From AI to Omelettes: Reflecting on LCAW 2026

Left: London Eye, Right: The Gherkin

 

Like many others, the Innovation Zero team spent much of last week out and about across London attending events taking place as part of London Climate Action Week.   

As always, LCAW brought together a wide range of thought-provoking discussions, providing an opportunity to hear from leaders across business, government and finance about how we close the gap between climate ambition and real-world delivery.  

From across the week, a few themes stood out.
 

Is AI the investment catalyst we’ve been waiting for?

Whether being discussed in terms of its transformative potential or the pressure it will place on our energy system and natural resources, AI is a topic that has become impossible to ignore.  

However, at AVEVA’s event on European electrification and AI infrastructure, Esther Finidori from Schneider Electric offered a refreshing perspective on the positive impact AI is having on unlocking capital.  

For almost two decades, Europe's electricity demand remained broadly flat, contributing to chronic underinvestment in grid infrastructure. AI and data centre growth has disrupted this pattern, contributing to increasing energy demand, which is projected to grow even more over the coming years. However, while this creating issues around demand management and system constraints, it is also driving capital towards the grid, flexibility and storage solutions required to help us modernise our energy systems.
 

Climate resilience is moving out of the margins, but so far failing to capture capital.

With events taking place against the backdrop of record-breaking June temperatures, leading to some events even being cancelled, the case for building resilience was front and centre of LCAW.  

Speaking at the opening plenary of the Climate Resilience Finance Summit, the UK Government’s Minister for Development, The Rt Hon. the Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Türkiye’s Minister of Finance and Treasury, H.E. Mehmet Şimşek, stressed how shortfalls in resilience finance pose a risk to both our societal and economic security, with much more needing to be done to turn resilience priorities into investable opportunities.  

In the following panel, Linda Freiner (Zurich Insurance) emphasised that unlocking resilience finance depends on being able to price forward-looking loss expectations. As she put it: “you can’t invest in what you can’t value.” Until we do governments, investors and businesses will continue to view resilience as a cost centre rather an investment and growth opportunity.

Climate Resilience Finance Summit 2026
 

The conversation has shifted decisively from ambition to delivery.

Perhaps the strongest theme running through the week was that the debate has moved beyond target-setting. Across almost every event, the focus was on implementation, deployment and execution. 

The technologies largely exist. Capital is available. The challenge now is aligning governments, businesses, investors and delivery partners to deploy solutions at the pace and scale required. 

Ultimately, progress won't be measured by the number of declarations signed, but by how quickly finance is mobilised and technologies are deployed. 

No one captured that shift more memorably than Negusu Aklilu, Chief Executive Officer of the COP32 Presidency Secretariat Office, who compared the transition from ambition to action to the difference between a chicken and a pig in making a ham omelette: 

"The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed." 

A light-hearted analogy perhaps, but an apt reminder that the next phase of the transition demands more than participation. It demands commitment.