During Climate Week NYC (Sept 22–28, 2025), McKinsey Sustainability brought together leaders across industries and sectors to discuss solutions across a wide range of topics from acceleration of climate technology scaling, climate investment opportunities in the Global South, to the future of nature markets, to accelerating decarbonization through automation and data. These conversations, along with sessions on innovation execution and adaptation, highlighted both the urgency of the transition and the opportunities to accelerate it.
McKinsey Speaks at Opening Ceremony
At Climate Week’s Opening Ceremony, Senior Partner Mark Patel reflected on how the transition is being reshaped by competing priorities from energy security and economic growth to the rapid rise of AI. While this makes the path forward more complex, Mark Patel emphasized that momentum is real: clean energy is scaling faster than ever, new innovation and execution models are delivering technologies to market at record speed, and AI is spurring advances in storage, nuclear, and efficiency. The path may not be linear or uniform, but it is moving and in the diversity of approaches and motivations, there is strength.
From Mission to Opportunity
A few themes stood out from the week: the challenge and imperative of achieving emission reductions that are affordable, reliable, and competitive; the importance of accelerating execution in some areas while driving innovation in others; and the need to integrate adaptation and resilience into core business strategies. The intersection of AI and climate, with AI as a potential tool to accelerate climate impact, also featured heavily in the climate week agenda. These themes underscore that sustainability is no longer just a mission, it is a strategic imperative and a catalyst for long-term value creation, demanding bold action at both speed and scale.
Resetting Innovation and Execution
Only a fraction of the technologies needed for the energy transition have reached scale, and many remain early in their adoption curves. During “Resetting Innovation & Execution for the Energy Transition” event, conversations with industry leaders highlighted forces reshaping the energy sector, declining costs of low-carbon technologies, growth in renewable capacity, and breakthroughs in electric mobility and data-center efficiency. Three insights stood out: regional pathways will diverge, incumbents must adapt fast, and a new industrial paradigm is emerging, defined by rapid problem-solving, a focused execution culture, and ecosystem-wide collaboration.
These insights build on findings from our report Innovation & Execution: A New Industrial Paradigm Emerges which explores how companies can adapt execution models to match the pace of today’s disruption. Anders Suneson, Partner at McKinsey, emphasized to attendees that: “we are moving into a new industrial paradigm, similar to lean 40 years ago. Once again it is not structural differences but principles of operating model that drives the outperformance. US and European incumbents need to adapt fast, extremely ambitious targets, innovation and execution along the full value chain, product-focused and stringent leadership as well as a culture of challenging everything is at the heart of it.”
Adaptation as Opportunity
During a session on 'Investing in Climate Resilience & Adaptation,' Alexis Trittipo, Partner at McKinsey, emphasized that climate adaptation is not only an urgent necessity but also a significant opportunity for innovation, investment, and long-term resilience for companies, countries, and communities. Panelists shared how companies are already deploying proven measures to protect workers, facilities, supply chains, and communities, and pointed to the need for stronger incentives and greater transparency to spur investment - such as incorporating climate risk into credit ratings. They also emphasized the importance of unlocking private capital as opportunities expand for resilience-related products and services.
These takeaways echo insights from our report Climate Resilience Technology: An Inflection Point for New Investment, which describes how adaptation innovations can attract scalable capital by quantifying “return on resilience” and rethinking structural incentives.
Leaders can act by assessing exposure to climate risk, implementing proven measures, embedding adaptation into decision-making, and continuously evaluating progress.
Progress Is Happening
Despite concerns of stalled momentum on sustainability, Mekala Krishnan, Partner at McKinsey shared her reflections on the current moment we are in. “The world is continuing to increase deployment on a whole range of low-emissions technologies—from the power system and scaling up low-emissions power to transforming how we drive. Progress is happening – not everywhere, to be sure, but across many technologies and in many parts of the world. We really see that reflected in all the conversations that we’ve had in the last few days; with companies from across the world continuing to find ways to make progress on sustainability and doing so with a view to where they can create long-term value and drive competitiveness.” These themes underscore that sustainability is no longer just a mission—it is a strategic imperative and a catalyst for long-term value creation, demanding bold action at both speed and scale.