This Earth Day, the Art World Gets Its First-Ever Climate Solutions Consultancy

News Gallery Climate Coalition Calls for Culture Shift in New Report Rachel Kubrick

This Earth Day heralds a timely milestone for the art world: the launch of Climate Action Services International (CASI), a consultancy designed to close the gap between museums’ and galleries’ environmental pledges and the harder work of keeping them.

The initiative comes from the team behind the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC), a membership body founded in 2020 by a group of London-based gallerists and professionals, which now spans thousands of organisations from Tate and Victoria Miro to Art Fund and smaller non-profits.

Heath Lowndes, founding partner of CASI and co-founder and director of the GCC, said: “The arts have an extraordinary ability to shape culture, and culture in turn shapes behaviour, values and public discourse. That gives the art world a unique role in responding to the climate crisis.

“…Art can engage people in ways that go beyond data and politics, making complex issues human and immediate. CASI was created to help organisations act on that responsibility, supporting the sector to move from intention to meaningful, tangible change.”

Structured as a social enterprise, the consultancy will offer hands-on support—carbon measurement, decarbonisation strategies, operational guidance—tailored to institutions, galleries, fairs, and their sprawling networks of shippers, fabricators and collectors.

The need for such work is far from abstract. According to the GCC’s latest stocktake report, in 2025, flights, air freight and building energy accounted for 80–95 percent of the art world’s operational emissions—estimated between 11–13 million tonnes of CO₂e annually.

The industry’s defining rituals—biennials, international shipping, and the non-stop fair circuit—are also its most carbon-intensive habits.

The report nonetheless offers some encouragement: 89 percent of members that have consistently tracked their data since 2019 have already reduced their footprint. Scaling those reductions across the sector, however, remains uneven and technically complex.

Meanwhile, public patience with the arts’ response to the climate crisis is thinning, with a reported 72 percent of cultural audiences now believing the sector has a moral duty to lead on environmental issues.

When the British Museum launched its high-profile Pink Ball last year, environmental campaign group Culture Unstained was swift to brand it a “billionaire gala for climate criminals”, highlighting a growing intolerance for the disconnect between cultural prestige and high-emission wealth.

CASI’s pilot phase has already included organisations such as English Heritage and Hauser & Wirth—a range that signals demand for more technical, embedded support across the sector’s full spectrum.