--- description: Find out why Alok Sharma is on TIME's 2025 list of the 100 most influential leaders driving business climate action. title: Alok Sharma: The 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders of 2025 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb324865f501d2a43/6998cb0283ec3724b5c7b101/Leaders-Alok-Sharma.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Oct 30, 2025 # Alok Sharma Chair, The Transition Finance Council by [Justin Worland](/author/justin-worland/) ## Justin Worland Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Senior Correspondent  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Photo: David Levenson—Getty Images) Alok Sharma is at the center of the United Kingdom’s push to become a sustainable finance superpower. As the inaugural chair of Britain’s Transition Finance Council, a role he was appointed to this year, he is charged with maneuvering between government, industry, and the financial sector to get money flowing toward decarbonization. To do that, he has sought to expand how the financial sector thinks about sustainable investment—moving from strict funding of renewables to a broader definition that includes investments that can help big emitters clean up. Crucially, Sharma has focused the Council on coming up with credibility standards—clear pathways, time-bound targets, and transparent disclosure—to give investors confidence. “Britain is open for business,” he says. “We are a very established market, but you can’t sort of sit there and rest on your laurels.” Sharma, a trained accountant who worked in finance before jumping into British politics two decades ago, is a good person to make the case for climate finance. He became a full fledged inhabitant of the climate world more recently when he was appointed to run the 2021 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, which ended in a deal he brokered to “phase down” coal consumption. In that time, he’s figured out how to talk about sustainable finance: it’s an opportunity. “What we’ve got here is an economic growth story of the 21st century,” he says. “This isn’t just about climate.” Alok Sharma: The 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders of 2025 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326530/alok-sharma/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326530/alok-sharma/"},"headline":"Alok Sharma","datePublished":"2025-10-30T11:30:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T01:00:56.639Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326530/alok-sharma/","keywords":["TIME100 Climate 2025","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock","Accolades"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb324865f501d2a43/6998cb0283ec3724b5c7b101/Leaders-Alok-Sharma.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Justin Worland","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/justin-worland/"}],"creator":"Justin Worland","articleSection":"Climate","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb324865f501d2a43/6998cb0283ec3724b5c7b101/Leaders-Alok-Sharma.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/climate/","name":"Climate"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time100-climate-2025/","name":"TIME100 Climate 2025"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time-100-climate-2025/7326530/alok-sharma/","name":"Alok Sharma"}}]}] ```