I was at an event recently with, among others, Nick Bridge (formerly the UK Government’s Special Representative for Climate Change, the man who built the world’s largest network of climate diplomats and played a central role in delivering COP26) and Camilla Born MBE, who led the COP26 strategy in the Cabinet Office and now runs Electrify Britain, the campaign by EDF and Octopus Energy to accelerate the UK’s switch to electric heating and transport.
These are not people on the fringes of climate policy. They are people who made it.
And the conversation crystallised something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
Consumers aren’t responding to guilt. Businesses aren’t acting out of obligation.
How can a family feel guilty about flying to Spain on holiday when Taylor Swift flies in her private jet daily?
How can a business owner feel bad about leaving the lights on when they see a data centre in Texas bolt-on another diesel generator?
The energy crisis, the war in the Middle East, and the political situation in the United States have all, in different ways, sharpened this.
The sustainability sector can no longer rely on the idea that the moral case alone will carry the argument. That window, if it ever really opened, has closed.
Faster. Cheaper. Better.
Electrify Britain’s central message isn’t “save the planet.” It’s cheaper bills, cleaner air, energy security.
An EV now costs a fraction of a petrol car to run – at InnovationZero recently, Lord Adair Turner said “face it, the ICE is dead, we just haven’t buried it yet.”
A heat pump on a smart tariff with a battery beats a gas boiler on cost. These are not environmental arguments dressed up in economic clothing, they are the actual value proposition, stated plainly.
The businesses in the sustainability sector that are winning are the ones that lead with concrete, verifiable benefit. They don’t ask customers to care about carbon. They show customers how their solution is faster to deploy, cheaper to run, or more resilient when supply chains break or energy prices spike.
I see this in my work with early-stage climate tech founders at Carbon13, the venture builder for the climate emergency.
The ones that are struggling are still leading with the moral imperative.
Still asking people to do the right thing.
Still surprised when it doesn’t convert.
If you run or market a sustainability business, here are three questions worth sitting with:
This isn’t about abandoning the climate mission. The founders I work with at Carbon13 and elsewhere are building solutions with the potential to reduce tens of millions of tonnes of CO2e. That ambition is entirely intact.
But the way you communicate it
– to customers,
– to investors,
– to partners
has to start with their problem, not yours. The planet’s urgency is real. Your customer’s decision-making, however, is driven by cost, speed, resilience and competitive pressure. Meet them there first.
That’s the shift. And it’s available to any sustainability business willing to make it.
I’m Richard Leader – a fractional CMO and marketing strategy advisor. I’m a Domain Expert at Carbon13 and a mentor at Draper University. I work with sustainability businesses and climate tech founders on messaging, positioning and marketing strategy.
