By Lindsay Boettiger
Penn hosted a Sept. 23, 2026, plenary session during Climate Week NYC. Pictured here are Witold Henisz, Lutz Morgenstern, Michael Apicelli, Heather Boushey, Jessica Olson, Sanya Carley, Stephan Nicoleau, and Steve Decina.
On Wednesday, September 23, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Climate Summit took place in New York City, coinciding with the 81st session of the UN General Assembly and Climate Week NYC. Amid growing climate urgency due to the overshoot of the 1.5°C warming target, and uncertainty around global energy security, UN Secretary-General António Guterres assembled the meeting of leaders from around the globe to “accelerate climate action and advance a just transition,” as he enters the final months of his second five-year term.
Throughout his tenure as Secretary-General, Guterres has called climate change the “defining issue of our time,” and has championed climate action and an end to the fossil fuel era. In his address to the meeting on September 23, his fervor was unchanged, asserting that “the world is crying out for climate justice — in mitigation, in adaptation and in finance. We must answer that call with action, and we don’t have a moment to lose.” Much of his address centered on the detriment of fossil fuel dependency and the urgency at which humanity must refocus our attention on renewable energy. He called on every country to “raise their ambition,” despite their differing economic circumstances, and to “deliver – and then overdeliver,” on efforts to mitigate climate change and fossil fuel emissions. In contrast, in his 2025 address to the UN General Assembly, Donald Trump called climate change the “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
The day before Guterres’ address, on Tuesday, September 22, as part of Climate Week NYC, Penn Climate, alongside 11 Penn partners, convened a group of panelists and speakers for a plenary event titled “The New Investment Map: Competitiveness, Climate Resilience, and the Future of Clean Energy Investment” at the Penn Club of New York. Katherine Baillie, Penn Climate’s Director of University and Community Engagement, was in attendance and describes the event:
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island
Against a stately backdrop of wood paneling and stained glass at the Penn Club of New York, Penn convened a distinguished group of speakers and panelists to scrutinize finance and investment in clean energy. Vice Provost for Climate Sanya Carley welcomed the audience of more than 130 guests and set the stage for the event to follow, underscoring the geopolitical, technological, and climate disruptions shaping the flow of capital in a complex global landscape. Carley welcomed honored guest Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who noted that “the climate crisis has moved from the science department to the economics department,” with climate impacts being felt in everyday citizens’ real lives—in their utility bills or home insurance cancelation notices. He urged political leaders to harness that reality to tell powerful stories that convey the salience of climate change.
Rachel Kyte, the United Kingdom’s Special Representative for Climate
Following Sen. Whitehouse’s remarks, attendees heard from another climate champion, Rachel Kyte, the United Kingdom’s Special Representative for Climate, who joined the event through video remarks as United Nations’ duties prevented her from attending in person. After clearly laying out the challenges— overshooting the 1.5°C warming target, soaring fuel prices, and a record of El Nino on our doorstep—she highlighted some ways forward. To close access gaps in energy infrastructure, for example, Kyte noted that mixing public and private financing presents a promising roadmap for creating a modern and durable grid, as does encouraging cross-boundary cooperation and stimulating an effective carbon pricing scheme in more places around the world. Combining those tactics would “provide security and safety and make a shallow and short overshoot of our 1.5-degree target,” she closed.
Witold Henisz, Vice Dean and Faculty Director of Wharton’s Impact, Value, and Sustainable Business Initiative, then moderated a diverse panel discussion with representatives spanning the public and private sectors: Stephan Nicoleau, a Penn alumnus and co-founder of FullCycle Climate Partners and Chair of the Board for Project Drawdown; Michael Apicelli, Head of Secretariat of the Climate Club, an intergovernmental forum focused on decarbonization; Jessica Olson, Head of Global Affairs at clean energy technology company Topsoe; Catherine Goldberg, Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab; and Lutz Morgenstern, Head of Division for Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Through a lively conversation exploring both policy and market drivers of the clean energy transition, the panel pointed to success stories as well as bottlenecks in scaling new energy technologies, highlighting the need for both multilateral coordination as well as collaboration across the public and private spheres. Heather Boushey, Professor of Practice with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, offered a closing synthesis of the event, which, among other takeaways, noted the need for significant capital investments to make a clean energy economy possible, while also driving home the need to involve and communicate with local communities to ensure the trust and on-the-ground knowledge can speed the transition.
After the event, Stephen Decina, Executive Director of Penn Climate, told a group of attendees that “Climate Week NYC is an incredible opportunity for Penn to host high-level convenings, make our presence felt at the numerous events around the city, and foster new collaborations with peer Universities and other global partners. By hosting what amounts to the first whole-of-Penn plenary event this year, keynoted by a sitting U.S. Senator and the UK Special Representative for Climate, we’ve put a stake in the ground and have committed to showing up in as formidable and robust a way as possible in the future. We were also able to bring up a sizeable student cohort this year, and next year, we want it to be even larger, because at the end of the day our students are our most precious resource. Exposing them to these plenary and other major events in NYC gives them a chance to be in the rooms where conversations are had that can change the course of the world.”
Thank you to Penn Climate’s partners: Kleinman Center for Energy Policy; Penn Center for Climate Resilience; Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media; Penn Development Research Initiative’s DevLab; Penn Global; Penn Institute for Urban Research; Penn Venture Lab; Penn Washington; Perry World House; Wharton Climate Center; Wharton Impact, Value, and Sustainable Business Initiative
Lindsay Boettiger is currently a Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture student at the Weitzman School of Design.