Net zero strategies: from commitments to accountability in the real economy

As the urgency of climate action intensifies, moving from target setting to transition planning has become a defining challenge for companies, investors, policymakers and regulators. Companies across high-emitting sectors have published net zero commitments and decarbonisation strategies; yet the critical question is whether climate targets will be translated into concrete decarbonisation levers, low-carbon business models and, ultimately, real-world action.

Are corporate transition plans credible? How can industries, policymakers, investors, and academia distinguish genuine decarbonisation strategies from commitments that lack substance? And what role can rigorous, independent assessment play in holding companies accountable and driving meaningful climate action?

This event will review the state of corporate transition plans in the oil & gas and diversified mining sectors, what credible sectoral transition plans look like and why they matter from policy, investor and industry perspectives.

Meet our speakers and chair

Vanessa Havard-Williams OBE is a member of the Transition Finance Council steering group and chaired the UK Transition Finance Market Review published in 2024. She worked on the TPT Delivery Group and co-chaired the oil and gas sector work stream. She is the senior independent director at UK Export Finance and a vice-chair of the Green Finance Institute Transition Finance Lab. Prior to this she was a partner at Linklaters and led their sustainability practice until 2023.

Kate McGrath is Head of ESG, Fixed Income at Aberdeen. She has been part of the Fixed Income ESG team since 2020, responsible for ESG oversight across sustainability-focused strategies including the Sustainable range, ethical mandates, and climate transition themes. She leads ESG strategy, client engagement and investment frameworks within Fixed Income, sitting on the Global Fixed Income Senior Leadership Team. In 2024, she was awarded Investment Week's Women in Investment Rising Star Award.

Peter Metcalfe is an Executive Committee Member, Ipieca and Vice President for Climate, Sustainability and Energy Policy at Woodside Energy. He is an experienced executive in climate, sustainability and external affairs, having held leadership roles at Woodside since 2017. He represents Woodside on the executive committee of Ipieca, the oil & gas industry's global association for environmental and social issues. He previously served as Director of External Affairs at BP.

Alireza Modirzadeh (Modir) is Project Lead at the TPI Global Climate Transition Centre (TPI Centre) at LSE. Modir is responsible for the Net Zero Strategies (NZS) project, carrying out research and analysis on assessment frameworks for sectoral transition plans and contributing to Carbon Performance assessments and sectoral methodology development. Modir has a MSc in Environmental Management and a BSc in Civil Engineering from the University of Tehran.

Carmen Nuzzo is Professor in Practice and Executive Director of the TPI Centre, which she joined in 2023. She leads the Centre's strategy, research, and operations. A macroeconomist with 20+ years in financial industry research, her career spans Salomon Brothers, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and the UN-supported PRI, where she headed Fixed Income and led ESG integration across sovereign and private debt. She holds a Ph.D. in Capital Markets from the University of Bergamo, Italy, as part of which she was a visiting scholar at the NYU Stern School of Business.

More about this event

The event will start with a presentation of the NZS framework and the latest NZS assessment results. It will be followed by a moderated panel discussion with investor, industry and policy representatives, before opening the floor to a Q&A session from the in-person and online audience. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on the TPI Centre's YouTube channel.

Established in June 2022, the TPI Global Climate Transition Centre (TPI Centre) is an academic research centre at LSE dedicated to producing independent and forward-looking research and data on the progress of corporate and sovereign entities in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Its assessments use publicly disclosed information and its research outputs and datasets are publicly accessible.

Any questions?

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You can also contact us at tpi.centre@lse.ac.uk.

Featured image: Photo https://unsplash.com/photos/a-factory-with-smoke-billowing-out-of-its-stacks-ELbnYDoxido

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