Top six takeaways from the SmartCitiesWorld Cities Climate Action Summit 2025

This article is part of LGIU’s Future Local Lab – a holistic programme of resources aimed at helping you to prepare for and respond to the emerging challenges facing local government everywhere.

Now in its third year, this year’s Summit is the biggest to date. It has become the flagship event of London Climate Week and the only event focused on the role of local government. We’ve outlined our top takeaways, highlighting some of the inspiration, innovation, and expertise that were on show from the 70+ speakers across the two days.

Background

The Cities Climate Action Summit is an annual event dedicated to discussing how cities around the globe can drive change.

Now in its third year, the Summit has become the flagship event of London Climate Week and is also the only event focused on the role of local government. Held over two days – with both a virtual day and an in-person day at London’s historic County Hall – the event brings together a global audience of climate, technology, finance, policy, and energy professionals to teach and hear the latest in climate advancements.

This year’s Summit was the biggest to date, and in this briefing, we’ve outlined our top takeaways, highlighting some of the inspiration, innovation and expertise that was on show from the 70+ speakers across the two days.

Why is the Climate Action Summit so important?

We’ve written before about our partnership with Smart Cities World and why we are committed to supporting events like the Climate Action Summit.

Set up in recognition of the critical part that cities and other urban areas play in tackling climate change, the Summit aims to strengthen the role of cities in global climate mechanisms.

The crux of it is that towns and cities are crucial when it comes to building climate resilience and achieving net zero targets. Already, 55% of the world’s population live in urban areas, and this is expected to increase to 68% by 2050, and cities currently account for over 70% of global CO2 emissions. But despite this, towns and cities are not currently formally embedded in the decision-making at the annual UN ‘Conference of Parties’ (COP) climate change summits.

The purpose of the Summit is to help bridge this gap – by bringing cities together, inspiring action, and giving cities a louder voice at the negotiating table.

Top six takeaways

1. Change is happening

We heard first-hand evidence of how this is changing at the Summit. In her keynote address, Cllr Susan Aitken, the Leader of LGIU Scotland Member Glasgow City Council, recalled the COP26 Summit in Glasgow in 2021, saying that the big positive that came out of this particular Summit was the recognition that cities ‘had mobilised,’ and were the ones ‘delivering the momentum.’ We will be covering Cllr Aitken’s keynote and Glasgow’s journey on climate action in more detail in the coming months, so watch this space for an upcoming article.

Connected to this, in 2024, the City of Liverpool in northwest England was announced as the World’s First UN Accelerator City. Under this programme, public and private partners and UN organisations will work together to trial projects to tackle climate change with the film, TV, events and music industries using a People, Place, Policy framework.

1. Film, music, and TV can educate, inspire and empower people that may be disengaged from this topic.
2. Place involves building infrastructure (i.e. improving green mobility infrastructure across the city),
3. and Policy would be looking more widely at projects like creating a land use framework.2

2. A set of city climate resilience priorities were identified

A key outcome of this year’s event was the agreement of a set of city climate resilience priorities. Summit attendees voted over the course of the two days, with the following being identified as the key priorities for city action:

• Policy: Require climate risk assessments for all new urban planning and infrastructure projects (41%).
• Finance: Build fiscal and institutional capacity of local governments (43%).
• Technology: Intelligent nature-based solutions for urban environments (42%).
• Mobility: Stronger and safer public transport networks (40%).
• Energy: Support innovation from tech to nature-based solutions to infrastructure to people-centred initiatives (47%).
• Built environment: Develop policies to strengthen the value of retaining and repurposing buildings and of reusing construction/demolition materials within the same city/region/country (41%).

Importantly, these agreed priorities will now form the basis of a city-based climate action campaign in the run-up to COP30 in Brazil in November. This is another example of how the Summit is delivering action and change.

3. The importance of climate finance

We also wrote about this in our coverage of last year’s Summit. For us at LGIU, and everyone involved with local government, it is reassuring to see that the Summit identified the critical importance of this for local government – with the key finance priority agreed as being to “Build fiscal and institutional capacity of local governments.”

Reflecting on this point Mary Kerr, Glasgow City Council’s Climate Finance Manager, said:

“There needs to be an innovative investment funding mechanism explored. These mechanisms need to allow a percentage of funds to help the councils prepare investable projects, whilst providing a more simplified pathway to full investment.”

We’ll be returning to the topic soon when we speak again with Mary to hear more about her experience in this area, so stay tuned for this.

4. New public-private partnerships are being forged

Sadiq Currimbhoy (Head of Sustainability, Vulpes Investment Management) spoke about how crucial it is for local government and the private sector to engage with each other and build effective partnerships and build credibility between partners.

He said that from the local government perspective, what’s important is moving from a project to project view to a portfolio of projects to attract investment. From the private sector side, he said that it’s understandable that local governments are politically driven organisations, and the outcome of these projects is to support communities and make them resilient.

5. New electric vehicle partnership

Electric vehicles will be a key part of the energy transition. In turn, the Summit included a panel discussion with deputy mayors and transport leads from cities across Europe and North America on how public-private partnerships can improve air quality and provide more accessible transport. As part of this, the organisation C40 Cities, who work with 96 cities around the world, announced a new partnership with Uber to accelerate electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

Uber has been surveying drivers since 2021 on their willingness to switch to an EV. They reported that for the first time since the survey began, access to charging has become the top issue preventing drivers in the US and UK from going electric, overtaking the cost of EVs.

The C40/Uber partnership will focus on London in the UK, along with Boston and Phoenix in the US, and is projected to benefit over 55,000 Uber drivers who currently lack access to affordable and convenient charging, through technical support, research, and policy advocacy.

As part of this initiative, Uber has also launched a new Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Estimator (EVIE) tool, which will give cities access to EV charging demand data from Uber drivers in order to support EV charger planning.

6. Technology can help to turn vision into action

Across the two days, we heard many innovative ways in which technology is being used by local leaders to take targeted action and make informed decisions. Digital Twins are an example of this. They are defined by McKinsey as:

“A digital replica of a physical object, person, system, or process, contextualized in a digital version of its environment. Digital twins can help many kinds of organizations simulate real situations and their outcomes, ultimately allowing them to make better decisions”.

These tools can be used by cities, local leaders & decision makers to empower them to identify gaps in provision,  areas that need intervention to build climate resilience and can be used to simulate the impacts of various interventions – this can be used for meaningful community engagement when proposing changes to the public realm. BizzTech, a Climate Change Action Summit partner, has developed the ‘UkraineVerse’ in partnership with the Mayors Club Ukraine, Economy of Trust Ukraine, Mayors of Europe, and Hafen City University in Hamburg. This digital platform aims to marry technological innovation with local leadership to help drive forward an informed approach to rebuilding Ukraine’s infrastructure. NVIDIA has also developed their ‘Climate in a Bottle’ project – a world-first generative AI foundation model designed to help us understand, predict and mitigate the effects of global climate change at an incredibly high resolution.

We heard from Steven Wilding (Head of Climate) about the borough’s ongoing work to meet their target of being a Net Zero Council by 2030 and the implementation of their Air Quality Action Plan. They are using Breathe London air quality sensors across the borough to build up a strong data set at a hyperlocal level. Steven emphasised that “Data is power as it helps you plan”, and these sensors are identifying where targeted interventions are required and help to prioritise investment.

The key to utilising these tools effectively was summarised well in the panel discussion about Digital Twins. These are not a silver bullet and require a people-centric approach when making decisions about urban development. We’ll be covering some more examples of digital twins in practice across local government soon in an upcoming briefing, so do keep an eye out.

Looking forward

This year’s Summit reinforced the critical work of cities on climate action.

For the first time, the Summit also delivered an agreed set of city climate action priorities that will now be a focus in discussions and negotiations at COP30 in Brazil. As stated above, this includes a priority to ‘Build fiscal and institutional capacity of local governments.’

Across the two days, we heard from over 70 speakers from diverse cities all around the world. Chris Cooke, the CEO of Smart Cities World, summed it up as follows, saying:

“Progress happens when cities come together – across borders, sectors, and communities – to learn from each other, pool resources, and amplify impact. The network we’ve built here is not just for today; it’s a platform for ongoing cooperation.”

Next year’s Cities Climate Action Summit is free to attend and will take place in London on 23rd – 24th June 2026.

To delve further into any of the initiatives highlighted here, you can sign up for free updates from Smart Cities World. You can also register here to catch up with any of the sessions and panels from the virtual day.

Join our next event with the Smart Cities World team – an AI-focused Future Local panel scheduled for 08:30 – 10:00 (BST) on 23 October. LGIU members can book your place here.

Explore LGIU’s new Future Local Lab – a holistic programme of resources aimed at helping you to prepare for and respond to the emerging challenges facing local government everywhere.