So f*cking what... you create some positive impact, but cannot pay the bills. We need to hijack the tools of capitalism to create resilient impact for all... these badass leaders are doing it.

The Climate Heist. 14th Dublin CCC (WOW). The Sugar Club. 14 April 2026.

Only at the Climate Cocktail Club do entrepreneurs, investors and a creative legends sit in the same room and collectively agree that capitalism's playbook needs to be stolen, rewritten and deployed — for good. Wicklow Wolf or Cocktail in hand. Tang food in the other (or another drink if so inclined). The audience stole the night with new ideas, connections and collaborations kicking off-a-plenty. FOMO - you bet. It was standing room only.

“Leaders exist, the movement exists, radical ideas and unradical actions exist... we just need to suck ourselves out of silos and into the world of systems to unlock the potential for impact at scale. Oh, with a bit of live music, cocktails and a lively crowd too!" Tom Popple - CEO-Founder, Climate Cocktail Club

Jack McHugh opened proceedings the only way a guitar-slinging, songwriting animator from Kilkenny should — with a set that made the room feel both nostalgic and restless at the same time. Cocktails poured. Wicklow Wolf beers cracked open — B Corp certified, because even the beer has standards. Tang food circulated. By 7pm the energy in the place was already running ahead of schedule and the back wall had filled with people who hadn't found a seat and weren't leaving anyway.

Heather Griffin and Patrick Mulvihill then pulled the room somewhere else entirely. Their immersive audio-visual piece — drawn from the Living Rhythms & Dinnseanchas project — was the kind of creative intervention that defies recap. You had to be there. It was genuinely a emotion moving exploration of nature, life, loss, change and expectation. A powerful storytelling of the last pair of Curlews in County Kerry, told by the man who loved and now a landscape that longs for them (90% decline in Curlews since 1970s in Ireland - that's the cost of a system that's got it wrong).

Lesley O'Connor — Founder of Trifecta Energy — set the scene with a fireside by host Tom Popple that set the frame for the evening and it was the talk of the night for many.

What makes Lesley compelling isn't just what she's built. It's why she built it. Her path into renewable energy wasn't a career pivot or a market calculation — it came from a deeper reckoning with what kind of world she wanted to operate in and what she felt responsible for shaping. That personal conviction, worn without apology, is rare in a sector that can default to technocratic language and financial abstraction. Lesley speaks from somewhere more honest than that.

But she isn't sentimental about it. The renewable energy sector in Ireland is in a critical window and she knows it. The grid needs to grow. The planning system needs to catch up. The finance needs to move faster and smarter. The community relationships need to be built properly, not retrofitted after the fact. Lesley's mission — the thing that drives her through the hard yards — is to supercharge this sector while there is still time to do it right. Not just to build projects, but to build the conditions in which the right projects can get done at the pace the climate requires.

She was frank about the structural friction: policy lag, grid constraints, the gap between ambition in government statements and the operational reality on the ground for developers trying to bring capacity online. And she was equally clear that none of that is a reason to slow down. If anything, it's a reason to push harder, to get better at navigating the system and to build the coalitions that make change faster.

The room was rapt. This is what it looks like when commercial ambition and personal conviction arrive in the same body, speaking the same language.

Aoife O'Leary CEO and Founder of Opportunity Green arrived with a brisk, surgical 10 minutes on the power of law as a lever for climate action — and how chronically it goes unused. As an international climate lawyer who has spent years navigating the gap between ambition and obligation, Aoife made a compelling and slightly maddening case: the legal architecture exists, the tools are there and we collectively keep failing to pick them up.

If your climate strategy doesn't include a legal dimension, it's incomplete. She made that very hard to argue with. A lively Q&A with Tom followed unpacking the headlines and call to action. Aoife was a highlight of the night for many and for a cohort an activist awakening occurred!

David Scanlon of Resolve Partners (and likely CCC superfan number 2 - Mary Robinson is 1, true fact) set the tone from the first question: capitalism with purpose. Profit with impact. Not as a brand story — as an operating thesis. He kept the heat on without letting anything tip into theatre, and the audience came alive. Questions flew, side conversations broke out and got pulled back in. Standing room only and nobody was looking at their phone. "So f*cking what..." t-shirts coming soon. We say David for Taoiseach - move over Martin.

Phil Doyle from SDCL brought institutional weight. The Global Energy Transition Fund is financing real infrastructure at scale — renewables, district energy, industrial decarbonisation. The money is moving. The question is whether policy, planning and grid can keep pace with capital that's ready to deploy. Plus... Phil has cut his teeth on trying to scale impact projects around the world... whether renewables in Latin America or bold decarbonisation in Europe. Success and failure are two sides of the same coin. But if you're pitching for cash from an investor - be authentic, humble and honest. Don't overbake the numbers or vision, it only ends in pressure and freefall. Investors appreciate transparency and partnerships.

Annie Leeson of Agricarbon walked the room through what it actually takes to build a soil carbon market from the ground up — working with farmers, navigating verification systems, and selling to buyers who are simultaneously sceptical and eager. The gap between input-based grant finance and verified output credits isn't just conceptual. It's felt by every farmer trying to understand what they're being asked to prove and every buyer trying to understand what they're actually getting. Annie is doing the hard operational work of bridging that gap. Clear-eyed about the challenges, unromantic about the timeline and completely committed to it. A new CCC hero for sure!

David Connolly of HeatGrid Ireland arrived with Wind Energy Ireland in his bones — and the hard-won wisdom of a sector that went from marginal to mainstream. He landed the line that resonated loudest all night: there are different types of money, and when you get it and how it's structured matters as much as how much you raise. Early capital with the wrong expectations can break a company as surely as no capital at all. The room, full of founders and investors and people sitting somewhere between the two, knew exactly what he was talking about. Now the challenge is district heating at scale. Legend. And... bringing it to the CCC home county of Laois, Ireland. Now we're talking.

Lavanya Bhandari of Ecoroots completed the picture — naming the financing gap that drops founders at precisely the moments they need support most. The valley between proof of concept and scale. The clustering of impact capital at the glamorous end, leaving the grinding operational middle underfinanced. She said it without bitterness. The room felt the weight of it. Between her and David Connolly, the panel delivered something rare: an honest account of what financing the transition actually feels like from inside it. Oh and laid out a table of fungi-based insights, there wasn't mushroom for anything else - cocktails called.

Orlaith Delargy of BE IMPACTFUL closed the evening with precision and warmth — grounding the conversation in what comes next and what each person in the room can actually carry out the door with them. It was the right note to end on. Jack came back on stage. The cocktails kept flowing. Wicklow Wolf sustained the back third of the crowd. The conversations went deep and loud and ran well past close.

What the heist taught us:

• The compliance market dwarfs everything else. The entire voluntary carbon market — globally — is smaller than the global scuba diving market. If you want to understand where the money actually is, start with the €1.4 trillion EU ETS. Policy and compliance is the big carrot (and stick).

• The law is a climate tool and it is chronically under deployed. If your strategy doesn't include a legal dimension, it's incomplete.

• Input-based finance is not impact. Activity paid is not outcome verified. The gap between the two is where most of the greenwashing lives.

• There are different types of money and most founders learn this the hard way. When you get it, and how it's structured, is as important as the number.

• You don't beat a system by standing outside it. You get in, learn the levers, and pull them differently. That's what every speaker at The Climate Heist is doing, in their own corner of the economy. And that is very much the point of this Club.

Huge thanks to our partners: THINKHOUSE, KPMG, BE IMPACTFUL, SDCL, Sustainabilityexamples.com, B Lab Ireland, Resolve Partners, Natural Capital Ireland and Luggala Estate. And to Wicklow Wolf for the B Corp-certified beers. Without your support these events don't happen.

The Impact Coalition is now forming. If you want to be part of what comes next, join the coalition and complete the corporate survey. Save the date for the Climate Carnival on 16th September — or join us in Galway and London... see events HERE.

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