Your Leadership in Climate Action: Where You Fit and What to Decide This Quarter

Budgets, procurement contracts, supplier standards, building fabric and fleet renewal all carry a climate consequence, whether or not anyone labels them climate decisions. I have spent most of my working life in rooms where those decisions get signed off, and the pattern rarely changes. The climate question is never on the agenda, but it is always in the room.

So here is the honest answer to what leaders ask me privately, usually after the meeting rather than during it. Your role is not to fix the climate alone. It is to use the authority you already hold, deliberately and in the open. Leadership climate action is unglamorous work. It looks like one procurement rule rewritten, one partnership formed, one investment pulled forward by two years.

This piece sets out where you fit, how to act alongside others rather than in isolation, and how to convert intent into a decision before this quarter closes. If your signature changes what gets built, bought, funded or taught, it is written for you.

The Challenge: “I Care, But I Cannot See Where I Fit”

The most common blocker I meet is not scepticism, it is scale confusion. Leaders tell me they are already stretched, that their efforts feel like a drop in the ocean, and that they do not know what good actually looks like for an organisation their size. Others hold back because they fear being called out for greenwashing the moment they say anything at all.

The result is a strange stalemate. Capable people with real influence, waiting for a clearer instruction that never arrives. The leadership climate action gap is not a gap in belief, and it is not a gap in technology. It is a gap in permission, and it is very often self-issued. Meanwhile the cheap decisions get made by default, and the expensive ones get inherited by whoever holds the job in 2035.

If you recognise that stalemate, a 30 minute conversation will do more than another report. Contact our team to define your role and leave with one decision you can act on this month.

What Leadership Climate Action Looks Like in Practice

Effective leadership climate action starts with what you control, not with what you wish someone else would do. I work from four levers that every leader has in some measure: assets, spend, influence and voice.

Assets are the buildings, vehicles, land and equipment you own, including the building fabric itself, the walls, roof, windows and draught-proofing that decide how much of the heat you pay for you then lose. Influence is your position in a supply chain, a sector body or a local partnership. Voice is your willingness to say publicly what you have done and what you have not yet solved.

Spend is your procurement and capital budget, and it is the lever most leaders underestimate. Analysis by CDP and Boston Consulting Group found that corporate supply chain emissions are on average 26 times greater than emissions from direct operations, yet only 15 per cent of the companies disclosing to CDP have set a supply chain target. What you buy moves considerably more than what you own, and the standard you set in a tender travels further than anything you install on your own roof.

The prosperity framing matters here. Leadership climate action is not a cost centre bolted onto the business plan. It is a route to lower energy bills, less exposure to volatile fuel prices, better staff retention, warmer homes, cleaner air and contracts you can still win in five years. Learn more about our approach to collaborative climate solutions and how we help leaders sequence those levers rather than tackle all four at once.

Collaborative Climate Solutions: Why Nobody Leads Alone

The biggest wins are shared, and shared wins need a convener. Grid capacity, heat networks, freight consolidation, retrofit skills, EV charging and the reuse of materials between businesses cannot be solved inside one organisation’s boundary. This is where pre-competitive collaboration comes in, meaning cooperation between organisations on shared infrastructure and standards, in areas where they do not compete for customers.

It already works. The Retrofit Academy has worked with local authorities including Devon County Council and Essex County Council, using Community Renewal Fund money, to build a competent retrofit workforce county by county, a pipeline no single employer could have staffed alone. At a larger scale, the National Wealth Fund has documented a council in the East of England developing a heat network of roughly £140 million and 90 GWh, connecting 21 public sites, where the partners jointly chose a public sector led joint venture because it delivered a lower cost of capital, and therefore lower heat charges, for everyone connected.

Three businesses on one industrial estate can commission a joint feasibility study for a fraction of the individual cost. A council, a college and four employers can build a retrofit training pipeline none of them could staff alone. Collaborative climate solutions also spread reputational risk, because a commitment made with named partners is harder to abandon quietly and easier to defend publicly.

Step by Step: How to Define Your Role in Leadership Climate Action

1. Map your four levers on one page. List your assets, your annual spend by category, the partnerships where you hold weight, and the audiences who listen to you. Keep it to a single side.
2. Identify the highest leverage decision available in the next 90 days. Look for something already in motion: a lease renewal, a tender, a boiler at end of life, a fleet order, a pension review. The economics reward this sharply. Work by Currie & Brown and Aecom for the Climate Change Committee found that designing appropriate standards in from the start costs a fraction of retrofitting later, with retrofit running around five times more expensive for residential buildings and from five to more than ten times higher for commercial ones. Retrofitting intent onto a live decision is cheaper and faster than starting a new programme.
3. Name the constraint honestly. Capital, capacity, data, landlord consent or board appetite. The constraint determines whether you act alone or need partners.
4. Find two or three organisations facing the same constraint. The same estate, the same supply chain, or the same town and travel-to-work area. Approach them with a specific proposition, not an invitation to discuss.
5. Commit in writing with an owner, a date and a number. Vague ambition attracts criticism. A dated commitment with a named owner attracts collaborators.
6. Report at 12 months, including the parts that failed. Publishing the honest version is what turns one decision into a durable climate change legacy others can build on.

What to Watch Out For

Most of the leadership climate action I see go wrong fails in one of five predictable ways.

• Announcing a target with no capital attached behind it. Pledges without budget lines are the fastest route to a greenwashing accusation.
• Delegating the whole agenda to one junior appointment with no authority over spend or suppliers.
• Waiting for perfect emissions data before acting. Directional data is enough to change a procurement rule or replace a failing boiler.
• Going it alone on shared infrastructure. Energy, transport and skills challenges rarely respond to single-organisation effort.
• Confusing communications with delivery. A campaign, a report and a stakeholder event are not the same as an installed heat pump.

Quick Checklist

• Write your four levers on one page this week: assets, spend, influence, voice.
• Pull forward the next live capital or procurement decision and stress-test it against energy costs in 2030.
• Add one climate clause to your standard supplier terms, then tell your suppliers why.
• Book a 30 minute call with two peers on your estate, in your sector or in your town.
• Give your sustainability lead a budget figure and direct access to the board.
• Set one dated, numbered commitment with a named owner before the quarter ends.
• Diarise a 12 month review now, and agree that the failures get published too.
• Decide which single change you want to still be working in 20 years.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is leadership important for climate action?

Because emissions are the by-product of decisions, and decisions have owners. Technology, funding and public support all exist in reasonable measure, but they only convert into outcomes when someone with authority approves the spend, changes the specification or signs the partnership. Leadership is the mechanism that turns available solutions into installed ones.

What can a small business leader realistically do about climate change?

More than most expect, and it starts with spend. CDP and BCG put average corporate supply chain emissions at 26 times direct operational emissions, so changing what you buy, and what you ask suppliers to demonstrate, moves far more than switching your own lightbulbs. Add energy efficiency in the premises you occupy, a considered vehicle decision and a workplace pension review, and the impact compounds.

How do I avoid greenwashing when we announce climate commitments?

State only what you have funded, dated and assigned to a named owner, and say plainly what you have not solved. Avoid absolute claims such as green or carbon neutral unless you can evidence the method behind them. Reporting a missed milestone honestly builds far more credibility than a glossy claim that unravels later.

What are collaborative climate solutions and how do I start one?

They are projects where several organisations pool cost, data or purchasing power to unlock something none could deliver alone, such as a shared heat network, a joint retrofit contract or a local skills pipeline. Start narrow: one problem, two or three partners, a defined output within six months. A specific proposition gets agreement far quicker than an open invitation to collaborate.

How do I build a positive climate change legacy as a leader?

Choose the decisions with the longest lifespan. Buildings, land use, infrastructure, pension allocation and skills programmes shape outcomes for decades, whereas campaigns and reports rarely outlive their author. Legacy comes from embedding a change into how your organisation buys, builds and hires, so it survives your departure.

The Window Is Open Now

You are reading this in September, which means budgets, tenders and plans for the next financial year are being drafted right now. That window closes quickly. In a few weeks the capital allocations will be fixed, the contracts will be let, and the specification that could have included a heat pump, a fabric upgrade or a supplier standard will have gone out unchanged.

There is no shortage of leaders willing to build a sustainable future. What is scarce is leadership climate action that names its own role, puts a date on it and invites others in. The invitation is open, and it is specific to you.

Tell us the decision you are facing, and we will help you shape it into something worth inheriting. Get in touch to define your role in building the future.

Sources

CDP and Boston Consulting Group, ‘Scope 3 Upstream: Big Challenges, Simple Remedies’, June 2024.

UK Green Building Council, reporting Currie & Brown and Aecom analysis for the Committee on Climate Change.

Ashden, ‘Retrofit: solving the skills crisis’.

National Wealth Fund, local government case study on heat networks moving from feasibility towards investment decision.