Partner Spotlight: EY on Climate Action, Resilience, and Munich Climate Week 2026

“Climate action, resilience, and future viability are directly connected. Munich Climate Week brings together the right players to turn climate ambition into concrete solutions.”

— Jens Haubensak, Partner, Sustainability Consulting, EY Germany

The professional services organisation, EY, is not only a partner and sponsor of the very first Munich Climate Week, but is also hosting various sessions on climate risk, resilience, and the “adaptation economy”, the emerging market around helping businesses and cities cope with climate impacts that can no longer be avoided, such as heat, drought, and flooding.

In the context of these events and the initiative as a whole, we spoke with Jens Haubensak, who is a Partner in Sustainability Consulting at EY Germany. He advises organisations on assessing climate risk, translating sustainability strategy into practice, and building resilient growth. In the interview, he explains why EY is getting involved as a founding partner and sponsor, how the organisation assesses its own climate footprint, and what lies on the road ahead.

What motivated EY to become a sponsor of the very first Munich Climate Week?

JH: Munich Climate Week brings together business, academia, policymakers, and civil society. This kind of cross-sector dialogue is exactly what is needed to accelerate effective climate action across society. That is why we are proud to support the inaugural Munich Climate Week as a founding partner. EY and MCW share a common ambition: to promote and amplify engagement, collaboration, and practical solutions for climate action.

For us, sustainability is not simply an environmental or compliance issue. It is closely linked to competitiveness, innovation, and long-term business success. At the same time, we recognise that the challenges ahead are too complex for any single organisation to address alone.

Munich Climate Week provides an open platform for collaboration and fresh perspectives. As a founding partner, we want to help bring people and organisations together and showcase practical solutions through our programme.

How do you assess EY's own impact on climate change today, and which aspects can you directly influence and change?

JH: Like every organisation, EY has an impact on the climate and the environment. We can influence this through decisions within our own operations as well as throughout our value chain. This includes areas such as the operation of our offices, employee mobility, and the procurement of energy, goods, and services. We provide transparency on these impacts through initiatives such as our publicly available sustainability reporting.

Our greatest opportunity to drive impact, however, lies in our work with clients. As a professional services organisation, we help businesses translate sustainability ambitions into concrete actions and successfully advance their transformation journeys. This can involve rethinking business models, strengthening supply chains, improving operational processes, and shaping investment decisions.

We apply the same expectations to ourselves. This commitment is reflected in our EcoVadis assessment, where EY achieved a score of 89 points, placing us among the top 1% of all companies assessed by EcoVadis over the past twelve months. EcoVadis independently evaluates sustainability performance across four key areas: environment, labour and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement.

In addition, EY's global EY Ripples programme enables our people to contribute their skills and expertise to support positive social and environmental impact. Through volunteering initiatives, they help create opportunities for young people, support entrepreneurs addressing environmental and societal challenges, and contribute to projects that advance environmental protection.

We believe sustainability is a core component of resilience and long-term business success. That is why our Munich Climate Week programme is centred around the theme ‘Well Prepared for the Climate Future: Strategies for Resilient Growth’. Together with businesses and stakeholders, we will explore how sustainability can become a foundation for long-term competitiveness.

How does EY's advisory work amplify climate impact beyond its own business operations?

JH: The challenges of climate change can only be addressed collectively. That is why we work closely with companies and experts to integrate sustainability into strategic and operational decision-making.

Our work includes supporting organisations in decarbonising value chains, adopting new technologies, and improving emissions transparency. The goal is to turn ambitious commitments into concrete actions and measurable progress.

During Munich Climate Week, we will explore these topics in a highly practical way through a variety of sessions. These include discussions on managing physical climate risks and strengthening resilience, such as “Focus on Infrastructure: From Climate Risks to Resilience” and “Resilience over Reaction – Managing Climate Risks in Practice”. Other sessions address supplier engagement and sustainability data management, including “Scope 3 Challenge: Successfully Engaging Suppliers and Managing Product-Related Sustainability Data”. We will also cover circular economy approaches and carbon management in sessions such as “Closing the Carbon Loop: How Carbon Capture and Utilization Enable Circular Carbon Economy” and “Circularity and Advocacy as Key Enablers for Climate Transition”. In addition, we will examine the role of data, technology, and artificial intelligence in sustainability through “Sustainability Data, Technology & AI – Unlocking the Full Potential of Sustainability Data through Technology and AI”.

These discussions demonstrate how sustainability goals can be translated into actionable solutions. They represent only a selection of the many topics that EY will be presenting and discussing throughout Munich Climate Week.

A particular strength of our work is the ability to bring together experience from different industries and transformation projects. Successful approaches can be scaled more quickly and applied across organisations. This creates a multiplier effect that extends beyond any single company. That is where we see our contribution: not only supporting transformation, but helping to accelerate its implementation.

What lies ahead for EY on this journey, and which partners would you like to engage to accelerate progress and drive implementation?

JH: In many organisations, the goals have already been set. The key challenge of the coming years will be to deliver transformation at the scale and speed required. This means addressing sustainability, climate resilience, and economic competitiveness together rather than treating them as separate priorities.

Achieving this requires even closer collaboration between business, policymakers, academia, and civil society. Many innovations originate in research institutions and startups, but their full potential can only be realised when they are adopted and scaled more broadly. Equally important are stable policy and regulatory frameworks that support climate action and adaptation, as well as financing models that make the necessary investments commercially viable.

At the same time, reducing emissions must remain the highest priority. The systematic decarbonisation of business models, supply chains, and operational processes remains the most effective way to limit the scale of climate change and reduce future adaptation needs.

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that society must also prepare for impacts that can no longer be avoided. This is where climate adaptation becomes critical. Around challenges such as heat, drought, and flooding, an entirely new economic sector is emerging, often referred to as the “adaptation economy”. The concept reflects a growing recognition that resilience should not be viewed only as a cost, but as a source of value creation. Organisations that invest early can not only avoid costly disruptions but also unlock new products, services, and business models. Some analyses suggest that this market could reach trillions of dollars by 2050.

Ultimately, we hope to see organisations view sustainability not merely as an obligation, but as a strategic opportunity. Platforms such as Munich Climate Week play an important role by bringing together people and organisations that are committed to driving meaningful change together.

Thank you to Jens Haubensak and the team at EY Germany for their insights and for their commitment as a founding partner and sponsor of Munich Climate Week 2026. The conversation shows how closely climate action, corporate resilience, and business success are now connected – and how much momentum builds when business, academia, policymakers, and civil society sit down at the same table.

Curious to learn more? At Munich Climate Week 2026, EY is running several of its own sessions under the theme “Well Prepared for the Climate Future: Strategies for Resilient Growth”, covering climate risk, scope 3 decarbonisation, circular economy, and the connection between sustainability and AI. For the full programme, visit munichclimateweek.com.