IESE Business School

Climate Action: The Growth Story of the 21st Century - Highlight

This is a highlights video for the Climate Action: The Growth Story of the 21st Century event, held at IESE on April 10th, which aims to bring together leading voices from economics, science, finance, and business to make the case that the climate transition is the defining economic opportunity of our time. Fabrizio Ferraro, Professor of Strategic Management and Director of the Institute for Sustainability Leadership at IESE Business School, framed the event around a core conviction: that climate action represented not a regulatory burden but the most significant business opportunity of the century. The keynote address was delivered by Lord Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. Lord Stern argued that repeated geopolitical crises, from the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s to the war in Ukraine, had demonstrated the profound strategic risks of fossil fuel dependency. He insisted that the costs of inaction far exceeded those of acting, and that investment was the central lever for driving the transition, pointing to concrete examples of efficiency gains, public health improvements, and urban productivity as proof that the economics were compelling. José Manuel Entrecanales Domecq, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ACCIONA, cautioned that the transition would not unfold in a linear or orderly fashion, describing the current moment as a mid-transition phase marked by uneven progress and imperfect decisions. He argued that the next phase would be defined by execution rather than vision, and identified five structural bottlenecks to address: infrastructure constraints, demand transformation, system stability, new dependencies, and capital allocation. Laia Alegret, Full Professor of Paleontology at the University of Zaragoza, provided a deep-time scientific perspective, noting that the pace and scale of current climate change was exceptional by any geological measure. She called on scientists to engage actively with policymakers and business leaders, and argued that the true goal of climate action was not to save the planet in the abstract, but to preserve the conditions on Earth that allow human life to thrive. Lola Solana Campins, President of the Instituto Español de Analistas and Head of European Small Caps at Santander Asset Management, stressed that the financial community bore a particular responsibility in steering the transition with discipline and long-term vision, acknowledging that short-term pressures remained a persistent obstacle for investors and companies alike. Learn more: https://www.iese.edu/faculty-research/climate-action-the-growth-story-of-the-21st-century/