The world's largest city-wide climate event series, @London Climate Action Week, came together against a backdrop of a city struggling to cope with the very challenge it was there to address.

As temperatures soared across the UK capital, events were disrupted, transport networks came under strain, and a dedicated session on extreme heat at the LSE had to be cancelled because the venue itself became dangerously hot.

Climate risk is no longer a future risk, and the heatwave last week was a stark reminder of the reality facing communities across Europe, where more than 200,000 people are estimated to have died from heat-related causes over the past four years. 

A recent study in Global Environmental Change found that heatwaves and droughts have reduced average household incomes across the continent by almost 3% and pushed an additional 5.6 million people closer to poverty.

Resolving a challenge of that scale is difficult and London Climate Action Week does show that governments and businesses are able to work together to build coalitions aimed at driving meaningful progress.

I truly applaud all participants, and the shared belief that together we can win the fight against climate risk is truly energising.

We need all this positive energy to achieve a breakthrough quickly, as we are failing to reduce CO2 emissions. Global CO2 levels reached a new peak in 2025, up 2.2% compared to 2024. We are way behind the Paris Agreement targets.

In my view, we need all this positive energy to be channelled into three important directions to win the race to Net Zero.

First, leaders across the public and private sectors need to be honest with the global population by introducing mandatory transparency on CO2 emissions, requiring every organisation and country to report their Net Zero emissions quarterly, through an open digital platform that is accessible to all. I am convinced that transparency will create accountability and ultimately drive positive change.

Second, leaders across the public and private sectors need to create a coalition of the willing, asking scientists from all countries to work together to develop the technological breakthroughs we need to win the race to Net Zero. The world faces an energy security and affordability crisis, making our dependence on traditional oil and gas necessary for longer. Without science-based technological breakthroughs to reduce CO2 rapidly, we will never get there.

Third, leaders across the public and private sectors need to create the financial conditions required to step-change the level of investment needed to fight climate risk. Let’s learn from AI and create a compelling business case that justifies the investment needed to win the race to Net Zero in every community and in every industry.

The race to Net Zero is real. Heatwaves may dominate headlines for a few days each summer, but what we need are three commitments throughout the year from leaders across the public and private sectors: to create real-time transparency on where we stand with Net Zero, to bring scientists together to develop the breakthrough technologies we need to cut CO2 quickly, and to make the business case that the race to Net Zero is an attractive investment opportunity for all.