During London Climate Action Week, which took place from June 20 to 28 this year, McKinsey convened stakeholders from across business, finance, and the broader climate ecosystem to discuss what it will take to move from climate ambition to climate action. As part of the official Climate Innovation Forum program, McKinsey Senior Partner Hemant Ahlawat hosted a fireside chat on “the new whys” for climate action, and Partner Mekala Krishnan joined a panel on climate adaptation. McKinsey also hosted a series of events at its London office, including an executive roundtable, dinner, panels, and presentations for more than 150 leaders.
Throughout the week, conversations focused on how climate commitments can translate into scalable and commercially viable solutions. The following five themes stood out.
Climate technology is becoming more selective and context specific
In a session titled “The next phase of climate tech: Pockets of competitiveness,” McKinsey Senior Partner Mark Patel and Associate Partner Shruti Badri led a discussion on how climate technology is entering a new phase. Rather than asking whether an entire technology category will succeed, the focus is shifting to identifying the specific conditions under which individual technologies can compete and scale.
Success now depends on the intersection of use case, technology maturity, and local context. A solution that is highly competitive in one geography may struggle in another because of differences in infrastructure, resource endowment, regulation, workforce capabilities, or market demand.
This reflects a broader evolution in what customers value. Climate technologies are being adopted not simply because they reduce emissions but also because they address pressing operational challenges: improving affordability, reliability, energy security, resilience, or speed to deployment. Decarbonization is the outcome, rather than the primary reason for adoption. Concurrently, organizations are moving away from broad sector views toward a more granular assessment of “competitive pockets”—the specific combinations of technology, geography, and customer need where the economics are already compelling.
“There has been a dramatic shift in the external environment—one that many would describe as structural,” observed Badri. “The framing around climate has evolved, but what hasn’t changed is the need to accelerate adaptation and mitigation.”
Adaptation is becoming a business strategy, not just a resilience exercise
A panel on “Advancing adaptation: From cooling to coastal protection,” hosted by Mekala Krishnan, focused on how adaptation is becoming a business priority. Climate risk is no longer a distant planning scenario. For many companies, it is already showing up in operations, supply chains, insurance costs, and investment decisions.
“Adaptation is not just a future topic,” Krishnan emphasized. “About four billion people—and 40 percent of the world’s land area—are already exposed to climate hazards today.”
That is changing the way organizations think about resilience. What was once treated largely as an environmental or emergency response issue is slowly but surely becoming part of business continuity, capital allocation, and long-term performance. Climate data can inform where assets are built, insurers can reward resilience before disasters occur, and investors can better understand physical risk across portfolios.
Panelists noted that when organizations undertake adaptation activities, they may not always describe them in those terms. Instead, they often speak of operational resilience, business continuity planning, or supply chain planning.
Of course, the journey is just beginning. A key challenge is demonstrating return on investment. Companies need more examples showing that resilience investments not only reduce risk but also create measurable commercial value.
Nature finance is growing, but markets still need to mature
In a panel on “Financing nature: Current reality and emerging opportunities to unlock nature conservation,” McKinsey Partner Marcus Frank brought together sustainability leaders from corporate-buying group Symbiosis Coalition, not-for-profit organization Emergent, and nature investment platform Silvania.
Nature-based solutions are moving from promise to practical market building. The scale of the need is one reason: McKinsey research points to an annual nature financing gap of about $700 billion, even as more than half of global GDP depends substantially on biodiversity.
That shift was a central point in the discussion. “Nature-based solutions are critical to solving the climate agenda,” said Frank. “After years of scrutiny, the solutions coming through today are stronger and more robust, with a strong outlook for growth over the next 12 months.”
The bigger challenge now is creating enough high-quality supply. Credible projects take time to develop, and investors need confidence that demand and market rules will remain stable enough to justify long-term commitments.
Voluntary markets could act as testing grounds for future compliance mechanisms. As frameworks such as Article 6 evolve, the methodologies and standards developed today may help lay the foundation for much larger regulated markets.
The market is also broadening beyond carbon. Biodiversity, water security, and community livelihoods are not cobenefits: They are central to the value case, especially when more than 1.2 billion jobs rely on natural ecosystem services.
Place matters more than ever
Another McKinsey session, “Strategies for successful place-based climate action,” focused on how local socioeconomic factors should inform the design and implementation of climate strategy. That idea is central to McKinsey’s Climate Transition Impact Framework (C-TIF), developed with input from more than 70 organizations and built around five dimensions: energy access, health, investment, jobs, and competitiveness.
The discussion surfaced examples ranging from innovation ecosystems in the United Kingdom to community-centered mining operations and grid investments across emerging economies. Despite their differences, they illustrated a common lesson: Achieving ambitious climate goals relies on strategies that work for people and the economy at the local level. Done right, place-based approaches can improve project economics by strengthening supply chains, building skills, and boosting long-term resilience.
“The climate transition will encompass a complex and extensive reorganization of systems, value chains, and markets,” said Rishika Daryanani, a McKinsey consultant who coauthored the C-TIF report and was one of the panelists. “But at the end of the day, those big, structural shifts are felt locally—in the communities where we live and work. To get climate action right, we have to put people first.”
Water is emerging as a strategic business issue
For the panel on “Water in focus: Turning supply chain risk into value at scale,” McKinsey Partner Thomas Kansy was joined by industry leaders to discuss how water risk is becoming a board-level business issue.
McKinsey research puts the business exposure in perspective: Water supports about 60 percent of global GDP, yet global demand could exceed supply by 40 percent by 2030. The investment required to strengthen water security is also significant, with projected capital deployment exceeding $13 trillion globally over the next decade.
Water has long been treated as an environmental issue. It is now becoming a strategic business issue because the risks are operational, financial, and systemic. For sectors ranging from food and beverage to finance, water availability increasingly influences operational continuity, supply chain resilience, and long-term growth.
Addressing water risk requires systems thinking. Companies cannot solve water challenges one site at a time because water systems operate at the basin level, where suppliers, communities, regulators, and ecosystems are all connected. Leading organizations are therefore moving beyond individual site-level interventions to collaborative, basin-wide initiatives that involve competitors, governments, nongovernmental organizations, and local communities.
Forests, too, should be understood as part of water infrastructure. Conservation and restoration can help maintain rainfall patterns, improve water security, and reduce future operating costs. The implication is that protecting ecosystems is becoming part of mainstream risk management.
Looking ahead
The conversations in London pointed to a clear trend: Climate action is becoming more practical, more commercial, and more grounded in the realities that businesses and communities are already facing, from resilience and energy security to affordability, competitiveness, and growth.
McKinsey research quantifies the challenge. Today, only about 10 percent of the deployment of low-emissions technology needed by 2050 has been achieved, mostly in less complex use cases. Closing that gap will require moving beyond pilots and proving what can work at scale.
The opportunity remains substantial. McKinsey estimates that 11 high-potential green value pools could generate $9 trillion to $12 trillion in annual revenues by 2030. Capturing that value will depend on turning proven ideas into practical action, backed by credible markets, resilient systems, and solutions that work for businesses, communities, and the people and places they serve.