What next after London Climate Week in a Heatwave? Start talking about Power

Peter Jackson, head of clean and climate tech at Diffusion, explores how climate comms is evolving in 2026.

Reflecting on London Climate Action Week 2026, we need to contend with the fact that the distance between two realities seems larger than ever. In one reality, we’ve just seen a record breaking heatwave, with likely more to come in a matter of months or weeks. But help is on its way – the cleantech sector, as headlines repeatedly show, is outperforming the rest of the economy, delivering on jobs and growth. Investment in clean energy is outperforming investment in fossil fuels

In the other – the ‘net zero agenda’ is being held up as a cause of immiseration, and old climate narratives of denial are returning. It’s impossible to have a sensible debate about the without someone bringing up 1976 and claiming that the only problem is that the country has gone soft – ignoring year on year of record temperatures.

This gulf of understanding reinforces the need for better, bolder comms. This was a common theme during climate week, across conversations about regulation, global ambition, technology and activism.

A lot of the debate around comms focused on similar themes:

• Talk about tangible benefits of climate action like lower bills and cleaner air, rather than abstract risks
• Listen and communicate outside the climate bubble
• Use simple language rather than scientific jargon
• Abandon ‘purity tests’ and discouraging people from taking action unless they are perfect (drive an EV, don’t eat meat etc.)

These strategies are all valid, and necessary; but most climate communicators have been working on these principles for years, if not decades already. Few in climate comms would put carbon savings in a headline over dollar savings.

So what’s next? How do we build on this to move the story forward? A few brilliant examples from the week stood out.

Rick Smith of 440 Megatonnes, a Canadian NGO, outlined simple tactics that worked in Canada. One was ‘elevating iconic numbers’ – putting climate action in terms people could understand, and introducing framing that was memorable in combating misinformation. A very Canadian example was the framing of the cost of carbon taxes as ‘a Timbit on a barrel of oil’ – in line with what they called a ‘white hot focus on affordability.’

Another framework that I found incredibly helpful came from Potential Energy, an NGO that frames itself as an organisation dedicated to winning the communications war on the side of climate action.

Their framework highlighted four main pillars:

• Power
• Health
• Money
• Love

This study primarily looked at shifting public opinion on a broad basis, but it finds several important missing pieces for communications when it comes to investors, regulators, customers, partners – the many specific audiences that cleantech businesses need to reach.

It can be tempting, particularly in the world of B2B comms, to think primarily about Money, savings and efficiency. But that’s not the whole story. Health and Love might seem a bit too warm and fuzzy – but protecting the health of the people and places that we love is ultimately why a lot of people get out of bed in the morning. So we ignore that at our peril – particularly when it comes to building a brand that resonates emotionally, not just financially.

The idea of Power kept coming back to me throughout the week  – what is AI hype if not the promise of power to get control back over your working life, and spend time doing the bits of the job you like and outsource the rest?

It’s also part of the appeal of AC – the power to tell the heatwave to mind its own business, and get on with your life. It also explains so much of the instinctive opposition we see to climate action. It feels good to tell someone to get lost (cruder instructions are available), because we rarely have that power. But climate actions provide a perfect opportunity to do that. Eat less meat? Install a heat pump? Fly less? These are all perfect opportunities to exercise power, and tell someone to get lost. Affordability is obviously key, but power is part of this instinct.

But climate advocates can exercise this power too. Solar, batteries, heat pumps, EVs – all of these are an opportunity to stick a middle finger up to the fossil fuel industry, and carry on despite the vagaries of gas prices. Climate advocates and entrepreneurs can go beyond looking at how much money clean technology can save – but what power it can put in the hands of its adopters.

If you’re an innovator looking to build your brand, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at peter [dot] jackson [at] diffusionpr.com