Decarbonization through a CFO's lens

“Carbon reduction is important. But right now, we're focused on cost reduction."

This sentence ends more sustainability initiatives than budget cuts do. And it points to a real structural problem: most decarbonization plans live in the sustainability team, while the decisions that determine whether they happen live in finance.

Webinar 1 was about building a credible decarbonization plan from the bottom up: quantifying reduction measures, prioritizing by cost and impact, creating a roadmap that holds. This session flips the perspective entirely.

Because here's what most sustainability teams underestimate: the real gate to decarbonization progress isn't ambition, data quality, or even regulation. It's capital allocation. And capital allocation is the CFO's game.

In this second session, we bring in the financial architecture layer — what it actually takes to connect your CO₂ reduction plan with integrated business planning, scenario modeling, and investment decisions at board level. We're joined by Prof. Dr. Ali Arnaout, Ex-CFO of AIDA Cruises, who has navigated exactly this challenge at scale.

Questions we'll work through together:

• How do you make sure that investment decisions actually account for carbon costs — before the asset is on the balance sheet?
• How do you surface fossil fuel exposure and carbon pricing risk in a way that finance leadership can act on?
• How do you integrate carbon costs into long-term asset planning and CapEx cycles?
• What does it take to move decarbonization from the sustainability report into the management review?
• Where does the CFO toolkit end and the sustainability toolkit begin — and who owns the overlap?

What you'll take away:

• A clear framework for translating CO₂ reduction plans into the language of financial decision-making
• Practical approaches to carbon cost integration in investment and asset planning
• How to structure the conversation with your CFO or head of controlling so sustainability moves from cost center to strategic lever
• Why scenario planning on carbon pricing changes how you build a business case — and how to do it

Stick around for the live Q&A: Prof. Dr. Arnaout will take questions directly. This is a rare opportunity to put real finance-strategy challenges in front of someone who has sat in the CFO seat of a major industrial operator.