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As investors, innovators, philanthropists, policymakers and corporate leaders descended on Builders Vision’s Markets in Motion event during 2026 Climate Week NYC, one thing was clear: there is momentum and renewed demand to accelerate the climate transition.
Set against the backdrop of a period of unprecedented, compounded volatility, the systems and structures we’ve relied on are shifting. This inflection point is showing up at the gas pump and grocery store; for farmers struggling to turn a profit; in our strained energy grid and the temperatures of our oceans; and in countless other ways. This dramatic change presents an opportunity to seize and shape the moment we are in. Builders Vision hosted discussions with leaders across sectors, investment and philanthropy to illuminate and test solutions that will drive more capital into the markets that are building the economy of tomorrow.
We are grateful to everyone who joined us. Here’s what we heard, where we see momentum and what comes next.
We aren’t facing one crisis. We’re facing several, stacked on top of each other: geopolitical shifts, trade tensions, an AI race, strained grids, rising costs and a warming planet. While we have grappled with many of them (or similar challenges) in the past, we’ve never had to contend with so many at once.
Ian Bremmer, Founder and President of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, put it plainly:
“Geopolitical recessions…those are long cycles. They happen when the rules of the road and the institutions and the architecture no longer align with the balance of power… and even though we see the cycle, we see the rupture; we have the uncertainty; the investment strategy is not one size fits all. And that makes it a lot harder for us collectively to navigate.”
There is no playbook for this unprecedented situation. But over the course of the day, Bremmer and others illustrated several bright spots for investors to leverage their capital in a way that produces both returns and resilience.
Across multiple discussions, one strategy kept surfacing: investing for resilience. Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, Managing Director and CEO of FSF Ventures and CEO of Food Systems for the Future, noted that supply chains used to prioritize efficiency above all else – but in the face of today’s geopolitical and climate challenges, companies (and investors) must now price both resilience and risk – and incorporate them into their operations against a “volatility premium.”
She described how even a subtle shift in language is driving conversations in the boardroom:
“We don’t talk about sustainability anymore. We talk about risk in our supply chains, and it’s pretty much the same thing as when we were talking about sustainability. The outcomes are actually the same, recognizing that there is value in having a different route to accessing the tools, the ingredients that are necessary to support the products.”
For example, Robin Burton, Director of Responsible Procurement at CBRE, noted that cleaner steel pitched as sustainability rarely moves – but pitched as a faster, more resilient way to get a data center online, it does.
One of the key means of increasing resilience is localizing and diversifying supply chains, from food and fertilizer to building materials and energy. Regional sourcing, processing, storage – while not necessarily top of mind for investors, Cousin pointed out that these “connective tissue” businesses all play key roles in hedging against the risks of long, complex value chains. From COVID-19 to the war in Ukraine, we’ve seen how crises can completely upend critical systems.
An article from earlier this year by Builders Vision’s James Lindsay, Director, Investments, captures this well: “The past 20 years rewarded efficiency at any cost; the next 20 will reward the ability to adapt and localize supply chains.”
Earlier this year, Builders Vision surveyed hundreds of investors, who told us that they see the energy transition as just as big of an investment opportunity over the long run as AI. Many of the leaders we assembled at Climate Week agreed: clean energy is the sector where a shift in markets has most clearly taken root. Bremmer called it “one of the most stabilizing, empowering technological trends in the world” as this resource becomes more localized, decentralized and even more affordable.
Chris Barnard, President of the center-right American Conservation Coalition, noted that:
“For the first time in a very long time, we have just an enormous amount of private capital that is hungry for new energy. If we align the stars, we can put that towards the high CapEx clean energy infrastructure that we struggle to fund in this country.”
This capital is aligned with popular opinion: about 70% of Americans want more clean energy, including nearly 60% of Republicans, according to James Dozier, Founding President of another leading center-right advocacy organization, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions. As increased investment generates a larger, more diversified supply of clean energy, demand is rising to meet it. In his words, “It’s clear that the popular choice and the affordable choice are becoming the same choice now.”
Still, there’s more work to be done to turn that momentum into lasting markets.
Mobilizing this capital starts with the right conversations. Builders Vision’s Founder and Executive Chairman, Lukas Walton, called on major investors and market participants to actively investigate more opportunities to increase resilience while meeting their risk-adjusted parameters.
“We are highlighting what is best in class and want to understand what other asset owners’ and managers’ concerns and considerations are so that we can drive participation. There are trillions of dollars here at Climate Week,” said Lukas Walton, Founder and Executive Chairman of Builders Vision. “We want to be able to speak to those audiences because markets need to be mobilized. That’s the potential that exists here.”
No single type of capital can move these markets alone. Philanthropy can take risks banks and private equity can’t, but it can’t close the funding gap. Policy needs to be durable. Investors need to see returns. Each innovation faces a different bottleneck, and each bottleneck calls for a different kind of capital, across oceans, energy, food and agriculture.
Through increased collaboration and coordination, investors can build a better understanding of what’s required to deploy capital in markets that need to be mobilized – surfacing the right opportunities to bring them to the table.
In addition to discussing these macrotrends, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work with relevant corporates, investors and experts through a series of working sessions across three sub-markets at or near a tipping point: green cement, plastics circularity and agroforestry. Participants worked through the specific barriers holding each market back and tested solutions to address them. Several common themes emerged:
As Matt Knott, Builders Vision’s Interim CEO, stated,
“We have to turn big ideas into investable opportunities for others, fund breakthrough solutions, scale what’s working, and bring more investors along with us because those who take the smart risks today will help shape the future and be rewarded for it tomorrow.”
To learn more about how Builders Vision is meeting this moment, follow us on LinkedIn or at buidersvision.com.