Harnessing AI for action in sustainability 

A searing heatwave and a night of electrical storms set the scene for an action-packed Weber Shandwick event on the second day of London Climate Action Week (LCAW) 2026. In an interactive workshop, delegates from around the world joined us to ask the question: can AI be harnessed to drive impact on sustainability?

 

With the LCAW agenda rich with much-needed discussion on ethics, energy use and a just transition to an AI world, we gathered to focus on a practical next step: deepening our understanding of the technology and exploring how we can deploy it to drive real, meaningful impact.

 

Thanks in large part to the fantastic input from attendees – brilliant human minds from across the business, policy, academia and non-profit worlds – we captured five key takeaways that sustainability communicators should consider moving forward:

 

1. The sustainability communications playbook hasn’t been ripped up. Yes, we must evolve our channel choices, and we might need to adapt our campaign position. However, the rules of strong communications by-and-large remain the same: be authentic, specific and clear about your strengths and your challenges. Talk about tangible actions. Articulate a sustainability journey. Invite others to join it. Underpin everything you say and do with data, examples, initiatives, detail. Bring forward the human story. Don’t greenwash. The rules and best practices we’ve all learned are still true.

 

2. AI is an aid to overcome sustainability communications headwinds. Sustainability professionals were already wrestling with immense pressure before AI came into play – from small teams with data-heavy burdens to cynical audiences suspicious of greenwashing, alongside complex policy and reputational challenges. However, AI offers a practical path forward to alleviate some of these pressures. For example, by taking on burdensome data analysis, AI can free up more time for sustainability leaders’ strategic thinking. Or, as we experimented with in our session, our AI-powered personas can act as a swift sounding board to refine and improve sustainability strategies.

 

3. Humans must always be the start and end point. Human creativity is an irreplaceable part of the communications design process, because AI’s strength is also its limitation. While it can quickly and articulately understand patterns in large datasets, it by instinct leans towards the middle. In sustainability communications, this can provide assurance that a strategy is likely to land well with an audience, or that a channel choice is the right one. However, it is up to the human to decide: is this the moment for conformity, or for bravery? In this space, impact can and does come from standing out from the crowd.

 

4. Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. Interaction with AI is a conversation. If one prompt brings a certain response from an AI-powered persona (a consumer? a B2B customer? A sales colleague?), then challenge its thinking. Offer another idea. Be willing to evolve your ideas, be challenged, and use the outputs to inform your decision making.

 

5. Develop the tools to succeed. An ‘off the shelf’ LLM is likely not the most effective way to deploy AI into your workflows. Instead, look at how you can deploy bespoke AI tools and agents to make solving challenges more effective. For example, consider how AI can help message test through the creation of bespoke and reusable audience personas; look at how agents – best trained on the right policies and guidance documents – can protect against (potentially very costly) green claims slips; and think about the ways that both your wider teams, and their colleagues, can better use AI to upskill on developments in sustainability policy to inform their own projects.

 

These are uncertain times. While AI technology – and our understanding of the power of each model we have at our fingertips – evolves by the day, our event attendees shared a clear conviction: used smartly and strategically, these tools can be powerful enablers for effective storytelling and accelerated action.

 

At Weber Shandwick, we combine bespoke strategic sustainability comms consulting with cutting-edge technology to help brands navigate complex policy landscapes and build robust sustainability comms strategies.

 

As shared during our LCAW workshop, we can design secure, custom AI-powered audience personas to stress-test your narratives and refine your messaging. To book a live demo of our AI personas or to discuss our strategic sustainability comms consulting services, contact Graham Reid, Head of Sustainability, UK.