How does the private sector view climate change, why is this important for global climate adaptation and how does someone in this field remain motivated? Founder & CEO, Emilie Mazzacurati, joins Josh Dorfman’s new podcast, The Last Environmentalist, to discuss these topics and much more. The conversation covers the evolving views of climate risk in the financial sector and how this awareness can translate into resilience-building. Emilie describes near-term impacts of climate change on real estate markets, adaptation actions taken by corporations and the interacting nature of climate risk and resilience across private and public sectors.
For more detail on climate risk in real estate, read our recent analysis, Real Estate Climate Risks: How Will Europe be Impacted? For more insight into corporate engagement by shareholder, read our report, Engaging with Corporates to Build Adaptive Capacity.
Four Twenty Seven's monthly newsletter highlights recent developments on climate risk and resilience. This month we feature analysis on climate risk in European real estate, Moody's research on credit quality and heat stress and the first climate resilience bond.
In Focus: Real Estate Climate Risk in Europe
Four Twenty Seven Analysis - Real Estate Climate Risks: How Will Europe be Impacted?
From this summer's record-breaking heat waves to storm-surge induced flooding, Europe is increasingly experiencing the impacts of climate change. Extreme events and chronic stresses have substantial impacts on real estate, by damaging individual buildings, decreasing their value and potentially leading to unusable assets. These asset-level impacts also have wider market implications.
Our latest analysis assesses the exposure of retail sites and offices across Europe to floods, sea level rise and heat stress. We find that 19% of assessed retail spaces and 16% of offices in Europe are exposed to floods and/or sea level rise, with floods presenting the highest risk for both types of asset. The analysis identifies the cities with the largest percent of facilities exposed to floods and sea level rise, and discusses the implications this exposure has for business continuity and real estate markets across the continent.
New Principles Support Integration of Resilience into Bond Markets
CBI Releases Climate Resilience Principles
Last Week the Climate Bond Initiative released Climate Resilience Principles, integrating forward-looking climate risk assessment and resilience considerations into bond markets. The guidance document is meant to inform investors', governments' and banks' reviews of how projects and assets contribute to a climate-resilient economy. The principles will be integrated into the Climate Bonds Certification of green bonds, signaling a valuable step toward the consistent use of resilience standards for debt projects. Four Twenty Seven is proud to have contributed to the Adaptation and Resilience Expert Group that developed the principles.
EBRD Issues First Climate Resilience Bond
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) issued the first bond to solely finance climate resilience projects. This is the first bond to fulfill the requirements of the new Climate Resilience Principles. Craig Davies, head of climate resilience investments at the EBRD, told Environmental Finance "The climate resiliency principles that the CBI has developed are a really important landmark because they very clearly set out eligibility criteria, and some very simple but clear and robust methodologies for defining a climate-resilient investment." The EBRD's four year bond raised $700 million to finance "climate-resilient infrastructure, business and commercial operations, or agricultural and ecological systems."
The EBRD also released a consultation draft of a Framework for Climate Resilience Metrics in Financing Operations this week. The report, published jointly with other multilateral development banks and the International Development Finance Club, outlines a vocabulary to facilitate consistent discussion and measurement of resilience investment.
Global Commission on Adaptation Launches Year of Action
The Global Commission on Adaptation presented its flagship report, Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience this week at the United Nations Climate Summit. This report emphasizes the return on investment of climate adaptation, noting that "investing $1.8 trillion globally in five areas from 2020 to 2030 could generate $7.1 trillion in total net benefits." It focuses on early warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, improving dryland agriculture, mangrove protection and increasing the resilience of water resources. This kicks off the Commission's Year of Action, during which it will advance recommendations, accelerate adaptation, promote more sustainable economic development and collate findings to present at the Climate Adaptation Summit in October 2020.
The Commission's report was informed by a paper called Driving Finance Today for the Climate Resilient Society Tomorrow by the UNEP Finance Initiative and Climate Finance Advisors. It outlines financial barriers to the acceleration of adaptation investment and recommends six actions to unlock adaptation finance. These actions include accelerating climate-relevant policies, implementing climate risk management, developing adaptation metrics, building financial sector capacity, highlighting investment opportunities and leveraging public institutions to accelerate adaptation investment.
Retailers Prepare for Physical Climate Risk
Women's apparel store, A'gaci, filed for bankruptcy in January 2018 after most of its stores were hit by hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Hurricanes can affect retail operations by causing building damage, merchandise loss and supply chain disruptions, and Hurricane Irma caused an estimated $2.8 billion loss for the sector. Retail Dive explores the implications of climate change for the retail sector at large, using Four Twenty Seven's data on retail site exposure. With over 17,000 retail facilities exposed to floods in the U.S., some businesses are beginning to prepare, reorganizing their distribution patterns and supply chains. Some retail stores, such as Home Depot, can also see increases in demand after extreme events, and will particularly stand to benefit if their facilities are resilient to climate hazards and can accommodate the associated surge in business.
New research by a Federal Reserve Board Economist, finds that weather variability impacts retail sales. On average, sales tend to increase with temperature and decrease with rain and snowfall. Overall there is not a clear shift in shopping habits from outdoor stores to indoor venues during extreme weather, but these patterns do show regional variation, suggesting that the impacts of extreme weather events vary by region. The impact of extreme events on sales will have an impact on retail employees and local economies depending on these companies. Businesses can leverage this research, alongside data on climate risk exposure, to plan for these shifts in consumer behavior.
Inside the Office at Four Twenty Seven
Meet Operations Coordinator, Naoko Neishi
Four Twenty Seve welcomes Naoko, who supports senior management and works with the Operations Manager to achieve operational excellence. Naoko has over 16 years of experience as a sales assistant and office manager in the United States and Japan, working in the financial and engineering industries.
Thurs. Sept 26, 8:30 AM - 12:20 PM – Moody's Climate Week Briefing: Senior Analyst, Lindsay Ross, will speak on a panel about climate adaptation efforts.
Thurs. Sept 26, 6 PM - 9:30 PM – Climate Week Symposium: Lindsay Ross will participate in a panel on fiduciary duty in a climate context.
Join the Four Twenty Seven team at these events:
Sept 23 - 29 – Climate Week NYC, New York, NY: Lisa Stanton and Lindsay Ross, will attend. See detailed schedule above.
Sept 25 – INREV Climate Risk Round Table, Copenhagen, Denmark: Director, Europe, Nathalie Borgeaud, will speak at 4:30 PM on "Tools to mitigate and report on climate risk."
Nov 7 - 8 – Building Resilience 2019, Cleveland, OH: Global Director of Client Services, Yoon Kim, will speak on a panel about public-private partnerships.
Nov 29 – Climate Finance Day, Paris, France: Lisa Stanton, Nathalie Borgeaud and Senior Analyst, Léonie Chatain, will attend.
Dec 4 – 2019 HIVE Conference, Austin, TX: Strategic Advisor, Josh Sawislak, will present about how to use data to build resilience.
Jan 6 - Jan 9 – NCSE 2020 Annual Conference, Washington, DC: Yoon Kim and Lindsay Ross will speak about cross-sector resilience-building and resilient infrastructure, respectively.
Four Twenty Seven's monthly newsletter highlights recent developments on climate risk and resilience. This month we feature developments in scenario analysis for physical risks, highlight the European Union's guidance on climate risk disclosure and share the latest on financial climate risk and the need for resilience.
In Focus: Scenario Analysis for Physical Risk
Bank of England Publishes First Climate Risk Stress Test
The guidance lays out potential impacts by providing sector-specific percentages of potential loss under three scenarios by sector and by region. These quantitative financial impact assumptions are not a projection but a starting point for the insurance industry to explore potential impacts of climate change on their portfolios.
The Bank of England leveraged Four Twenty Seven's analytics on climate risk exposure in equity and real estate markets to inform its assumptions about which sectors will experience the largest impacts. We explain how data on risk exposure in equities can be leveraged for this type of analysis in our new blog series on scenario analysis.
Blog Series: Scenario Analysis for Physical Climate Risk
Our new blog series provides our reflections on how corporations and financial institutions can integrate physical climate risk into scenario analysis. Scenario analysis for physical risk is fundamentally different from transition risk. Corporations and investors increasingly recognize the need to integrate physical risk into scenario analysis but are looking for guidance and best practices on how to proceed.
Our first blog focuses on the foundations, demonstrating how characteristics of climate science affect how climate data can be used to inform scenario analysis. We argue that because physical risks over the next 10-20 years are largely independent from policy decisions and emission pathways, investors would be better served by scenario analysis that focuses on the inherent uncertainty of projected impacts, independent from assumptions on GHG emission scenarios.
The next blog focuses on Equity Markets, with concrete examples of how available data can inform financial stakeholders ready to start putting scenario analysis into action. We look at data on climate risk exposure by sector to explore how climate risk analytics can inform early developments of stress test assumptions, as done by the Bank of England.
The EU also released the Technical Expert Group (TEG) report on a taxonomy for activities that contribute to climate adaptation and mitigation. The taxonomy aims to help investors and policymakers understand which economic activities contribute to the transition to a low-carbon economy, through both mitigation and resilience. It outlines qualitative screening criteria to identify adaptation of economic activities and adaptation by economic activities, providing activity-specific examples for a range of sectors. The proposed taxonomy is still under legislative review.
Second TCFD Status Report
While more firms are releasing TCFD disclosures, investors call for an increase in informative disclosure of the financial impact of climate risks. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) released its second progress report earlier this month, emphasizing that the quality of risk disclosures must continue to improve as firms build their understanding and capacity to address climate risks. 91% of surveyed firms said they plan to at least partially implement the TCFD recommendations, but only 67% plan to complete implementation within the next three years. This progress must be accompanied by continued knowledge sharing and research on financial risk pathways for climate impacts, meaningful exposure data and best practices for reporting.
Even as TCFD reporting increases, quantitative assessment of physical risk exposure lags behind. Explore physical climate risk reporting by French firms in our analysis of physical risk in Article 173 reports and stay tuned for Four Twenty Seven's forthcoming analysis on physical risk disclosure in TCFD reports.
Catastrophic Midwest Flooding Has Rippling Impacts
At the end of May only 58% and 29% of the U.S. corn and soy crops had been planted respectively. After persistent flooding beginning in Mid-March, inundated fields delayed planting. This means that some farmers will miss the planting window, which closes in June due to the heat and dryness of later summer months.
Those crops that do get planted will have to overcome soggy soil conditions and will remain at the peril of the summer's weather. It's already clear that this will be a below average crop yield, which translates into more expensive corn in cattle feed and higher prices in grocery stores.
A weak El Niño likely contributed to increased rainfall, but climate change also plays a role as warmer air holds more water. This month also saw record high temperatures in the western U.S., caused by a bulging jet stream making warm air flow south to north. While this does happen naturally, it may be happening more often due to warming ocean waters. This jet stream activity also contributes to other extreme events like the Midwest flooding.
The Need to Rethink Preparedness
From floods and heat waves to fires and hurricanes, federal recovery efforts for extreme events have cost almost half a trillion dollars since 2005. As disasters become more common and costs increase, there is an urgent need to invest in resilience proactively rather than spending billions on recovery. Last fall's Disaster Recovery Reform Act made an
"There is a silver lining to our climate challenges — economic growth. Americans are very good at innovating and building and we can leverage our need to be more resilient by growing the economy with good resilient and sustainable jobs," Sawislak wrote.
Upcoming Events
Join the Four Twenty Seven team at these events:
June 19 – Columbia University and PRI Private Round Table, New York, NY: Founder & CEO, Emilie Mazzacurati, will discuss scenario analysis for physical climate risk at this workshop.
July 4 – Japan Institutional Forum, Tokyo, Japan: Chief Development Officer, Frank Freitas, will present at this gathering of Japan's institutional investment community.
July 14 & 21 – UC Davis MBA Course on Climate Risk and Business, Davis, CA: Emilie Mazzacurati will teach this course.
The TCFD Status Report published early June 2019 reiterates the need for corporations and financial institutions to perform scenario analysis in a context of uncertainty over climate risk. It notes that while about 56% of companies use scenario analysis, only 33% perform scenario analysis for physical risk. Even fewer firms (43% of those using scenario analysis) disclose their assumptions and findings. The report contains useful case studies, but most focus on transition risk.
Yet a growing number of corporations and financial institutions recognize the need to integrate physical risk into scenario analysis and to develop resilience strategies that address imminent challenges from climate impacts. For example, the most recent IPCC report illustrating the impact of 1.5˚C increase in global temperatures on mean temperatures, extreme temperatures, extreme precipitation and sea levels shows that there will be significant implications for economies even with a 1.5˚C increase in global temperatures. This is still a best case scenario compared to impacts of 2˚C or 2.5˚C warming.
Scenario analysis for physical risk is fundamentally different from transition risk in its challenges and assumptions. This blog series provides our current reflections on how corporations and financial institutions can integrate physical climate risk into scenario analysis. This first blog presents the Foundations, focusing on important characteristics of climate science that affect how climate data can be used to inform scenario analysis for economic and financial risk. The next blog focuses on Equity Markets, with concrete examples of how available data can inform financial stakeholders ready to start putting scenario analysis into action. A forthcoming post will discuss scenario analysis at the asset level for real asset investments and corporate facilities.
Part 1: Foundations
The physical impacts of climate change encompass a range of direct and indirect hazards caused or exacerbated by the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Previous publications such as Advancing TFCD Guidance for Physical Risks and Opportunities, for which Four Twenty Seven was a lead author, provide background on these hazards as they pertain to corporate value chains and economic activities. Further information is also available in Cicero’s excellent report, Shades of Climate Risk. Categorizing climate risk for investors.
The Science: Uncertainties and Relevant Time Frames
Rapid developments in atmospheric and climate science over the past 30 years enable us to understand how these physical hazards will evolve over time due to climate change. Sophisticated global climate models project expected changes in key physical phenomena affected by greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration: heat, humidity, precipitation, ocean temperature, ocean acidification, etc. Like any other models, climate models have limitations in their accuracy and ability to correctly simulate complex and interrelated phenomena. However, it is worth noting that since 1973 models have been consistently successful in projecting within the range of warming that we have experienced in the past twenty years. More details on climate data and uncertainties from global climate models can be found in our report, Using Climate Data.
The Bad News: Impacts Are Locked In
Global climate models project different possible outcomes using scenarios called Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). RCP scenarios capture differing GHG emissions trajectories based on a representation of plausible global policy outcomes, without specifying the details of the underlying policies that could generate this outcome. These scenarios show that GHG emissions generated over the coming decades will influence the severity of impacts in the long-term, but also that we are already committed to some impacts through 2100 and beyond.
This is particularly noticeable over the “short term.” When looking at the next 10 to 20 years, projections for temperature and other physical hazards do not present significant differences under different emissions scenarios (Fig 1). This is due to the massive inertia of the Earth’s systems, and the life expectancy of the stock of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. To put it simply, significantly reducing GHG emissions is akin to applying the brakes on a rapidly moving truck. It won’t stop instantaneously. Even if we were to stop emitting GHG altogether, climate change would persist. In the words of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), climate change “represents a substantial multi-century commitment created by the past, present, and future emissions of CO2.”
Figure 1. Temperature increases under different GHG emissions scenarios in the near term. Source: IPCC, as published by Climate Lab Book.
This is by no mean an invitation to give up on reducing GHG emissions. Quite the opposite. Emission reductions are critical to curbing long term impacts and avoiding irreversible effects to our environment (Fig. 2). But for organizations looking at climate data and scenario analysis for risk management and strategy, with a focus on the coming decade(s), this is a critical fact to understand.
Figure 2. Temperature increases under different GHG emissions scenarios through 2300 from IPCC AR 5: Figure 12.5 | Time series of global annual mean surface air temperature anomalies (relative to 1986–2005) from CMIP5 concentration-driven experiments. Projections are shown for each RCP for the multi-model mean (solid lines) and the 5 to 95% range (±1.64 standard deviation) across the distribution of individual models (shading). Discontinuities at 2100 are due to different numbers of models performing the extension runs beyond the 21st century and have no physical meaning. Only one ensemble member is used from each model and numbers in the figure indicate the number of different models contributing to the different time periods. No ranges are given for the RCP6.0 projections beyond 2100 as only two models are available.Aside from RCP-driven scenarios, there is, of course, a broad range of possible increases in temperature (and other climate hazards) even when looking at the 2030-2040 time frame. These plausible differences are not so much policy-driven as science-driven, demonstrating the different possible responses from the Earth’s systems to the existing stock of GHG.
These differences have significant implications for businesses and investors. For example, a model of sea level rise developed in 2018 incorporates accelerated rates of melting and recent advancements in modelling ice-cliff dynamics to capture extreme risk of coastal flooding. The model shows the Atlantic rising by 1.2m (3.9ft) by 2060 on the Florida coastline, which would equate to widespread flooding of coastal properties with potential domino effects on real estate prices across the state (Fig 3). The ‘intermediate’ scenario, however, most often used for planning, predicts only a 55cm (1.8ft) rise in water levels. While reducing GHG emissions does reduce the risk of more extreme sea level rise millennia into the future, year after year, scientists find that the Antarctic is warming faster than anybody predicted, and there is increasing concern that the process of ice sheet melt may be too far advanced to be stopped.
Figure 3. Building-level perspective of inundation in downtown Miami under 1m (3.3ft). Red buildings are those most likely to be impacted and blue areas are inundated. Source: NOAA Office for Coastal Management.
Thus, performing scenario analysis where the key variable is GHG emission reduction targets may not be an accurate representation of the range of possible outcomes for the near future. Rather, looking at high and low warming projections across a large set of models to understand the range of potential outcomes (independent of the underlying RCP scenario) is a better way to understand potential risk. In other words, physical risks over the next 10-20 years are largely independent from policy decisions and emission pathways, and a rapid, orderly, effective transition to a low-carbon economy could still come with massive physical impacts as these processes are already under way, fueled by the past 150 years of GHG emissions.
The Worse News: Tipping Points
Another challenge is that climate scientists are not currently able to model certain possible impacts from climate change, commonly known as “tipping points.” Tipping points is a catch-all term for a wide range of phenomena that may accelerate feedbacks due to climate change, though the timing or probability of their manifestation is currently not well understood. The phenomena are known as tipping points because past a certain threshold, they may not be reversible, even with a dramatic reduction in GHG emissions. Tipping points of most concern to the scientific community are presented in this report from the Environmental Defense Fund.
Figure 4. Melting permafrost is a powerful feedback loop exacerbating climate change. Source: UNEP, Woods Hole Research Center.
Some tipping points catalyze “feedback loops” which can worsen and dramatically accelerate climate change beyond human control. Such is the case, for example, with melting ice sheets, which would not only lead to catastrophic sea level rise, but would also further heat up the planet as the poles’ albedo (reflectivity) is reduced after the ice disappears. Thawing permafrost could lead to massive amounts of methane, a particularly powerful GHG, to be released from the frozen tundra into the atmosphere (in addition to many direct impacts for local communities, infrastructure and ecosystems in the region) (Fig. 4).
Tipping points further reinforce uncertainty about severity and timing of these extreme impacts and the limitations of using RCP scenarios to understand the range of outcomes for physical risk.
Figure 5. The likely risks to human and natural systems under several global warming scenarios, with dark purple representing high risks of severe impacts with limited reversibility and white indicating no attributable impacts. Source: IPCC, 2018
These indirect or second-order hazards are as relevant as first-order impacts to understand the implications of physical climate change on economic outcomes, but they’re not captured by RCP scenarios and many require stand-alone models that cannot easily be integrated into one clean set of scenarios.
Conclusion
Scenario analysis is often approached from the perspective of transition risk, where policy developments and GHG emission targets are the key drivers of risk pathways over the next 10 to 30 years. Physical risk, however, requires a different approach. Impacts over the coming decades are largely locked-in and are only marginally influenced by GHG emission pathways. In contrast, uncertainty looms large regarding how severe these physical hazards will be, and exploring a range of possible outcomes for physical risk, including looking at tail-risks, provides important insights for risk management and financial analysis. In summary, the current state of scientific knowledge and the nature of the Earth’s atmospheric systems call for the developments of scenarios that are decoupled from transition/policy scenarios and instead focused on key scientific drivers of uncertainty and risks that may be experienced regardless of policy decisions over the short to medium term (2020-2040).
While efforts to develop easy-to-use tools for physical risk analysis are nascent, organizations can still extract important insights from climate data and leverage estimates of risk exposure across portfolios. Our next blog in this series provides examples of how financial institutions can leverage data on physical risk exposure in equities to inform some early scenario analysis in equity markets.
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Four Twenty Seven’s data products and portfolio analytics support risk reporting and enable investors and businesses to understand their exposure to physical climate risks across asset classes.
As climate change impacts worsen, the need for solutions to support adaptation grows. Founder & CEO, Emilie Mazzacurati, joined Molly Wood on Marketplace Tech to discuss climate risk analytics. The conversation covers the importance of understanding climate risk exposure and how companies leverage climate data to prepare for climate hazards. While recent findings on sea level rise and other climate impacts can be daunting, there is hope for adaptation that builds resilience across sectors.
New research on sea level rise emphasizes the potential for dire changes over the course of the century. Recent satellite data suggests that warming water is causing East Antarctica to melt more quickly than previously thought and a study released in early May found that almost a quarter of West Antarctica’s ice is thinning, with its largest glaciers shrinking five times faster than in 1992. A study based on expert opinion found that there is the possibility of sea levels rising by 2 meters (6.5ft) under an extreme scenario of 5˚C global temperature increase. This would mean an area of land as big as Libya would be lost, and up to 2.5% of the population globally could be displaced.
The cascading direct and indirect impacts of sea level rise affect all facets of the regional economy. Source: Union of Concerned Scientists.
Extreme scenarios of sea level rise will have severe impacts on our cities and economies. Sea level rise is happening today to a lesser extent; however it is already having tangible impacts on real estate values. This means increasing costs for property owners and tenants, but it also has far-reaching market impacts on access to and cost of insurance, fluctuations in market values and potential increase in local taxes to fund adaptation efforts.
65,000 homes in Florida worth $35 billion are expected to be underwater or impacted daily by high tides in 2040. From soaring insurance premiums and increasing risk of disclosure to declining property value and diminishing tax revenue, sea level rise is already challenging property owners, investors and banks. Among other impacts, the value of single-family homes in Miami-Dade County that are exposed to sea level rise declined by about $465 million between 2005 and 2016.
Investors and businesses have a responsibility to understand these risks: using best available science to measure exposure to sea level rise and other flood risks, getting informed on adaptation efforts by local governments, and engaging with local industry associations or other groups to promote further investments in resilience.
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Four Twenty Seven works with investors to provide portfolio hotpot screenings and real time due diligence with site-specific data on sea level rise and other climate risks. Contact us for more detailed analysis and site-specific data on sea level rise exposure and detailed analysis of local jurisdictions’ response.
Four Twenty Seven's monthly newsletter highlights recent developments on climate risk and resilience. This month we explore the second year of Art. 173 reports, highlight regulators' action on climate risk and share new findings on financial climate risk in Asia.
In Focus: Lessons Learned from Art. 173 Reporting - An Update
Physical Risk Analysis is Stronger in Art. 173's Second Year
The second year of reporting under Article 173 in France saw increased analysis of physical climate risk, but there is still substantial room for improvement. We reviewed disclosures from 49 asset owners in France, finding that almost half of the respondents conducted more substantial physical risk analysis compared to last year. Insurance companies AXA and Generali provided the most detailed analysis for property portfolios, adding to their previous methodology. FRR and Comgest provided the most thorough assessment of physical climate risk in their investment portfolios and BPCE Group was the only bank with a complete analysis of physical risk.
Many firms still cite lack of data and tools as a barrier to adopting thorough analysis of physical risks. Those firms that are on the forefront of climate risk reporting disclose asset-level risk exposure and are beginning to explore how to assess value at risk and scenario analysis for physical climate risks, which are emerging as key research topics.
While French firms are refining their climate risk disclosures, other companies across Europe are beginning to report on climate risk. 30 out of the top 80 companies in Europe made statements in support of TCFD and/or released disclosures, according to the Climate Disclosures Standard Board's review, First steps on climate-related financial disclosures in Europe. Only seven of these firms addressed physical risks.
ClimINVEST reviews developments in physical climate risk assessment in the financial sectors of France, the Netherlands and Norway, finding that common needs across these countries include in-house capacity building, improved risk assessment tools, increased understanding of the impacts of extreme events & guidance on corporate engagement. The report also reviews the landscape of physical risk data providers, including Four Twenty Seven.
How do these developments in TCFD reporting affect the greater landscape of financial risk disclosure and management? In its winter issue the Climate Change Business Journal interviewed Founder & CEO, Emilie Mazzacurati, about the history of the TCFD, it’s uptake to-date and how the recommendations influence other developments on risk disclosure. Emilie says, “The market is in exploratory mode: this is an emerging issue, and the collective understanding of impacts on corporations and financial markets is fast evolving. What is clear, however, is that this is a very material issue, and that is here to stay.”
Central Banks and Regulators Take Action
A Call for Action: Climate Change as a Source of Financial Risk
In its first comprehensive report, the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) makes the case for climate change as a material financial and economic risk and outlines six recommended actions. The first four are directed at central banks and supervisors: integrate climate risks in financial stability monitoring, set an
example by assessing risks in central bank portfolios, promote the growth of publicly available data and encourage continued research and knowledge sharing on climate risks. The report makes two final recommendations for policy-makers: encourage continued uptake of climate risk disclosures, in line with the TCFD and develop a taxonomy of activities that support the transition to a resilient low-carbon economy and those that are highly exposed to climate and environmental risks.
Integrating Physical Climate Risks into Insurance Stress Tests
The draft outlines three scenarios, including a sudden disorderly transition, a long-term orderly transition and a "hot house" scenario without transition and lists metrics of physical risk hazards and transition risk for each scenario. Feedback from industry participants is requested by May 31.
Survey of French Banks and Insurers on Climate Risk
The French banking supervisor, ACPR surveyed French banks and insurers on their management of climate-related risks. The analysis found that governance of risks is improving significantly, slowly shifting from a corporate responsibility perspective to an integrated element in risk management strategies. However, this is not yet consistent and has yet to lead to operational adaptation for businesses.
While banks and insurers have made significant progress on assessing transitition risk, progress in undertanding physical and liability risks is much slower. In response to these findings ACPR will establish two working groups with the financial sector, one on governance of climate-change related risks and another on risk metrics and scenario analysis.
Climate Change: Awareness to Action
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) surveyed 38 regulated entities including authorized deposit-taking institutions, superannuation firms and insurers on their risk perceptions, governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets and disclosures. Firms identified several opportunities associate with climate risk response: positioning themselves as
industry leaders, developing new products and promoting community resilience. Over 50% of respondents are conducting financial analysis of key risks. Many cite data limitations, resource constraints, regulatory uncertainty and lack of defined terms and methods as barriers to conducting scenario analysis.
Climate Change and the Federal Reserve
"In short, climate change is becoming relevant for a range of macroeconomic issues, including potential output growth, capital formation, productivity, and the long-run level of the real interest rate," writes Glenn D. Rudebusch of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. His economic research letter highlights the ways that climate risks are pertinent for monetary policy, encouraging continued research on the financial impacts of climate change hazards.
Asian Investors Exposed to Water-Related Climate Risk
Are Asia's Pension Funds ready for Climate Change?
Asia's financial sector faces unique climate risks due to the population's concentration in large urban areas highly exposed to climate risk and their economies' reliance on water, a threatened resource. China Water Risk, Manulife Asset Management and the Asia Investor Group on Climate Change, released a new report exploring the drivers of climate risk exposure for asset managers in Asia and recommending strategies to build resilience.
They found that public pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and central banks tend to have portfolios concentrated in their domestic markets, which are also highly exposed to climate risks. The export economies of India and China are particularly vulnerable to water stress, and businesses must prepare for the shift in economic policy towards more resilient industries. In light of high exposure to climate impacts that are already locked in, financial actors should promote adaptation finance, assess their portfolios' physical risk exposure and engage with companies and industry initiatives.
Yale 2019 Symposium on Sustainable Finance Call For Papers
The Yale Initiative on Sustainable Finance is seeking papers for its 2019 Symposium on "The State of Play in ESG Investing.” They will consider empirical research papers, literature reviews or position papers from scholars, practitioners and industry experts. Selected authors will be asked to present at the symposium in November. Specific focal topics within the broad theme of ESG investing include: environmental and social impact metrics; portfolio-level ESG assessment and metrics; ESG in financial disclosures; future reporting frameworks for ESG information; private equity and ESG; and social- and green-impact bonds. Abstracts are due by May 17.
Upcoming Events
Join the Four Twenty Seven team at these events:
April 30 - May 1 – Ceres Conference 2019, San Francisco, CA: Meet with Founder & CEO, Emilie Mazzacurati on Wednesday.
April 30 – NAREIM Sustainability & Investment Management, Chicago, IL: Chief Operating Officer, Colin Shaw, will present on climate risk data for real estate at this gathering of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers.
May 1 – Addenda Capital Investor Day, Toronto, Canada: Colin Shaw will present on physical climate risk.
May 9 – Addenda Capital Investor Day, Montreal, Canada: Emilie Mazzacurati will present on physical climate risk.
June 4 - 7 – Innovate4Climate, Singapore: Yoon Kim will present on climate risk and resilient infrastructure.
June 10 - 12 – US SIF Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN: Senior Analyst, Lindsay Ross will attend.
June 11 - 12 – RI Europe, London, UK: Hear Emilie Mazzacurati present on scenario analysis for physical climate risk and meet with Director, Europe, Nathalie Borgeaud, at Four Twenty Seven's booth.
June 19 – Columbia University and PRI Private Round Table, New York, NY: Emilie Mazzacurati will discuss stress testing for physical climate risks at this workshop.
FEBRUARY 19, 2019 – SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – Four Twenty Seven receives Climate Change Business Journal Awards for three climate change risk and resilience projects.
The Climate Change Business Journal (CCBJ) released its 10th annual CCBJ Business Achievement Awards, recognizing outstanding business performance in the climate change industry. CCBJ assesses markets and business opportunities across the emerging climate change industry and acknowledged Four Twenty Seven’s contributions to this field through our global dataset on climate risk in real estate, the development of the California Heat Assessment Tool and our contribution to the EBRD-GCECA initiative on Advancing TCFD Guidance on Physical Climate Risks and Opportunities.
The California Heat Assessment Tool (CHAT) earned the Project Merit: Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience award for its innovative approach to helping public health officials, health professionals and residents understand what changing heat wave conditions mean for them, through a free online platform. CHAT is part of California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment, a state-mandated research program to assess climate change impacts in California, and was developed by Four Twenty Seven, Argos Analytics, the Public Health Institute and Habitat 7 with technical support from the California Department of Public Health.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Global Centre of Excellence on Climate Adaptation initiative on Advancing the TCFD Recommendations on Physical Climate Risks and Opportunities earned the Advancing Best Practices: Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience award. This project culminated in a conference and report building on Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) recommendations and providing common foundations for the disclosure of climate-related physical risks and opportunities. It identifies where further research or market action is needed so that detailed, consistent, industry-specific guidelines can be developed on the methodology for quantifying and reporting these risks and opportunities. Four Twenty Seven and Acclimatise provided the technical secretariat that led the working groups and authored the report.
Four Twenty Seven's monthly newsletter highlights recent developments on climate risk and resilience. This month we explore climate risk in the S&P 500, discuss the impacts of climate change on credit risk and share the latest reports on climate risk disclosure.
In Focus: Climate Risk in the S&P 500
Barron's: An Exclusive Look at the Companies Most Exposed
to Climate Change Risk - And What They're Doing About It
Bloomberg also reports on corporate climate reporting, highlighting the self-reported exposure of many U.S. companies in CDP, as well as reported opportunities from a changing climate, such as Home Depot's estimation that increasing disasters and higher temperatures will mean more sales, particularly of fans and cooling appliances.
PG&E Bankruptcy Sparks Investor Concerns
The bankruptcy of PG&E, California's largest utility, has become a symbol of the very material impacts climate change can have on corporations and financial markets. While credit ratings agencies like Moody's had downgraded PG&E's credit rating to junk status based on its tens of billions of dollars in wildfire liability in the weeks preceding the bankruptcy, the question for investors is how these risks can be detected and priced in earlier.
In a broad review of emerging practices for ESG, Credit Risk and Ratings, the UN Principles for Responsible Investment highlights the increased transparency by credit rating agencies and investors into their thinking on ESG integration, although these groups often have different goals for their ESG analysis.
Indeed, the world of credit ratings is slowly moving towards a better integration of ESG considerations at large, including some aspects of climate change risk, like transition risk. Trucost, of S&P Global recently released a report on integrating transition risk scenario analysis into credit rating instruments, while Fitch Ratings introduced ESG relevance scores that provide industry-specific explanations of ESG factors. Systematic integration of physical climate risk in corporate ratings, however, remains the next frontier for financial markets.
EU Releases Recommendations for
Climate Risk Disclosures
EU Technical Expert Group Report on Climate-related Disclosures
The report integrates climate risks into the existing NFRD framework, which includes business model; policies and due diligence processes; outcomes; principal risks and their management; and key performance indicators. It maps this framework to TCFD recommendations and goes further, referencing the EBRD-GCECA report on metrics for physical climate risks and opportunities reporting. While many of the metrics identified in the recommendations are for transition risk, the authors do integrate physical climate risk throughout the report and also require disclosure of a company's impact on climate change.
Quantifying Climate Risk:
Stories from the Field
Dutch Central Bank Assesses Water Risk in the Financial Sector
This report surveys the uptake of TCFD recommendations by large companies in Asia, focusing on the financial services, agriculture, energy, materials, buildings, mining and transport sectors. The research found that insurance, transport and energy sectors scored the highest for both quality and coverage of TCFD reporting, while asset owners and managers had lower average scores.
On Again: France Enters Third Year of Mandatory Disclosures
2019 marks the third reporting year under Art. 173 in France, which requires investors to disclose their exposure to both transition and physical risk. Noteworthy reports from previous years' reporting include analysis by French sovereign wealth fund Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR) and insurance company Allianz France, which both integrate physical risk analysis by Four Twenty Seven. Read more about our reporting and analytics solutions for investors and banks.
Upcoming Events
Join the Four Twenty Seven team at these upcoming events:
March 20-22 – Climate Leadership Conference, Baltimore, MD: Emilie Mazzacurati will speak about the evolving landscape of climate risk disclosure.
April 10-12 – RI Asia Japan, Tokyo, Japan: Hear Chief Development Officer, Frank Freitas, present on climate analytics for investors and meet with Emilie Mazzacurati at Four Twenty Seven's booth.
April 13-16 – APA National Planning Conference, San Francisco, CA: Director of Advisory Services, Yoon Kim, and Director of Analytics, Nik Steinberg, will speak on a panel called, "Beyond Vulnerability: Innovative Adaptation Planning."
April 23-25 – National Adaptation Forum, Madison, WI: Editor, Natalie Ambrosio, will present on local adaptive capacity from a private sector perspective and Yoon Kim will also join the convening.
April 29 - May 1 – Ceres Conference 2019, San Francisco, CA: The Four Twenty Seven team will join investors and corporations at this annual gathering.
June 11 - 12 – RI Europe, London, UK: Hear Emilie Mazzacurati present on climate risk in financial markets and meet with Director, Europe, Nathalie Borgeaud, at Four Twenty Seven's booth.
Four Twenty Seven's monthly newsletter highlights recent developments in climate adaptation and resilience. This month, we release a new report to help corporations and investors understand local adaptive capacity, share initiatives to standardize adaptation and highlight resources on adaptation finance.
In Focus: Assessing Local Adaptive Capacity
427 Report: Helping Corporations and Investors Understand
Local Adaptive Capacity
Building resilient communities and financial systems requires an understanding of climate risk exposure, but also of how prepared communities are to manage that risk. From flooded or damaged public infrastructure hindering employee and customer commutes to competition for water resources threatening business operations and urban heat reducing public health, the impacts of climate change on a community will impact the businesses and real estate investors based in that community.
Our newest report describes Four Twenty Seven's framework for assessing adaptive capacity in a way that’s actionable for corporations seeking to understand the risk and resilience of their own facilities and for investors assessing risk in their portfolios or screening potential investments. We create location-specific analysis by focusing on three pillars: 1) awareness, 2) economic and financial characteristics, and 3) the quality of adaptation planning and implementation. This helps the private sector understand their assets' risks and provides an entry-point for collaboration on local resilience-building.
While climate mitigation has traditionally been the focus of efforts to address climate change, the past few years have seen an increased recognition of adaptation as a critical element of confronting climate change. As efforts grow to understand, quantify and catalyze adaptation investment there is a growing need for standardization and metrics around resilience investments.
This will contribute to the ongoing effort to identify investments that build resilience in specific industries. The TEG recently released its preliminary report outlining its current thinking and explaining where it is soliciting feedback. The report shows the current lack of consensus around adaptation metrics and the need to standardize resilience definitions.
These principles will be released for public consultation in June 2019 and will lay the foundation for the development of sector-specific adaptation and resilience criteria. Founder & CEO, Emilie Mazzacurati, and Strategic Advisor, Josh Sawislak, are members of AREG.
Science Suffers in Government Shutdown
Four Twenty Seven analysts Josh Turner and Colin Gannon attended the American Meteorological Society's annual meeting last week, where the absence of hundreds of federal scientists was sorely felt. Numerous sessions were cancelled or poorly attended, and information sharing was lost in both directions.
Plugging the Climate Adaptation Gap with High Resilience Benefit Investments
In this report S&P Global Ratings highlights both the funding gap and the multifaceted benefits of resilience projects. It outlines both challenges and benefits of quantifying benefits of adaptation projects and the barriers to adaptation, providing a small case study on the economic benefits of adapting to sea level rise. Lastly, the brief report emphasizes the need for private investment to support limited public funding.
This report outlines a vision for a realigned financial system, prepared for long-term climate risks and opportunities. The OECD, World Bank and UN Environment explain the dire need to disclose climate-related financial information in infrastructure projects and to invest in low-emission, resilient infrastructure that is both prepared for a changing climate and able to catalyze economic growth.
Money for Resilient Infrastructure
The ebook Money for Resilient Infrastructure: How to Finance America's Climate Changed Future, explains recent developments in the financial sector's understanding of climate-related risks and highlights the growing demand for resilient infrastructure. Joyce Coffee outlines infrastructure finance options, investment instruments and strategies for obtaining resilience financing.
“I’m honored to be recognized by The Top 100 Magazine,” says Emilie. “We’re pushing the boundaries of how the financial world thinks about climate change, and appreciate the recognition on how our work helps drive the conversation on climate risk.” The Top 100 Magazine writes that while climate data "may seem like a fairly novel niche within the financial sector, the demand for this data has grown exponentially over the past two years... [Four Twenty Seven's] analysis leverages best-in-class climate data at the most granular level, and scores assets based on their precise geographic location. This provides the financial industry with the most comprehensive overview of investment outcomes related to present and future climate changes."
Upcoming Events
Join the Four Twenty Seven team at these upcoming events:
January 23 – From Sciences Po to the Economic Risk of Climate Change, San Francisco, CA: Hear Founder & CEO, Emilie Mazzacurati, speak at this Sciences Po American Foundation event at 6:30pm. Use discount code 427 for a $10 ticket.
February 12 – Investing for Impact, New York, NY: Emilie Mazzacurati will present on adaptation as an impact investment opportunity at this annual convening hosted by The Economist.
March 20-22 – Climate Leadership Conference, Baltimore, MD: Emilie Mazzacurati will speak about the evolving landscape of climate risk disclosure.
April 10-12 – RI Asia Japan, Tokyo, Japan: Chief Development Officer, Frank Freitas, will present on climate analytics for investors and Emilie Mazzacurati will also join this convening.
April 13-16 – APA National Planning Conference, San Francisco, CA: Director of Advisory Services, Yoon Kim, and Director of Analytics, Nik Steinberg, will speak on a panel called, "Beyond Vulnerability: Innovative Adaptation Planning."
April 23-25 – National Adaptation Forum, Madison, WI: Editor, Natalie Ambrosio, will present on local adaptive capacity from a private sector perspective.
April 29 - May 1 – Ceres Conference 2019, San Francisco, CA: The Four Twenty Seven team will join investors and corporations at this annual gathering.
Our mailing address is:
Four Twenty Seven
2000 Hearst Ave
Ste 304
Berkeley, CA 94709
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![Figure 12.5 | Time series of global annual mean surface air temperature anomalies (relative to 1986–2005) from CMIP5 concentration-driven experiments. Projections are shown for each RCP for the multi-model mean (solid lines) and the 5 to 95% range (±1.64 standard deviation) across the distribution of individual models (shading). Discontinuities at 2100 are due to different numbers of models performing the extension runs beyond the 21st century and have no physical meaning. Only one ensemble member is used from each model and numbers in the figure indicate the number of different models contributing to the different time periods. No ranges are given for the RCP6.0 projections beyond 2100 as only two models are available.Source IPCC AR5: Collins, M., R. Knutti, J. Arblaster, J.-L. Dufresne, T. Fichefet, P. Friedlingstein, X. Gao, W.J. Gutowski, T. Johns, G. Krinner, M. Shongwe, C. Tebaldi, A.J. Weaver and M. Wehner, 2013: Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1029–1136, doi:10.1017/CBO9781107415324.024.](http://427mt.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ipcc-rcp-1024x688.jpg)
