The Future of Carbon Finance — Practitioner Working Session (London Climate Action Week)
The Future of Carbon Finance
Practitioner Working Session | London Climate Action Week
Following a practitioner workshop convened during New York Climate Week 2025, a group of leading legal and finance experts came together to tackle a central question:
What will it take to connect carbon markets with commercial and institutional capital at scale?
Over the past several months, that collaboration has evolved into a practitioner-focused book, The Future of Carbon Finance, which explores the market infrastructure being created to move from highly bespoke transactions toward more standardized, investable, and scalable approaches.
Recently, many of the book's coauthors participated in a series of intensive working sessions at Stanford University to refine the core thesis, strengthen cohesion across chapters, and challenge key assumptions. Stanford's involvement has helped bring additional rigor, objectivity, and interdisciplinary thinking to the work.
As we move toward publication and launch during New York Climate Week in September, we would like to bring together a select group of leading practitioners to discuss the book's key themes, test and "fine tune" emerging recommendations, and gather industry feedback before the manuscript enters final technical review.
This is an invitation-only working session designed to facilitate candid discussion among practitioners actively shaping the future of carbon markets and climate finance.
Session Structure
10:30am (30 min) — Introduction to the Book & Key Themes
Cheri Sugal
Overview of the book's core thesis, contributing authors, major themes emerging across chapters, and key questions where industry input is being sought.
11:00am (40 min x 2) — Breakout Roundtables by Chapter Theme
Small-group working sessions led by coauthors and contributors focused on the major themes of the book. We will break into groups and each co-author will give a 5-10 minute introduction to the key themes in the chapter. Participants switch groups after 40 minutes providing each with an opportunity to discuss 2 of the themes.
Chapter 1 – Financing Instruments
Sam Lampert, Greg Adams
Chapter 2 – Title Infrastructure
Benoît Clément
Chapter 3 – Due Diligence for Financing
Matthew Brady
Chapter 4 – Bankable Offtake Agreements
Peter Mayer
Chapter 5 – Standardized Contracts for Commercial Financing
Peter Zaman
Chapter 6 – Insurance & Risk Allocation
James Kench
Chapter 7 – Project Finance Structures & SPVs
Anna Hickey
Participants will be invited to provide feedback on recommendations, identify areas for "fine tuning" for additional market alignment, and help strengthen the final manuscript.
12:20pm (40 min) — Read-Outs & Group Discussion
Roundtable leads summarize key takeaways, points of debate, and recommended next steps (5 minutes each).
To maintain a highly interactive and practitioner-focused environment, attendance will be limited to approximately 45 participants.
We look forward to a thoughtful, candid, and solutions-oriented discussion focused on one of the most important questions facing the market today: how do we build the infrastructure necessary to unlock commercial and institutional capital at scale?