A Swiss bank created a four-word metaphor that became the standard language for explaining climate investment strategy.
Lombard Odier’s Climate Value Impact framework classifies companies into four categories based on emissions trajectory: burning logs, ice cubes, solutions providers, and climate insulated. The metaphor became a standard reference in investment communications for explaining why high-emitting companies on a decarbonisation path can be credible climate investments.
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.
Lombard Odier’s framework argues that a high-emitting steel or cement company actively decarbonising, an ‘ice cube’, may be a better climate investment than a clean-tech solutions provider with flat growth. The transition value is created in the act of decarbonising, not in being already green. This counterintuitive insight reframes the entire debate between divestment and engagement.