstraZeneca Clean Heat Program demonstrate how companies can work with suppliers to accelerate industrial heat reductions through coordinated procurement and engagement.  

ERM’s sessions also profiled other approaches being successfully operationalized and additional barriers. In transport, falling battery costs are accelerating the shift to low-carbon road mobility, reducing dependence on imported oil. At the same time, aviation and shipping will require sustained policy support to decarbonize, highlighting the uneven pace of transition across sectors.  

In industrial operations and buildings, organizations face rising costs and reliability risks. Yet energy efficiency frequently delivers “win-win-win" outcomes that lower costs, improve resilience, and reduce emissions, often thanks to the growing adoption of technologies such as heat pumps and e-boilers.  

For more insights, see our blog Scope 3 – Moving from strategy to action to deliver value and visit our Supply Chain solutions page. 

Theme 3: AI as potential transition accelerator and growing emissions source

AI is generating excitement as a clean energy transition catalyst and causing anxiety given its energy and resource demands.  

Across LCAW, the AI’s potential to enable the transition was prominent. The launch of the “Net Benefit AI: Scaling Solutions, Opening Opportunities” report by the Climate Action Coalition highlighted how AI can support the energy transition through applications in system optimization, infrastructure planning, and operational efficiency. 

At the same time, AI governance is moving up the agenda. The AI Environmental Transparency Initiative, announced by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, calls on AI companies to disclose the environmental impacts of their systems and commit to renewable energy use by 2030.  

As ERM’s recent report Turning bottlenecks into advantage: Future-proofing the AI infrastructure value chain highlights, AI expansion will be shaped not only by compute capacity but by physical constraints including the availability of water, energy, and critical minerals. Addressing these pressures while maintaining community trust and social license to operate will be central to scaling AI responsibly. For more, read ERM’s blog Community Permission: The New Critical Path for U.S. Data Center Delivery | ERM

ERM conversations at LCAW highlighted how fundamentally AI’s value depends on data quality and credibility. Organizations are distinguishing themselves by establishing strong data governance, integration, and standardization before scaling AI.  

AI is also being used to assess the integrity of sustainability disclosures. As tools become more sophisticated, they can analyze large volumes of information to identify inconsistencies or unsupported claims, raising the bar for transparency, and increasing the risks associated with greenwashing. For more information, visit ERM’s Marketing & Communications Agency page. 

Theme 4: Nature-related risks spur shift to execution 

Nature is increasingly recognized as a critical resource underpinning long-term value creation and a source of risk. While the strategic importance of nature is clear, many companies struggle to integrate it into business decisions and quantify its value in financial terms, leaving a chasm between ambition and execution. 

ERM sessions at LCAW showed how these dynamics play out when climate, nature, and financial pressures converge. At our event with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the tension between rising demand for critical minerals and nature risks in high-biodiversity areas came into focus. Progress will depend on making nature visible in financial terms. Leading companies are beginning to quantify impacts such as permitting delays, community disruption, and operational risk, embedding nature into project design and aligning value chain incentives to reward stronger environmental performance. Read more in our recent report Nature-smart mining: Opportunities to reduce the nature impact of mining and metals.  

Attendees at another ERM event on nature and climate resilience agreed that while many organizations recognize the importance of nature, they struggle to translate this into investment decisions and measurable outcomes. The challenge is not awareness; it is execution. This gap is becoming a material business risk, driving supply chain disruption, regulatory exposure, and lost value, while unrecognized dependencies on natural systems can cause assets to underperform. 

For more on the evolving nature market and the opportunities for companies to apply solutions, listen to our recent podcast “Beyond the Bees and Birds.”   

Conclusion 

The structural shift underway from an ambition-led sustainability agenda to one embedded in how businesses create value and compete shaped LCAW 2026. Attendees sought evidence and means to accelerate execution instead of assessing aspirations. Leading organizations have been embedding sustainability into decisions on capital, operations, value chains, and nature. The next phase will be defined by organizations and leaders that demonstrate the ability to use sustainability knowledge to improve performance, boost resilience, and increase competitive advantage.