Pain Points

This global investment firm does not have a separate sustainability function since the CEO strongly believes that climate risk is investment risk and should be understood by all. To develop a standard approach for assessing potential physical hazards, he wanted to find a reputable firm that could help his teams:

• Identify a range of physical risks in different locations across the world.
• Evaluate how these risks could increase operational costs of an infrastructure project or result in damages that would require expenditures for repair.
• Express the risks as a financial impact for different types of projects and locations
• Use a ‘self-serve’ capability to run the analysis on their own as needed.

The CEO had heard that The Climate Service (“TCS”) had a cutting-edge solution in this area and made contact to learn more about its capabilities. TCS explained that the company had recently been acquired by S&P Global and was now part of its Sustainable1 division, further enhancing the TCS offering. Sustainable1 brings together S&P Global’s extensive environmental, social and governance (ESG) resources to provide clients with a 360-degree view to help achieve their sustainability goals.

The Solution

TCS described its Climanomics® platform that measures physical risks in financial terms under different climate-warming scenarios. Clients can use the platform directly to evaluate a wide range of infrastructure projects, such as pipelines, oil terminals, water networks, airport terminals, communication networks and wind and solar farms.

The assessment would start with team members inputting four details for a project: (1) the specific asset type (e.g., pipeline) (2) the location, (3) the value of each associated asset, and (4) ownership.²

This last factor is important since it is the project owner who will bear the costs associated with climate hazards. These costs could impair the project’s ability to generate cash flows and extend the timeline for paying down any associated debt financing, resulting in material risk for the investment firm.

With this information, the Climanomics platform would then project the impact of major hazards, including extreme temperatures, drought, coastal flooding, fluvial flooding, water stress, tropical cyclones and wildfires. This would be done in conjunction with a sophisticated analysis of the unique vulnerabilities to each asset from each hazard. For example, tropical cyclones would impact communication networks differently than pipelines.

To quantify the financial risk, it is important to determine how a hazard will affect a project in a way that is financially material. For example, how will an increase in temperature impact cooling costs or damage from a flood impact clean-up and repair costs? This will depend on the type of project and the vulnerabilities of its associated assets.

All hazards and assessments of vulnerabilities are considered for each asset in a project to model the average annual loss, which calculates the cost of damage and/ or lost revenue over time as a percentage of the project’s value. At some point, this loss could become material to the financial viability of a project. The total average annual loss is the sum of the financial impacts of all hazards. This can be disaggregated by type of hazard and, within each hazard, by type of loss. The loss data are provided for each decade out to 2100 and for four greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration scenarios.

In summary, TCS explained how these capabilities would provide the investment team with:

Key Benefits

The CEO and team members were impressed with the TCS solution and the firm decided to subscribe to the Climanomics platform. In particular, they thought they would benefit from having:

• An ability to assess a wide range of physical risks on different projects and the potential financial impacts to provide an additional lens on the attractiveness of investment opportunities.
• Outcomes across scenarios and timelines to better understand reasonable investment dollars and investment horizons.
• A hands-on capability that can be used directly by team members across the firm.
• Ongoing training and support to use the platform efficiently and stay up to date on enhancements.
• Access to renowned leaders in the climate arena, with offerings powered by a transparent methodology and rigorous science.
• A platform that is now part of S&P Global Sustainable1, an organization with extensive global data on ESG issues, the transition strategies of heavy fossil fuel-emitting sectors, private markets, infrastructure development and much more.

Team members have come to embrace the platform, as it is easy to use and the results are straightforward. All members has been trained, and the platform is used as part of the due diligence process on every investment.