The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne
In a year that was more difficult than most, Climate Week NYC 2025 turned out to be the biggest one yet. As more than 1,000 events took place across New York, its flagship program convened over 100 top-level CEOs, executive directors, and government figures – from right around the world.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, joined the discussions. The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Philip Davis. Ministers from Denmark, Indonesia, Australia, Vanatu, Japan, and the UK. The actors and activists Mark Ruffalo and Jane Fonda. Ex-footballer Robbie Fowler. Artists, broadcasters, and musicians. And, of course, thousands of delegates.
There is a bold statement in these numbers and these names.
As delegates started streaming into the venue for the Opening Ceremony and The Hub Live, they spoke of a confidence boost for the global community, because the event was going ahead – despite headwinds. And they spoke of a reassurance because US companies and delegates were attending in such numbers.
Actor Mark Ruffalo and CEO Gloria Walton, co-founders of The Solutions Project
"It may seem contradictory to talk about power at a time when many of us feel so powerless,” Helen Clarkson, CEO of Climate Group, said in her opening speech. “By trying to talk about a collective action problem at an individual level, of course it doesn’t add up. But Climate Week NYC has never been about what you can do as individuals, it’s what we can do together.”
Her tone – defiant optimism with a great sense of urgency – set the scene for the days that followed: “We’re here to Power On.”
What this looked like in practice became clear quite quickly. As the opening ceremony picked up speed, an exceptional group of government leaders, including Ursula von der Leyen, private sector executives, and figureheads from civil society gathered into a breakout room to challenge each other: What are the next steps to achieve renewable energy abundance?
“We need to build [this prosperity], not just share it,” said Andrew Forrest, Founder and Executive Chairman of Fortescue, who co-organised a High-Level Session on Renewable Energy Abundance with Climate Group and the Global Renewables Alliance. “It's about courage, it's about science in an age of disruption. These principles must endure leadership by action.
“Please, reject anything which stands in the way of this.”
Helen Clarkson, CEO of Climate Group
There’s no question that companies worldwide are facing new realities. Between geopolitical challenges and economic uncertainty, little remains the same. But even when the conversations in New York were different this year, they made one thing clear:
Companies do not want to change course.
They presented themselves to their peers not as a box-ticking exercise, but because they’re strategically aligning themselves with a new, better way of doing things. And therein lies a whole new competitiveness.
"We're seeing that leaders who are repositioning their value propositions around sustainability are significantly outpacing their peers," said Diego Ibarra, Senior Partner at Roland Berger. Whether it’s renewables, grids, EVs, charging infrastructure – “for everything that's electrified we do tend to see a business case," said BCG Managing Director Patrick Herhold.
The world’s corporates may not want to put a flashy “climate action” sticker on themselves right now. But what many of them continue to do – even if it’s less public – does “really move the needle,” as Noémie Bauer, Chief Sustainability Officer at Pernod, put it.
Companies are actively shaping better systems for everyone – they are just looking for new ways to talk about it.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission
That wish for a different narrative wove itself through our flagship program, like a storyline. From footballers to farmers, from CEOs to ministers, speaker after speaker added their contribution to what started to feel like a collective move towards a new language.
Central to this was a stepping away from “the disaster avoidance business,” and towards “the better lives business," in the words of Ed Miliband, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. His Danish counterpart, Lars Aagaard, said: “We have to convince [people] that if we go green, we'll have a better future, better services, better living conditions."
This necessity to “answer to the need of people” (Emmanuel Normant, VP for Sustainable Development at Saint-Gobain) was stressed repeatedly – to meet them where they are, speak their language, and build a case from there.
That’s climate not as compliance, but as the creation of a better.
“We fundamentally reject the narrative that it’s too hard to address climate change,” said Chris Bowen, Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy. “It’s an opportunity."
Fredrika Klarén, Head of Sustainability at Polestar
In conversation with Helen Clarkson, Ed Miliband captured the ethos of the event: "There is so much we can learn from each other; we don't do this enough. What has worked elsewhere?"
At Climate Week NYC, this vital exchange of experiences and ideas happens on stages and shared elevator rides, in networking areas and the lunch queue, at backstage chats and the closed-door roundtables where top leaders can strategize.
The event has a knack for working both at the macro level – when, say, in the last room of the corridor creative minds are plotting the complete transformation of the fashion industry – as well as the most granular. Many delegates will have walked away with an enhanced understanding, for example, of how 24/7 carbon-free electricity can work for them.
What countless conversations circled back to was this: No company, and no country can achieve this alone. The importance and the power of alliances and of ecosystem-building was at the very fore of this Climate Week.
This is one of the reasons companies see such value in Climate Group’s leadership networks like RE100 and EV100. They’re driven by knowledge exchange, but also deliver the strength of a collective voice, which gives companies much greater sway in the policy arena.
Companies’ appeal to policymakers at the event? “Hold the line,” as Fredrika Klarén, Head of Sustainability at Polestar, put it. To keep succeeding in creating this, companies need solid frameworks. They need investment certainty, and they need to feel reassured that the direction remains set.
Ed Miliband, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, in conversation with Helen Clarkson
While heads of government were giving speeches at the United Nations General Assembly, policymakers and companies on the other side of Manhattan created a vision that left no doubt where a prosperous future really lies.
“We must act as governments and industry, and we must act together, across borders, across continents,” said Ursula von der Leyen a day earlier. “This is an opportunity to shape our society, shape our economics,” said Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources of Mexico.
Shining through the Opening Ceremony and The Hub Live were the urgent voices of activists like Wawa Gatheru, Founder and Executive Director of Black Girl Environmentalist, and Dr. Beverly L. Wright, Founder and ED of Deep South Center. They kept the spotlight on the importance of the next generation. "We have to mobilize young people around the globe. And we need to have a completely different conversation with them.”
At the end of it all, as delegates left, it was hard not to feel positive about what Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, called “this new era of climate action”.
And this constructive spirit continued through the week, as events organized by hundreds of organizations, businesses and governments carried Climate Week NYC across the city, and made this new era of climate action come to life for audiences old and new.
What next? Perhaps, as the actor and activist Mark Ruffalo put it, we simply “need to drop our fear, and live up to the moment."