Columbia Business Magazine: "Closing the Climate Knowledge Gap"
by Jonathan Sperling
By pairing research with compelling media, Columbia Business School's Climate Knowledge Initiative is helping climate innovations reach the boardroom and beyond.
When Columbia Business School Professor Gernot Wagner found himself standing on the factory floor of a cement startup, it wasn't a typical day for a climate economist.
Alongside Emmy-winning 60 Minutes producer David Gelber—co-creator with Joel Bach of the climate documentary series Years of Living Dangerously–Wagner was filming a series of short documentaries aimed at bringing the next generation of climate solutions to life.
Wagner’s work comes at a time when the climate policy pendulum is swinging back hard in Washington, DC, and beyond. These policy uncertainties magnify the already daunting challenges facing many business leaders: navigating the complexities of climate technologies, economic models, and the implementation strategies needed to adapt their business strategies to the many climate risks companies face.
Enter CBS Climate Knowledge Initiative (CKI), which was launched to close that gap—fast. The initiative, supported by the School’s Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change, provides business leaders with the curated, actionable knowledge to pick investable and scalable green technologies while unapologetically flagging areas where business and public interests diverge.
Launched in 2024, CKI is translating technical climate knowledge into something rare in today’s fragmented sustainability landscape: clear, investable, and actionable insights.
“CKI’s mission is to translate technical knowledge—the sort of thing universities typically focus on—into useful, investable, scalable information,” says Wagner, CKI’s faculty director. His on-the-ground work is just one example of how CKI is trying to get valuable climate solutions and data in front of leaders who can make a difference.
Aside from distilling research into accessible case studies and media, CKI also identifies and engages with startups and industry stakeholders through formal events. All these efforts serve to accelerate the development and deployment of lower-emission climate technologies that can replace incumbent, high-emissions systems within the next decade.
An Industry Catalyst
Tackling key, high-emission sectors can have an outsized impact on solving the climate crisis and that begins with getting information in front of these sectors’ leaders. While access to high-quality data on climate technology is often costly for businesses, CKI offers a unique open-access model: Its background decks, abbreviated business case studies, and key insights are all available free of cost. The model is woven into the fabric of the Tamer Institute’s core mission, which is to educate business leaders looking to address social and environmental challenges.
“CKI’s mission is very much unique within academia. This is rigorous research conveyed in easily digestible formats, including the sort of decks you’d expect from top management consultancies,” Wagner says. “This is not something typically accessible without paying for it.”
CKI’s case-study approach allows academia to drive action. Take the cement sector, one of the most carbon-intensive industries on the planet, for example. Early in its creation, CKI convened a workshop bringing together leaders from startups like Brimstone and Sublime Systems with executives from global incumbents like Cemex. That workshop informed not just an internal knowledge exchange but a suite of public-facing materials, such as an MBA case study published in the Financial Times; three videos with the YEARS Project, a nonprofit media organization focused on climate storytelling; and a multi-slide investor summary deck—all aimed at accelerating adoption and understanding across stakeholder groups.
This full-spectrum storytelling—from boardroom briefings to classroom discussion to media amplification—makes CKI unique. The initiative not only identifies promising solutions but also the connective tissue that helps those solutions to scale.
On Location
On the road, in factories, and inside the laboratories of climate startups lies one of CKI’s most ambitious storytelling efforts to date. It is there that Wagner traveled to alongside Gelber to produce a new series of short documentary films aimed at bringing the most promising climate solutions to life on screen—and in front of the leaders who have the power to make a change.
Each short film offers a vivid, accessible look at high-potential startups working in hard-to-decarbonize sectors. The first two installments feature Brimstone and Sublime Systems, two companies developing radically cleaner ways to produce cement. A third video spotlights Stegra, a Swedish startup aiming to reinvent steel manufacturing.
The video series reflects CKI’s broader strategy: meeting different audiences where they are. While slide decks and case studies effectively reach industry insiders and decision-makers, these short films speak to a broader group of public-business leaders, policymakers, and general audiences hungry for solutions.
The featured startups emerged from CKI’s rigorous research pipeline, having first been vetted through sector-specific workshops and structured analysis. This multi-format approach isn’t just about education—it’s about acceleration. By connecting high-quality research with effective storytelling, CKI aims to shape investment flows, influence corporate strategy, and inform public policy. It’s a model that treats storytelling not as an afterthought but as a strategic tool for change
As CKI continues to work with influential stakeholders, the films help define what a modern, mission-driven academic initiative can look like: rigorous, credible, and unafraid to speak to a wider world. Unlike any other academic initiative of its kind, however, CKI’s success hinges on making itself obsolete.
Working Toward Obsolescence
The stakes of CKI’s work are nothing short of monumental. The cement industry alone, for example, must replace 3,000 highly polluting kilns to go from being responsible for almost 10 percent of global annual carbon emissions to being part of the solution. That kind of transformation requires an unprecedented speed of technology adoption—and every year counts.
CKI is playing a huge role in that effort by identifying technologies on the cusp of commercialization, convening key stakeholders, and creating knowledge products that help both incumbents and innovators move faster. Whether it’s connecting startup founders with Fortune 500 CFOs at industry workshops, producing captivating media content, or educating the next generation of climate finance leaders, CKI is focused on catalyzing action at every level.
In the immediate future, Wagner hopes CKI becomes deeply embedded in the most pivotal climate sectors—cement, steel, aviation, and agriculture— and technologies from solar and batteries to geothermal and nuclear, playing a key role in steering pivotal investments into real solutions.
By the end of the next decade, however, if all goes according to plan, CKI will have worked itself out of its current mission. The innovations it champions today will be mainstream, the investment pathways well-worn, and the public’s understanding far broader. CKI’s legacy will not be in its longevity but in the momentum it helped create, says Wagner.
That is because impact is measured differently for CKI. In how quickly critical climate technologies can move from niche innovations to global standards. In how many billions of dollars are redirected toward scaling up solutions like low-carbon cement, green steel, and next-generation batteries. In whether the world can stay on track to meet its climate goals by the middle of the century.
This fact is perhaps what sets CKI apart from the most traditional academic initiatives—its success is designed to make itself unnecessary. For Wagner and the CKI team, the program is not looking to build permanence, but rather it’s building a bridge to a future where its work is no longer needed.
Published by Columbia Business Magazine (23 July 2025).
