The Center for Climate Action

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.