The Case
Lombard Odier Investment Managers (LOIM), the asset management arm of the Swiss private bank, developed a classification framework called Climate Value Impact (CVI) that sorts companies into four categories based on their emissions profile and decarbonisation trajectory. The framework uses deliberately vivid language: burning logs, ice cubes, solutions providers, and climate insulated.
Burning logs are companies in high-emitting sectors with no credible decarbonisation plan. They carry growing transition risk as carbon prices rise and regulations tighten. Ice cubes also operate in high-emitting sectors but are actively and rapidly decarbonising, their trajectory is toward lower emissions, and Lombard Odier argues they will gain competitive advantage as the transition accelerates. Solutions providers are companies whose climate mitigation products outweigh their own footprint. Climate insulated companies are largely unaffected by climate risk in either direction.
The framework’s central thesis is that trajectory matters more than current emissions. An ice cube operating in steel or cement today may be a better climate investment than a solutions provider with flat growth, precisely because the transition value is being created in the act of decarbonising. This insight directly challenges the exclusion-based approach to sustainable investing and provides a rigorous narrative for why a climate-aligned fund might hold companies in heavy industry or fossil fuels.
LOIM operationalised the framework through its TargetNetZero equity strategy and Global Climate Bond fund. The 2022 podcast series “Ice cubes, burning logs and the road to net zero” expanded the framework publicly. The language proved remarkably sticky, investment teams, consultants, and communications professionals adopted the metaphor because it made a complex, counterintuitive concept instantly memorable.
For communications professionals, the CVI framework is a case study in how language shapes understanding. The four categories solve a practical problem that clients routinely face: explaining why engagement and transition financing are not the same as endorsing dirty companies. Each category carries a different communications posture, burning logs are candidates for exclusion, ice cubes for engagement, solutions providers for straightforward green positioning, climate insulated for conventional financial analysis.
The Debate
The ice cubes framework is elegant, but is it too convenient? Critics argue that classifying a high-emitting company as an “ice cube”, and therefore a worthy climate investment, gives asset managers a narrative justification for holding exactly the kind of companies they would have held anyway. If every coal-to-gas utility can be rebranded as an ice cube, the framework risks becoming a sophisticated form of greenwashing rather than a genuine analytical tool.
Defenders counter that the framework is rigorous precisely because it requires evidence of trajectory, not just intent. A company does not qualify as an ice cube because it publishes a net-zero pledge, it qualifies because its emissions are measurably declining, its capital expenditure is shifting toward clean technology, and its transition plan is independently verified. The metaphor is simple; the underlying analysis is not.
The deeper tension is philosophical. The divestment movement argues that the most powerful thing investors can do is withdraw capital from fossil fuels and high-emitting sectors entirely, that engagement is a fig leaf for inaction. The engagement camp, which the ice cubes framework supports, argues that divestment simply transfers ownership to investors who care less about climate, while engagement keeps pressure on companies to change. The Lombard Odier framework does not resolve this debate, but it gives the engagement side its most memorable language, and in communications, language often determines which argument wins.
You Might Not Expect
The dirtiest companies might be the best climate investments