Highlights from New York’s Climate Week

New York’s frenetic pace ratcheted up last week with one of the United States’ biggest ever security operations, as it hosted world leaders for the United Nations General Assembly annual meeting. Global tensions, particularly in the Middle East, explain the tightened security measures in place to protect thousands of attendees, among them Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and our own Keir Starmer.

Noise levels peaked as NYPD sirens signalled the passing of world leaders’ motorcades, while drivers in grid-locked traffic honked horns and overhead helicopters thudded across the Hudson River delivering yet more diplomats to the UN’s headquarters.

Into this heightened atmosphere delegates were also arriving for Climate Week NYC on the opposite side of Manhattan’s Midtown area. Some 2,000 political figures, business leaders, climate advisers and senior decision-makers had the pick of more than 900 events taking place in person and online, all focused on top-level strategic thinking to accelerate climate action around the world.

The Climate Week conference, which opened at The Glasshouse on 12th Avenue with a speech from former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Adern, was themed around the urgency of the climate crisis. The Climate Group, the event organiser, works in partnership with the UN General Assembly – hence the reason for holding it last week – and it chose to highlight three key messages: “It is time to course correct. It is time to speed up. It is time to finish the race”.

I believe not only that things can be better but that they must be. That politicians, policymakers, the private sector, financial institutions will respond to the challenge

Jacinda Adern, speaking at Climate Week NCY

Positivity was evident from the outset, as Adern explicitly called on delegates to resist those who view optimism as naive or dangerous: “I believe not only that things can be better but that they must be. That politicians, policymakers, the private sector, financial institutions will respond to the challenge in front of us, through the sheer magnitude of what will happen if they don’t.”

Nevertheless, a common theme of many of the subsequent discussions was the sheer scale of the challenges and demands posed by the necessary green transition of economies across the globe. An underlying frustration was evident among many speakers as they warned of examples in business and in government that showed the alarming distance between intentions to tackle the climate crisis and tangible results.

If the point about taking climate change seriously needed underlining, then delegates only had to turn on the news to hear about the impending damage to be wreaked by hurricane Helene as it hit the Florida coast. If anything the devastation has been worse than expected, affecting five states in the south-east, killing more than 60 people and causing billions of dollars of damage.

Topics at Climate Week covered everything from corporate transparency and the role of leaders to climate finance and the impact of AI, with all sectors represented including the built environment.

Building hosted its own roundtable debate with a full range of construction professionals, held in association with the Climate Group and supported by Gleeds, on the dual pressures to decarbonise the built environment that are coming from investor demand and regulatory change. A full account of their views on overcoming the barriers to greener buildings and infrastructure will be published soon.

In the meantime, here is a quick guide to some of the topics and themes that caught our eye during Climate Week NYC:

Importance of verifiable global standards

In order to get to net zero, all organisations in society need to make a transition to reach some challenging goals. That transition will not happen on its own, and requires a governance structure, which was discussed in a Climate Week session focused on international standards.

A key point of discussion was the need businesses have for standardised approaches globally that are trusted and independently verifiable. Currently there are many initiatives to measure different aspects of the green transition such as the Science Based Targets initiative for net zero target setting, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to measure emissions and the International Sustainability Standards Board, which sets standards for climate-related disclosure.

Right now, ISO is developing its first ever international standard for net zero for organisations

Shana Gallagher, British Standards Institution

Shana Gallagher, net zero engagement manager at the British Standards Institution (BSI), argued that it can be difficult for those who want to take climate action because they have to piece together information from this fragmented landscape, often referred to as the “alphabet soup of net zero frameworks”.   

She cited the Net Zero Tracker’s 2023 report which said just over 1,000 of the world’s largest businesses have set a net zero target, and of those only 4% have strategies in place to achieve their goal. International standards are seen as the principal way to ensure businesses have a clear pathway to take meaningful action while also guarding against greenwashing.

With this in mind, BSI’s Gallagher said an upcoming global standard will make it possible to prove progress to suppliers, shareholders, financiers, staff and the public: “Right now, ISO is developing its first ever international standard for net zero for organisations”.

She said this new standard is based on the ISO net zero guidelines, adding: “Once this international standard launches – which is expected to be at COP30 at the end of 2025 – it will allow this very powerful international standards system and quality infrastructure […] to be leveraged to scale and accelerate net zero action.”

The hope is that this new ISO standard will also help drive change within organisations because ISO is widely recognised among senior leadership teams who might not be sustainability experts. 

The panel put out a call to action for those in the industry to contribute to the public consultation on the draft standard, which will happen next year. Other suggested ways to get involved included contacting national standards body or joining a national climate change management standards committee.

Built assets and risk

How big is the risk posed by the energy transition and climate change to our built assets? That was one of the questions posed during an event organised by JLL and the Financial Times.

Lori Mabardi, ESG senior director at Barings Real Estate, took the view that 2025 will be the year that we reach “a tipping point when the risks become more real” for investors. She has next year in her sights because that is when a raft of regulations come into effect and it is only five years away from many corporations’ 2030 interim climate goals.

She said that four decades ago extreme weather events accounted for $220bn of extreme property damage. In the past four years that sum has more than doubled to about $560bn.

Ultimately her point was that the more climate awareness becomes mainstream, the more it will hit property valuations. She also said that whether you are a tenant, buyer or insurer of property, if you cannot get insurance the risk you face is one of liquidity.

Francesca de Quesada Covey at Miami-Dade County in the state of Florida pointed to the example of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which resulted in the area changing its building codes. At the time the private sector had been worried the changes would stifle the development and the wider economy but that has not happened and instead she said Miami-Dade is now the standard bearer for building codes across the US, and is now focusing on resilient infrastructure.

Guy Grainger, global head of sustainability services and ESG at JLL, outlined some of the challenges building owners and occupiers face. He said in the current market they face higher costs and falling property values which represent “real survival issues” on top of some “pretty scary climate targets”.

In Grainger’s view, those working in real estate need to “acknowledge we are part of the problem, […] we have made no dent in emissions cuts”, meanwhile the supply of net zero carbon buildings is diminishing but demand is increasing.

Ending on a more positive note he suggested that the gap between supply and demand could be a “golden opportunity” for smart building owners with access to capital.

Willingness to pay

Research released from Ramboll and the Climate Group revealed more customers are willing to foot the bill for sustainable products, such as lower carbon concrete and steel, than they were a year ago.

The research indicates growing momentum, with 45% of respondents saying they would be willing to pay more for emissions reductions of 25% or higher for steel, while 57% would be willing to do so for emissions reductions exceeding 50%. For concrete, these numbers were 40% and 49% respectively.

Compared with one year ago, 52% of respondents had a higher willingness to pay more, while 34% reported no change in their stance, according to the report entitled The Steel and Concrete Transformation: 2024 market outlook on lower emission steel and concrete.

The research is based on more than 250 companies from 42 countries and 21 industries. The companies were surveyed on their current readiness to use and willingness to pay for lower emission steel and concrete. 

However, cost barriers do exist for many in the supply chain as do other challenges. Rahul Shendure, chief executive at CarbonBuilt, which received Meta’s capital funding mentioned above, said the structure of the concrete market is delaying the uptake of low carbon solutions. He said: “It’s a hyper local business made up of small, medium sized companies, very low margin. […] We have to make this [low carbon solutions] profitable for a producer so that they want to make all their concrete this way.”

We’re trying to solve this issue where there isn’t large scale project finance. Concrete is not a great fit for traditional project finance

Sara Neff, Microsoft and The New Concrete

Sara Neff who recently left Lendlease for Microsoft and is now also co-director of The New Concrete, talked about a new decarbonisation recoverable grant for low carbon technologies to help bridge the affordability gap in places.

She said: “We’re trying to solve this issue where there isn’t large-scale project finance. Concrete is not a great fit for traditional project finance. The historic cash flows are difficult. Willingness to pay is tough. There’s just a lot of high capex. And so we decided to launch this fund focused on philanthropic and institutional capital to come in and be that catalytic capital through the recoverable grant.”

Linking back to the theme of optimism at the start of the conference Neff struck a hopeful note, saying: “Concrete is great because it is the second most impactful investment anybody can make in carbon avoidance. The first one is alternative meat. […] Concrete is a solvable problem. It’s a fast problem. We can get there.”