AIB has announced the keynote speakers for its tenth AIB Sustainability Conference, the theme of which is ”A decade of impact”. Over the last ten years, the annual conference has sought to start conversations and inspire action among Irish businesses, and this year’s keynote speakers will share their experience from their considerable achievements with AIB’s audience. Former Vice President and founder and Chair of The Climate Reality Project Al Gore will be opening the 2027 event, which takes place on Thursday February 11thfrom 9am to 1pm, and Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres will close the event.
People can join the conference online for free and need to register at aib.ie/sustainabilityconference.
For a decade the AIB Sustainability Conference has showcased leading international guests and given voice to Irish companies that have embraced and embedded sustainable practices. Previous speakers have included Mary Robinson, Jacinda Ardern and Edward Norton and in 2020, Christiana Figueres. AIB customers and Irish businesses also share their sustainability experiences at the conference.
AIB Chief Executive, Colin Hunt, said: “With AIB’s tenth Sustainability Conference we’re not only celebrating a decade of impact, we’re helping chart a course of impact for decades to come. And it’s only through impact that we can ensure a more sustainable tomorrow for our own and future generations.
It’s a huge honour for AIB to welcome Al Gore and welcome back Christiana Figueres. We know their experiences will inspire Irish customers and businesses on their sustainability journeys, and we look forward to sharing further guest speakers in the coming months, including Irish companies who can tell their green transition stories.”
AIB is proud to partner with the Irish Government in becoming the primary sponsor of Ireland’s first-even national pavilion at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye from November 9th to 20th.
One of AIB’s three strategic priorities is greening our business, and we have done this by the following:
- Providing green and transition lending since setting our Climate Action target in 2019 of reaching €30 billion by 2030. €26bn or 87% of the target has been deployed since 2019.
- Green and transition lending of €3.1bn accounted for 41% of new lending in the first six months of 2026. Green mortgages represented 60% of new mortgage lending.
- Our Climate & Infrastructure Capital division delivered strong new lending of €1.2bn in the first six months of this year, reflecting the Group’s continued commitment to funding the transition to renewable energy and social infrastructure.
- Providing finance to Irish housebuilders for residential development in H1 2026 supporting the construction of over 10,000 homes.
- This year we issued our tenth green bond, with €8.95 billion raised from the issuance of ESG (green and social) bonds to date.
- AIB is primary sponsor of the first-ever Irish National Pavilion at COP31, and will take part in the Finance and Cooperation strand of the programme
- We have reopened the SBCI Growth and Sustainability Loan Scheme to help farmers and SMEs in Ireland to invest, adapt and grow, enabling more sustainable growth.
- In 2022 AIB became the first Irish business to sign a corporate purchase power agreement.
Al Gore
Former Vice President Al Gore is the founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit devoted to solving the climate crisis, a founding partner and chairman of Generation Investment Management, and a co-founder of Climate TRACE. He is also a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a member of Apple Inc.’s board of directors, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees.
Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1982 and to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the 45th vice president of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.
He is the author of the #1 New York Times best-sellers “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The Assault on Reason,” the NYT best-sellers “Earth in the Balance,” “Our Choice: A Plan To Solve the Climate Crisis,” “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change,” and most recently, The New York Times best-seller “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.”
He is the subject of the documentary movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won two Oscars in 2006 — and a second documentary in 2017, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.” In 2007, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.”
Christiana Figueres
Christiana Figueres is a Costa Rican citizen and an internationally recognized leader on climate change. She was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010 to 2016.
During her tenure at the UNFCCC, Ms. Figueres brought together national and sub-national governments, corporations and activists, financial institutions and NGOs to jointly deliver the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, in which 195 sovereign nations agreed on a collaborative path forward to limit future global warming to well below 2°C, and strive for 1.5°C, in order to protect the most vulnerable. For this achievement Ms.Figueres has been credited with forging a new brand of collaborative diplomacy and received multiple awards.
Since then, Ms. Figueres has continued to accelerate the global response to climate change. Today she is the co-founder of Global Optimism, co-host of the podcast Outrage + Optimism and is the co-author of “The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimists’ Guide to the Climate Crisis.
Ms. Figueres sits on multiple executive and advisory boards and is a frequent public speaker and media commentator. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the London School of Economics. She lives in Costa Rica and has two daughters.