Combating climate change is one of humanity’s defining challenges of the 2020s. BCG’s Center for Climate Action partners with businesses and governments to help them prepare for a decarbonized world, supporting them as they drive technological and economic transformations and realize competitive advantage in a low-carbon economy.
The Center for Climate Action partners with clients across the public, private, and social sectors to align their strategy, operations, and stakeholder engagement with a low-carbon world. Our work is supported by BCG’s range of consulting experience across all industries and capabilities, as well as by our expanding reach of brands.
Purpose, Ambition, and Target Setting. The Center for Climate Action works with BrightHouse, a BCG company, to realign the purpose of organizations with a low-carbon economy. We help companies set ambition levels for their own 2°C transformation and set science-based targets that are tightly linked to their own corporate strategy.
Scenarios, Climate Risk, and Portfolio Resilience. Global climate change and low-carbon policies can threaten the mainstays of a company, as well as shareholder value. We develop tailored climate scenarios and evaluate business and portfolio impact using scenario-based approaches to help clients understand the implications of a low-carbon economy on corporate and portfolio strategy. We create winning business models, along with M&A and technology roadmaps, refocusing strategy on new, low-carbon growth markets.
Low-Carbon Product and Growth Strategy. The Center for Climate Action helps clients accelerate new business performance by identifying and measuring potential growth markets through the lens of climate action—and by applying commercial growth levers to win in those markets. We help companies find the right business model, design variants, go-to-market strategy, pricing, and branding for every given situation.
Ventures, Partnerships, and Ecosystems. The Center for Climate Action, along with BCG Digital Ventures, ideates and incubates business and service innovations to drive growth in a low-carbon economy. We develop new partnership strategies and help coordinate ecosystem-based initiatives that may include competitors, suppliers, and customers—reducing the risks associated with decarbonization challenges and ramping up new, low-carbon technologies at greater scale.
Emission Reduction and Offsetting. The Center for Climate Action helps companies develop an “abatement curve” to understand the most cost-efficient path for bringing down their own emissions. We use key CO2 reduction levers, such as increased efficiency and the use of renewable power, fuel alternatives, new processes, low-carbon hydrogen, and carbon capture, usage, and storage. We plan ambitious emission-reduction programs, including offsetting measures, and support their implementation with BCG’s rigorous program management tools.
Sustainable Sourcing and Supply Chain (Scope 3). To address their carbon footprint holistically, companies need to address emissions across the entire value chain. We help them create a clear view of their supply chain emissions, identify material reduction levers, and develop effective strategies to engage suppliers and recalibrate procurement processes with emissions reduction in mind. We also support clients in engaging with customers to reduce their downstream footprint and improve the sustainable use and end-of-life treatment of their own products.
Infrastructure Resilience. The increase in storms, floods, heat waves, and other natural disasters brought on by global warming will have a significant impact on future physical infrastructure and material flows. BCG helps clients make informed decisions about physical climate impact and develop resilience plans designed to safeguard at-risk infrastructure around the world.
Financial Management and Carbon Trading. The Center for Climate Action supports clients in understanding, navigating, and managing their cost exposure with regard to Europe’s Emission Trading System and other carbon-pricing schemes. We help them explore low-carbon investment programs by familiarizing them with innovative financing instruments and structures, such as green bonds. And we make clear how financial institutions can effectively recalibrate investment portfolios to comply with the Paris targets.
Low-Carbon Governance. The Center for Climate Action can tap into BCG’s deep people and organization expertise to rewire companies for a low-carbon world. We help implement new ways of working that allow for greater emissions-related transparency, launch internal carbon pricing, set efficient incentives, embed climate decision making and innovation in daily processes, achieve faster time to market with climate solutions, and become more attractive to outside talent.
Stakeholder Engagement & Narrative. The Center for Climate Action helps leaders tell their climate story—sharing the right amount of data and describing the narrative in the most effective way—to position organizations for a value-adding dialogue with external stakeholders (including investors, policy makers, customers, and suppliers) as well as internal stakeholders (such as employees, management, and board members).
Financial Disclosure. We work with companies to establish analytically grounded, scenario-based, and TCFD-compliant financial disclosure practices that document climate-related financial risks and opportunities to the broader financial market. We develop scenarios, model financial impacts, shape the narrative, and help set up an end-to-end set of processes and tools to support this process.
BCG worked with OGCI Climate Investments to ensure its $1 billion climate fund could maximize the impact of its investments. Read more on the approach and overall impact.
To understand the disruptive force of climate change, a leading mining company partnered with BCG to proactively drive an ambitious sustainability agenda. Read more.
Fünf Jahre nach dem Pariser Klimaabkommen ziehen wir Bilanz: Das bisher Erreichte, reicht lange noch nicht aus, um die Klimawende herbeizuführen. Zusammen mit Experten aus Politik, Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft haben unsere BCG Experten Judith Wallenstein, Matthias Tauber, Dr. Jens Burchardt und Dr. Patrick Herhold auf der #KlimaKon20 darüber diskutiert, wie Klimaschutz und wirtschaftliche Interessen vereint werden können, um unsere Versprechen einzuhalten.
Can we create a global waste disposal service for carbon? BCG Managing Director & Partner Bas Sudmeijer proposes building networks to trap CO2 emissions deep in the earth, giving us a shot at stalling climate change.
The COVID-19 crisis isn’t slowing Canada’s ambitious agenda for mitigating carbon emissions. Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, explains how green jobs will play a major role in economic recovery.
How China Can Achieve Carbon Neutrality by 2060
Our simulation of China’s climate-change pathways shows that it has economically attractive and socially viable pathways to achieve its decarbonization goals.
A New Course for Climate in the US?
President Joe Biden has proposed the most ambitious climate policy in American history. How should companies get ready for the changes that are coming?
How Government Can Fuel a Green Recovery
Governments have an unparalleled opportunity to use stimulus programs to drive climate change progress. But their approach must reflect the specifics of their economy and workforce.
Climate Action Pays Off in Transportation and Logistics
Companies that get it right will create financial value and help save the planet.
Think Small to Unlock Carbon Capture’s Big Potential
By reducing abatement costs, small networks of emitters could help establish carbon capture as a mainstream technology in the effort to mitigate global warming.
How COVID-19 Is Changing the Pace of Energy Transitions
An analysis of pandemic stimulus measures finds that Europe is continuing its steady shift toward green energy while major Asian countries are sharply accelerating their transition.
Insurers Take Up the Climate Fight
To advance the battle, firms should focus on their underwriting and investment portfolios, internal emissions, and regulatory and reporting transparency.
How an EU Carbon Border Tax Could Jolt World Trade
Plans to tax CO2 emissions that are attributed to imports would hike costs for EU trade partners and redefine competitive advantage in many industries.
Climate Should Not Be the Virus’s Next Victim
COVID-19 recovery efforts can contribute to solving two crises at once—if leaders direct recovery-focused investments toward sustainable infrastructure, green jobs, and environmental resilience.
We Need True Net Zero, and It Needs Early Adopters
Mitigating climate change will require a way to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for good. A few companies have the right incentives to launch that effort today.
BCG’s Net-Zero Pledge
While we expect to have the biggest climate impact through our client work, we know that we must also walk the talk by reducing the negative impact of our own footprint as quickly as we can. BCG will have a net-zero climate impact by 2030.
Why Climate Change Is No Prisoner’s Dilemma
Ours is the last generation that can prevent a global disaster. Unilateral action may be the answer.
A New Approach to the Intractable Problem of Climate Change
To overcome climate inaction, we must understand the rationale for individuals’ behaviors, identify the groups that could change those behaviors, and work with those groups to transform the vicious cycle into a virtuous one.
Have We Passed Peak Demand for Fossil Fuels?
The COVID-19 crisis may have accelerated a key inflection point in fossil fuels – fundamentally altering many energy companies’ economic position and outlook.
Learn about our climate and environment work
