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Sean Kane

Advises on climate, sustainability, and environmental, social, and governance topics; helps investors and high-growth sustainable companies deploy capital toward net-zero transitions and accelerate scale, value, and impact

Sean is a joint leader of our global work in sustainable investing and advises investors on sustainability, climate risk, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Sean also works with high-growth sustainable companies to accelerate scale, value, and impact.

Sean’s recent client projects include the following:

  • leading an enterprise-wide net-zero strategy for a large North American institutional investor, assessing portfolio decarbonization pathways across top emitting assets and defining operating models to deliver
  • working with leading investors to incubate and launch new climate-tech ventures
  • leading the effort to define a scalable and systematic decarbonization playbook for a global investor, including direct engagement with select portfolio companies to build marginal abatement cost curves
  • assisting a global investor consortium in building its climate stress-testing scenarios and investor toolkits to assess the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) by issuers
  • leading the assessment of market opportunities and return profiles across sustainable infrastructure, including renewable power and grid flexibility, low carbon mobility, waste-to-value, and the circular economy

Outside his client work, Sean is a regular contributor to our knowledge development on sustainability and climate risk and has published several articles on ESG, energy storage, and the energy transition.

Before joining McKinsey, Sean worked as a venture-capital and private-equity investor in renewable energy, helped launch an impact investment fund in South Africa, and spent several years as a Wall Street trader.

Published work

"Climate investing: Continuing breakout growth through uncertain times," McKinsey & Company, March 2023

Playing offense to create value in the net-zero transition,” McKinsey Quarterly, April 2022

Innovating to net zero: An executive’s guide to climate technology,” McKinsey & Company, October 2021

EV fast charging: How to build and sustain competitive differentiation,” McKinsey & Company, June 2021

The ESG premium: New perspectives on value and performance,” McKinsey & Company, February 2020

Redefining the power industry,” McKinsey Quarterly, November 2019

How residential energy storage could help support the power grid,” McKinsey & Company, March 2019

The new rules of competition in energy storage,” McKinsey & Company, June 2018

Past Experience

E+Co (now Persistent Energy Partners)
Associate, clean energy investment

Heart Capital
Head of strategy and development

Goldman Sachs
Financial analyst

Education

Columbia University
MA, business administration

Harvard University
BA, psychology