Public lecture - From dialogue to decarbonisation: can investor engagement deliver?

With headwinds hindering the momentum behind the low-carbon transition, investors play a critical role in in sustaining climate ambition. The dismantling or weakening of collaborative initiatives, rising ESG backlash and competing priorities are making impactful engagement increasingly difficult.

The TPI Global Climate Transition Centre (TPI Centre), based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, hosted a public lecture focused on the role of investor engagement in driving decarbonisation, which brought together academics and market practitioners.

The session showcased academic research on what collective climate engagement has achieved and where it has fallen short. The research presentation was based on two papers below:

• Nikolaus Hastreiter (2025), Can investor coalitions drive corporate climate action?
• Matteo Gasparini and Peter Tufano (2025), An Empirical Examination of Business Climate Alliances: Effective and/or Harmful?

Following the presentation, the panel explored how active ownership, engagement and stewardship, whether undertaken individually or collectively, can help drive credible transition progress across sectors and how investor strategies differ by asset class and market.

The speakers also discussed what effective investor engagement looks like in practice, how its impact can be measured and whether current approaches can deliver the pace and scale of decarbonisation needed in a more fragmented global landscape.