Foreword Catalysing the widespread adoption of low-carbon technologies and products today demands more than early market enthusiasm – it requires identifying and addressing barriers that hinder scale, streamlining collaboration across sectoral frontlines and thoughtfully addressing the operating realities that suppliers confront. Since its inception, the World Economic Forum’s First Movers Coalition (FMC), through its First Suppliers Hub (FSH), has worked to advance the market by illuminating supply-side perspectives and fostering direct engagement between innovative suppliers and critical decision-makers within heavy-emitting industries. As market architecture evolves, one clear lesson stands out: the journey from demonstration to commercial maturity is shaped as much by structural headwinds as it is by ambition or capital. This report, created in partnership with Deloitte Consulting, builds on last year’s High-Emitting Sectors: Challenges and Opportunities for Low- Carbon Suppliers. It moves beyond foundational analysis to examine supplier perspectives more deeply, at a time when urgency and complexity are becoming more acute. Drawing on fresh interviews and operational insights from project developers, technology pioneers and early producers across the aluminium, aviation, carbon dioxide removal, cement and concrete, shipping, steel and trucking sectors, we delve into the specific friction points slowing supplier momentum. In doing so, we underscore that while sectoral dynamics may vary, entrenched challenges prove to be obstacles across the value chain and require unified interventions. Suppliers serve not merely as implementers in this ecosystem, but as trailblazers whose capacity to innovate, attract investment and reliably deliver is pivotal to achieving net-zero ambitions. By centring on their perspectives and experiences, this report aims to help policy-makers, procurement leaders, financiers and R&D partners find the most appropriate levers – be they more consistent regulatory signals, robust offtake frameworks or targeted support mechanisms – to foster thriving early and scaled-up markets. By bringing to light candid, practical viewpoints from the FMC and FSH communities, this report extends our prior work, offering supplier-led insights to accelerate progress in some of the hardest-to- abate industrial sectors. We trust that these findings will help clarify where coordinated, pragmatic action can tip the scales, ensuring that breakthrough solutions move decisively from innovation to global implementation to advance decarbonization goals.Dilip Krishna US Consulting Managing Director, Deloitte Noam Boussidan Programme Head, First Movers Coalition, World Economic Forum Turning Challenge into Opportunity: Supplier Voices from Heavy-Emitting SectorsDecember 2025 Turning Challenge into Opportunity: Supplier Voices from Heavy-Emitting Sectors 3

Turning Challenge into Opportunity 2025