Notes from Oxana Loguinova, Head of Growth at Olive Gaea, on the ground at London Climate Action Week 2026.
There was something striking about discussing climate resilience and transition finance in a week when London was living through one of its hottest stretches on record, heat-health alerts in place across the city, and several venues adjusting their cooling systems, and making sure plenty of drinking water was readily available for participants, just to keep the week’s sessions running as planned. It was a harsh reminder that climate risk is no longer a distant or abstract issue. It is tangible, physical, and already affecting economies, businesses, and communities.
What became increasingly clear across the week is that ambition, frameworks, and innovation are not in short supply. The real challenge now is how to connect them, and how to move faster, together.
Four reflections from Oxana’s notes from the floors of London-:
1. Data isn’t the shortfall – usability is
At the UNEP FI Global Roundtable, the conversation centred on the role financial institutions must play — not only in managing climate risk, but in actively enabling the transition across the real economy. Whether through export finance, circular economy models, or large-scale capital mobilisation, the question raised wasn’t whether the transition happens, but how it gets made investable and scalable. One point came through consistently: data matters, not because it’s scarce, but because its quality and usability determine how effectively climate risks get understood, priced, and translated into action. In most cases, the information already exists. The real challenge is making it usable, reliable, and actionable for the people who have to make decisions with it.
2. Physical risk and the insurance gap need collective action, not isolated tools
This came through again at Moody’s session, “Unlocking Capital for Climate Resilience: From Data to Decisions,” where the focus turned to physical risk and the widening insurance protection gap. As climate volatility intensifies, stronger risk models, resilience planning, and new risk-transfer mechanisms will matter more than ever. But none of it works in isolation — regulators, insurers, investors, and public institutions will need to move in step with one another for any of these tools to hold up.
3. London’s Global Advantage: Convening Capital, Talent, and Policy
At the Innovation Hub, held in partnership with the EU Delegation to the UK, the tone shifted from problem to solution. It was encouraging to see investors, founders, corporates, philanthropy ,and policymakers in the same room — not just discussing climate technologies, but working through how to support their deployment at scale. It reinforced that London’s position isn’t only about ambition or frameworks; it’s a genuine hub where capital, innovation, and talent sit close enough to move together.
4. Turning complex science into simple climate aligned labels
Olive Gaea used the week to showcase its own climate-aligned labelling methodology, an approach built to turn complex climate science into something usable at a glance. Unlike traditional carbon labels, which communicate emissions alone, the methodology benchmarks products against scientifically defined climate pathways, making the sustainability impact of a choice intuitive for consumers and businesses alike. The intent isn’t just to inform: climate-aligned menu intelligence is designed to convert sustainability data into prioritised actions that deliver measurable business outcomes.
Where this leaves things
None of these four threads -regulatory-grade data, physical risk, regional collaboration, or consumer-facing climate labels, solve the problem on their own. Taken together, they point to the same underlying task: making climate information usable enough that the people holding capital, writing policy, and running businesses can act on it at the pace the data now demands.
What stayed behind was the collaborative spirit that defines London Climate Action Week itself. As a community-led initiative, LCAW brings together governments, businesses, investors, academia, innovators, philanthropists, and civil society as equal partners in the same conversation — not just another conference, but an ecosystem where every part of society participates on equal footing. That’s part of why it has become so influential globally, and it was a reminder that climate action is a shared responsibility, with lasting progress only possible by working together. That spirit left her genuinely inspired, and energised for the work ahead .
FAQ
How does climate risk data affect access to transition finance?
Data quality is becoming a pricing input, not just a disclosure exercise. Companies able to produce clearer, more verifiable climate data are increasingly rewarded with a lower cost of capital, while weaker or inconsistent data raises exposure to scrutiny and a higher cost of capital.
How would climate-aligned labelling fit into our existing sustainability reporting, without creating a parallel data system?
It’s designed to sit on top of the data you’re likely already collecting for frameworks like GRI or PCAF-aligned carbon accounting, rather than replace it. The labelling layer translates existing emissions and sourcing data into a pathway-aligned score, so reporting and customer-facing communication draw from the same underlying dataset.
