Hurricanes/Typhoons Archives - Four Twenty Seven

Scenario Analysis for Physical Climate Risk: Equity Markets

Posted on June 18, 2019June 18, 2019 by Natalie Ambrosio

In this second installment of our blog series of scenario analysis, we focus on how investors can start exploring impacts on portfolios of listed equities/fixed income with existing climate risk analytics. The series provides our current reflections on how corporations and financial institutions can integrate physical climate risk into scenario analysis. The first installment, on foundations, focuses on important characteristics of climate science that affect how climate data can be used to inform scenario analysis for economic and financial risk. A forthcoming post will discuss scenario analysis at the asset level for real asset investments and corporate facilities.

Scenario Analysis Serves Different Purposes

Scenario analysis serves different purposes for real asset investors and for equity or fixed income investors. When looking at a single real asset, scenario analysis can be used to inform very concrete decisions regarding the asset, working directly with the asset operator: whether and what flood protections to put in place, insurance requirements, anticipated impacts on operational costs from water and energy consumption, etc.

In contrast, for an equity or fixed income portfolio, investors’ influence on the resilience of the underlying asset (e.g. a corporation or a sovereign entity) is much more limited. In a previous publication we discussed the importance of shareholder engagement with corporations as a key channel for investors to help raise awareness of rising risks from climate change, and encourage companies to invest in responsible corporate adaptation measures. Investors, however, would be hard pressed to run scenario analysis on individual portfolio companies themselves, and disclosures from corporations on scenario analysis remain weak and fragmented.

Meanwhile, prudential authorities in Europe have been signalling expectations that insurers and banks perform scenario analysis on their portfolio to examine potential impacts of climate change, to understand how different climate-driven outcomes might prevent the insurers and lenders from meeting their financial obligations. Most recently, in April, the Bank of England Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) released a proposed set of specifications for scenario analysis that includes some simplified assumptions on climate impacts on financial portfolios.

In this piece we examine how available climate risk analytics can be leveraged to inform early attempts at developing stress test assumptions and simulate potential outcomes on investment portfolios aligned with the relative exposure of corporations by sectors and by regions.

Climate Risk Analytics for Equities/Fixed Income

We leverage our data on corporate physical risk exposure to determine what assumptions can be made in this type of early stress test. In this piece, we analyze the climate risk scores for 1730 of the largest companies in MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI). This physical risk assessment is based on the exposure of the underlying database of about a million facilities globally.

We score each company on three components of physical climate risk: Operations Risk, Supply Chain Risk and Market Risk.

427 Methodology Chart — Figure 1. 427 indicators for physical climate risk exposure in corporations (equities/fixed income)

A company’s Operations Risk is based on its facility-level exposure to hurricanes & typhoons, sea level rise, floods, extreme heat and water stress. The analysis also considers the sensitivity of different types of facilities. For example, manufacturing plants with their high energy demands are more sensitive to extreme heat than offices.
Supply Chain Risk is based on the risk in countries that export commodities that the company depends on and a company’s reliance on climate-sensitive resources such as water, land and energy, based on its industry.
Market Risk is based on where a company’s sales are generated and how its industry has historically been impacted by weather variability.

Scores are normalized, with 0 being the least exposed and 100 being the most exposed. (For more details, please refer to our previous report Physical Climate Risk in Equity Portfolios as well as our Solutions page)

In line with considerations of relevant time horizons and of impacts being locked in over the climatic short term (detailed in Part 1), our standard equity risk score data considers projected climate impacts in the 2030-2040 time period under a single RCP scenario, RCP 8.5 (the worst case scenario, also known as business as usual), but leverages several climate models.

From Climate Hazard Exposure to Financial Impacts

Studies of how physical climate hazards translate into financial impacts at the company level are scarce. While a growing body of research explores the complex relationships between climate hazards and economic impacts, which vary by sector and by region, academic research on the relationship between climate events and corporate/stock performance, at scale, is still limited. Our approach focuses on leveraging what can be estimated in a robust, data-driven way: relative exposure of companies to climate hazards.

Our analysis of global corporations shows the relative exposure of industries to climate related risks across all three dimensions: operations risk, market risk and supply chain risk (Table 1). This table shows the sectors with the highest exposure, including manufacturing, infrastructure (utility, energy, transportation), and industries with high dependency on natural resources (food, apparel).

Table 1. Industries most exposed to physical climate risks . Source: Four Twenty Seven.

Services, not shown in the table, are not only less exposed, they’re also far less sensitive to changes in climatic conditions, with the exception of the financial sector, which holds the risk of all the other sectors in its investment, lending or insurance portfolios. Note that real estate is not included in this analysis, but data on regional exposure in that sector can be found in our white paper on climate risk in real estate.

These differentiated impacts by sectors can lay the foundations for a stress test, as industry risk levels can be used to set initial assumptions on sector-wide impacts. Following the example set out by the Bank of England’s PRA, for example, investors could assume that sectors with high exposure might see a 10% or 20% drop in value, whereas sectors with medium exposure would see half of that impact. These assumptions are not intended to substitute for financial impact modeling, but provide a shortcut to test how a portfolio might perform under climate-driven duress.

Drivers of Exposure to Physical Climate Risk

While some sectors overlap with those examined in scenario analysis exercises for transition risk, such as utilities and energy, other sectors with high exposure are not typically included in scenario analysis, like tech manufacturing or pharmaceuticals. Understanding the nuances of the risk pathways in each sector and their relative exposure to different hazards is critical to refining assumptions and developing models that can quantify value-at-risk by sector with some accuracy.

Manufacturing companies in the tech sector rely on complex value chains that can be interrupted by extreme weather events, particularly in Asia, which is a region highly exposed to typhoons and extreme precipitation. They also often produce expensive and water sensitive products using costly machinery and can incur costs and damages from extreme events on site. Pharmaceuticals are particularly exposed because of the prevalence of their manufacturing in water-stressed regions (India, California) and regions highly exposed to hurricanes & typhoons. For example, damaged manufacturing sites in Puerto Rico had rippling impacts on pharmaceutical operations globally during Hurricane Maria in 2017. Pharmaceuticals is also one of the groups with the most weight in the MSCI ACWI, making this exposure particularly significant (Fig 2).

Figure 2. The average company risk score by GICS Industry Group, with Operations Risk on the y-axis and Market & Supply Chain Risk on the x-axis. Red represents those industries with the highest exposure, green represents those with the lowest exposure and the size of the bubble signifies an industry’s weight in the MSCI ACWI. Source: Four Twenty Seven.

In the utility sector, the nature of the exposure is very different from that observed in transition risk analysis: carbon neutral power generation can be as exposed as thermal generation – for example due to water stress or floods for hydro facilities. In addition, utilities rely on expensive equipment, such as cables, poles, fuel storage and pipes that are often exposed to severe weather and sensitive to extreme conditions. Their operations are also resource-intensive, relying heavily on energy and water for cooling. They can experience operations disruptions during peak energy demands or due to equipment damage during storms.

The exposure of the automobiles & components sector has been illustrated by recent flooding in Japan. Automobile companies rely on manufacturing processes and machinery that can be interrupted due to flooding or hurricane damage, but their reliance on employee labor also makes these companies vulnerable to the wider regional impacts of extreme events. For example, during Japan’s extreme flooding in July 2018, Mazda was forced to halt operations at some of its facilities that were not physically damaged themselves, because its employees could not travel safely to work.

Conclusion

Climate change calls for a better understanding of impacts of physical hazards on financial markets, which remains a topic largely unexplored. Yet as regulators push insurers and banks towards the integration of climate scenarios into stress testing, robust, data-driven views on the relative exposure of sectors or regions provide a helpful foundation from which to explore the potential impacts on equity and fixed income portfolios.

Over time, better data will become available as academic and industry providers develop models that capture the nuances of climate impacts on different industries and geographies, but also as companies make a concerted effort to disclose better data on their past and anticipated financial exposure to extreme weather and climate-related events.

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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.

Webinar: Climate Risk in Real Estate

Posted on October 23, 2018October 24, 2018 by Natalie Ambrosio

This webinar on climate risk in real estate presents Four Twenty Seven and GeoPhy’s analysis of exposure to physical climate hazards in global real estate investment trusts (REITs). The presentations includes key findings from the white paper, Climate Risk, Real Estate, and the Bottom Line and a discussion of how physical climate data is leveraged in financial risk reporting for the real estate sector.

Download the slides, including links to resources discussed during the presentations and additional Q&A slides based on the webinar.

Summary

Context and Introductions: Dr. Nils Kok, Chief Economist at GeoPhy and Emilie Mazzacurati, Founder and CEO of Four Twenty Seven

Data and Methodology: Dr. Nils Kok presents GeoPhy’s database of REITs holdings and Nik Steinberg, Director of Analytics at Four Twenty Seven, shares Four Twenty Seven’s scoring methodology for climate risk exposure.

Key Findings: Kendall Starkman, Manager at Four Twenty Seven, presents key findings highlighted in the paper, Climate Risk, Real Estate, and the Bottom Line.

Market Implications & Opportunities for Investors: Emilie Mazzacurati discusses best practices for integrating physical climate risk into financial risk disclosures for real estate investors and Chris Pyke, Research Officer, U.S. Green Building Council, shares results from the GRESB Resilience Module and discusses plans to support reporting on climate risk.

Read more about Four Twenty Seven and GeoPhy’s REITs data product and our other solutions for investors.

Climate Risk, Real Estate, and the Bottom Line

Posted on October 11, 2018November 20, 2018 by Natalie Ambrosio

OCTOBER 11, 2018 – BOSTON, MA – Four Twenty Seven & GeoPhy Release First Global Dataset on Real Estate Investment Trusts’ Exposure to Climate Change.

Four Twenty Seven and real estate technology company GeoPhy today announce the release of a data product that provides granular projections of the impacts of climate change on real estate investment trusts (REITs). REITs represent an increasingly important asset class that provides investors with a vehicle for gaining exposure to portfolios of real estate. The data was launched at the Urban Land Institute Fall Event in Boston, MA, accompanied by a white paper that lays out the implications of climate risk for the real estate sector.

Four Twenty Seven applied its scoring model of asset-level climate risk exposure to GeoPhy’s database of listed real estate investment trusts’ (REITs) holdings, to create the first global, scientific assessment of REITs’ exposure to climate risk. The dataset includes detailed, contextualized projections of climate impacts from floods due to extreme precipitation and sea level rise, exposure to hurricane-force winds, water stress and heat stress for over 73,500 properties owned by 321 listed REITs.

“Real estate is on the frontline of exposure to climate change” said Emilie Mazzacurati, founder and CEO of Four Twenty Seven. “Many valuable locations and markets are often coastal or near bodies of water, and therefore are going to experience increases in flood occurrences due to increases in extreme rainfall and to sea level rise.” she noted. “These risks can now be assessed with great precision — the availability of this data provides investors with an opportunity to perform comprehensive due diligence which reflects all dimensions of emerging risks.” she concluded.

“The market has begun to price in the potential impacts of fat-tail climate events” noted Dr. Nils Kok, Chief Economist of GeoPhy. “Properties exposed to sea level rise in some parts of the United States are selling at a 7% discount to those with less exposure, and the value of commercial real estate is expected to equally reflect these risks. Leveraging forward-looking data on risk exposure can allow REIT investors to anticipate changes in market valuations and react accordingly.”

Read the report: Climate Risk, Real Estate, and the Bottom Line.

Key findings include:

35 percent of REITs properties globally are currently exposed to climate hazards. Of these, 17 percent of properties are exposed to inland flood risk, 6 percent to sea level rise and coastal floods, and 12 percent to hurricanes or typhoons
U.S. markets most exposed to sea level rise include New York, San Francisco, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Boston. The high-value REITs most exposed to sea level rise in the U.S. are Vornado Realty Trust and Equity Residential.*
Globally, REITs concentrated in Hong Kong and Singapore display the highest exposure to rising seas. Sun Hung Kai Properties, worth $56 billion, has over a quarter of its properties exposed to coastal flooding.
37 Japanese REITs have their entire portfolio exposed to the highest risk for typhoon globally, representing $264.5 billion at risk in properties in Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

Read the report Climate Risk, Real Estate, and the Bottom Line.

Download the Press Release.

*Erratum: A previous version of this blog post mentioned in error that CapitaLand is one of the U.S. REITs most exposed to sea level rise. CapitaLand is a Singapore-based REIT with some exposure to sea level rise but it is not among the most exposed.

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Read more about Four Twenty Seven’s REITs data product and our other solutions for investors.

Time and Tides – Flooding in Japan

Posted on July 16, 2018July 18, 2018 by Natalie Ambrosio

July 15, 2018 – 427 ANALYSIS: Record-setting rains in Japan led to floods and landslides that disrupted business operations of automobile manufacturers, electronic companies and others. Understanding the ownership and operations of facilities located in the damaged areas provides insight into what companies and industries may exhibit downturns in performance over the near term and be vulnerable to similar storms in the future.

Japan was the inundated by over 70 inches of rain in early July, an event that resulted in significant loss of life and business disruptions. The clouds have since receded, leaving economic damage with long-term implications yet to be understood. However, estimates expect industry losses to be in the billions USD. Destruction was centered in Okayama and Hiroshima, driven by flooding and landslides.

Typhoons Prapiroon and Maria contributed to this rainfall and climate scientists expect a warmer climate to increase the severity of these storms. Japan has fewer preparations in place for floods than it does for other extreme events, and understanding the various manifestations of risk caused by extreme rainfall is essential to mitigating damage in the future.

Much of Okayama sits immediately below mountains, which makes it particularly exposed to devastating landslides following significant rainfall events. Bursting pipes and power outages led over 250,000 homes in the Okayama and Hiroshima Prefectures to go without water for several days after the floods. Landslides destroyed homes and exacerbated infrastructure damage caused by flooding.

Many business operations were severely impacted by these events as well, and some facilities remain closed. Companies such as Panasonic experienced physical damage due to flooded facilities, and others were impacted by damaged infrastructure and communities, impacting their supply chains and workforce.

Okayama and Hiroshima are centers of economic activity for a number of key sectors in Japan, hosting production facilities for auto manufacturing, consumer electronics, retail trade and others. The figure below highlights the concentration of facilities of companies in the auto manufacturing industry by the sector of their operations. Companies that rely heavily on manufacturing operations are particularly vulnerable to flooding due in part to their utilization of expensive equipment that can easily incur water damage.

The heavy rainfalls showed no favorites in their disruption of manufacturing facilities across industries. For example, Mitsubishi and Mazda halted operations at some factories during the storms, due in part to supply chain disruptions. Many companies were also forced to pause operations because employees couldn’t get to work. While Mazda’s headquarters in Hiroshima Prefecture and a production facility in Yamaguchi Prefecture weren’t damaged themselves, they remained closed after the storms until employees could return to work safely. Likewise IHI Corp. closed its No. 2 Kure factory in Hiroshima because of water shortages and employees’ commute challenges.

The extent of long-term economic impacts that these companies will bear in the aftermath of last week’s storms is not yet known, but merits ongoing examination as the region recovers. Understanding the location of a corporation’s facilities and their exposure to extreme weather events is a key starting point for gauging exposure, and therefore can be instrumental in understanding company’s future performance.

Four Twenty Seven’s extensive facility level database can help investors proactively identify their portfolio companies’ exposures both to chronic climate effects and to individual extreme weather events such as the extreme rainfall that beset Okayama and Hiroshima. This deeper understanding can drive better risk-return tradeoffs, and importantly, shareholder engagement strategies that foster investments in resilience.

Engaging with Corporates to Build Adaptive Capacity

Posted on June 5, 2018June 8, 2018 by Natalie Ambrosio

June 5, 2018 – 427 REPORT. Shareholder engagement is a critical tool to build resilience in investment portfolios. Investors can help raise awareness of rising risks from climate change, and encourage companies to invest in responsible corporate adaptation measures. We identify top targets for shareholder engagement on physical climate risks and provide data-driven strategies for choosing companies and approaching engagement. Our report includes sample questions as an entry point for investors’ conversations about climate risk and resilience with corporations.

Shareholder engagement on climate change has grown tremendously in recent years. Over 270 investors, managing almost $30 trillion collectively, have committed to engage with the largest greenhouse gas emitters through the Climate Action 100+. In addition to their ongoing efforts to engage and encourage companies to reduce emissions, investors are becoming aware of the financial risks from extreme weather and climate change. Climate change increases downside risks: a negative repricing of assets is already being seen where climate impacts are most obvious, such as coastal areas of Miami. As climate change can negatively impact company valuations, investors must strive to bolster governance and adaptive capacity to help companies build resilience.

This Four Twenty Seven report, From Risk to Resilience – Engaging with Corporates to Build Adaptive Capacity, explains the value of engagement, for both corporations and investors and describes data and case studies to drive engagement strategies. While news coverage of extreme weather events can clue investors in to which corporations may be experiencing climate-driven financial damage, new data can empower investors to identify systemic climate risk factors and proactively engage companies likely to experience impacts in the future. Reactive engagement strategies based on news stories can also use data to more thoroughly explore corporations highlighted in the news, by examining other hazards that may pose harm to their operations.

The report also identifies the Top 10 companies with the highest exposure to physical climate risk in the Climate Action 100+ and calls for investors to leverage their engagement on emissions to also address urgent issues around climate impacts and building resilience.

Once they identify companies, shareholders can use a variety of questions to gain a deeper understanding of companies’ vulnerability to climate hazards and their governance and planning processes, or adaptive capacity, to build resilience to such impacts. The report provides sample questions for different components of climate risk, including Operations Risk, Market Risk and Supply Chain Risk, as well as Adaptive Capacity.

Key Takeaways

• The impacts of a changing climate pose significant downside risk for companies; a risk bound to increase as the climate continues to degrade.
• At present, investors are likely to become aware of exposure to financial damages from extreme weather events only after they have occurred. Disclosure is limited but gaining traction.
• Corporate engagement is a tool to encourage companies to deploy capital and technical assistance to build resilience in their operations and supply chains.
• Investors can select target companies reactively based on prior incidents or pro-actively identify firms that would benefit from resilience plans.
• Investors should question companies on their exposure to physical climate risks via their operations, supply chain and market, as well as how they are building resilience to these risks through risk management and responsible corporate adaptation strategies.

Download the report.

Download the press release.

Newsletter: US Munis Increasingly Vulnerable to Floods, Storms and Drought

Posted on May 22, 2018May 22, 2018 by Natalie Ambrosio

Four Twenty Seven’s monthly newsletter highlights recent developments in climate adaptation and resilience. This month, don’t miss our new report on muni climate risk exposure, details on upcoming Four Twenty Seven webinars and an update on risk disclosure resources!

In Focus: U.S Munis Increasingly Vulnerable to Floods, Storms, and Drought

New report from Four Twenty Seven analyzes exposure to climate hazards in U.S. muni market

Our latest report Assessing Exposure to Climate Change in U.S. Munis identifies U.S. cities and counties most exposed to the impacts of climate change. As credit rating agencies start integrating physical climate risk into their municipal ratings, our new climate risk scores help inform investors with forward-looking, comparable data on the climate risks that impact these municipalities. Learn more about Four Twenty Seven climate risk scores for cities and counties and options to finance city resilience in our Webinar: Building City-level Climate Resilience, May 23.

Read the Report

Advancing TCFD Guidance on Physical Climate Risk and Opportunities

EBRD and GCECA Conference on May 31

Advancing TCFD Guidance on Physical Climate Risks and Opportunities is a targeted initiative to lay the foundations for a common conceptual framework and a standard set of metrics for physical climate risks and opportunities disclosures. Working with thought-leaders in the financial and corporate sectors, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Global Climate Center for Excellence on Climate Adaptation (GCECA), with the support from technical experts Four Twenty Seven and Acclimatise, developed a set of technical recommendations on metrics for risks and opportunities disclosures.

The final report will be released during a conference held at the EBRD’s headquarters in London on May 31st, 2018. Four Twenty Seven founder and CEO Emilie Mazzacurati will facilitate the panel discussion on the project’s key findings with Murray Birt from DWS, Simon Connell from Standard & Chartered, Craig Davies from EBRD, and Greg Lowe from AON.

TCFD Knowledge Hub

The recently launched TCFD Knowledge Hub is a curated platform of insights and resources on climate risk reporting. Users can search by keyword or sort for resources by the four TCFD themes. There is a broad set of research, tools and frameworks for implementing the TCFD recommendations, including our Lender’s Guide for Considering Climate Risk in Infrastructure Investments, our Technical Brief on Using Climate Data and a Climate Scenario Guide for Investors.

Helping Banks Build Climate Resilience

Acknowledging that financial impacts, regulatory pressures and industry action all point toward the need for climate-related risk disclosure and more comprehensive data, IDB Invest asserts that what may have formerly been ancillary ESG factors must now be central to business decisions. They report on four key messages from their annual Sustainability Week, in their article “Four insights for banks willing to seize sustainable finance opportunities.”

The key takeaways are that risk analysis must include more than solely financial data, technology is a crucial ally in translating data into actionable insights, new ways to understand risk bring new market opportunities, and prioritization of ESG and climate analysis demand shifting human capital needs. Four Twenty Seven provided one of the featured new technologies, combining climate data with data on bank’s credit portfolios to assess climate-related risks and new market opportunities for banks in Ecuador. Read more.

Tomorrow! Four Twenty Seven Webinar:
Building City-level Climate Resilience

Wed, May 23, 2018 11:00AM – 12PM PT

Four Twenty Seven is hosting a webinar to provide insight into concrete actions that cities can take to more effectively attract investor financing for climate adaptation and resilience, and share findings from our comprehensive analysis of city-level physical climate risks in the U.S. The webinar will be recorded and made available in the Insights section of our website. Register here.

Save the date – Four Twenty Seven Webinar:
Metrics for Physical Climate Risks Disclosure

Four Twenty Seven will host a webinar on TCFD reporting, emerging metrics and best practice for physical climate risks and opportunities disclosures. We will provide insights and lessons from the front line on:

How to use climate data to assess risks
Do’s and don’ts of scenario analysis
How to structure your TCFD/Art. 173 disclosures
Strategies for corporate engagement

Tues. June 12 at 8am PT; 11am ET; 4pm CET:

Tues. Wed. 13 June at 9am HKT/SGT; 10am JST; 11am AEST (June 12 at 6pm PT):

The Third California Adaptation Forum

The biennial California Adaptation Forum will take place in Sacramento from August 28-29. This multidisciplinary gathering of adaptation professionals and local stakeholders will include plenaries, workshops and sessions discussing trends in climate resilience, forward-looking adaptation policy, strategies for adaptation finance and new tools.

Upcoming Events

Join the Four Twenty Seven team in the field at these upcoming events:

May 23: Four Twenty Seven Webina r Building City-level Climate Resilience, 11am-12pm PT: This webinar will discuss city level physical climate risks and opportunities to access climate adaptation and resilience financing. Register here.
May 23: Capital Region Climate Readiness Collaborative Quarterly Meeting, Sacramento, CA: Advisory Services Manager, Kendall Starkman, will join this quarterly meeting focused on the drivers of poor air quality in the Capital Region.
May 31: Advancing TCFD Guidance on Physical Climate Risk and Opportunities, London, UK: Four Twenty Seven is a strategic partner for this event hosted by EBRD and GCECA to discuss emerging guidance on metrics for physical climate risk disclosures and scenario analysis and Emilie Mazzacurati will moderate a panel presenting findings on physical risk metrics.
June 5-6: Responsible Investors Europe, London, UK: Hear Emilie Mazzacurati speak on a panel on corporate engagement and also meet with Chief Development Officer, Frank Freitas, and Senior Risk Analyst, Léonie Chatain, to discuss ratings and engagement on physical climate risk in equities.
June 7-9: 7th Sustainable Finance Forum, Waddesdon, UK: COO Colin Shaw will speak on a panel called “Supply chain transparency and network analysis” at this forum hosted by the Sustainable Finance Programme at the University of Oxford.
June 12: Four Twenty Seven Webinar: Metrics for Physical Climate Risks Disclosure, 8am PT and 6pm PT: This webinar will cover TCFD reporting, emerging metrics and best practice for physical climate risks and opportunities disclosures.
June 12-14: VERGE Hawaii, Honolulu, HI: Kendall Starkman, will speak about Four Twenty Seven’s heat assessment work at this convening of corporate, government and NGO stakeholders committed to building resilient cities and economies.
June 18-21: Adaptation Futures 2018, Cape Town, South Africa: Director of Advisory Services, Yoon Kim, will facilitate a session exploring integrating climate risks into infrastructure investment decisions.
June 26: GRESB’s Sustainable Real Assets Conference, Sydney, Australia: Meet with Frank Freitas at GRESB’s annual conference on resilient infrastructure investments.
August 28-29: 3rd California Adaptation Forum, Sacramento, CA: Save the date for this opportunity to join over 600 climate leaders in workshops, sessions and networking around adaptation action in California.
September 12-14: PRI in Person, San Francisco, CA: Join the Four Twenty Seven team at this annual convening of responsible investment industry leaders.
September 12-14: Global Climate Action Summit, San Francisco, CA: Join the Four Twenty Seven team at this convening of global climate adaptation experts meant to propel action around the Paris Agreement.

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Assessing Exposure to Climate Risk in U.S. Municipalities

Posted on May 22, 2018October 31, 2018 by Natalie Ambrosio

May 22, 2018 – 427 REPORT. Cities and counties are bearing the costs of the sixteen billion-dollar disasters in the United States in 2017, raising concerns over the resilience of municipalities to the impacts of climate change and associated financial shocks. Credit rating agencies are increasingly integrating physical climate risk into their municipal rating criteria; however, they lack concrete metrics that compare and assess which municipalities are exposed to climate impacts. Four Twenty Seven’s new local climate risk scores provide comparable, forward-looking data to fill this gap. This report discusses our approach to measuring exposure to climate hazards and highlights cities and counties most exposed to the impacts of climate change.

Following Hurricane Harvey, Moody’s downgraded Port Arthur from A1 to A2 due to its “weak liquidity position that is exposed to additional financial obligations from the recent hurricane damage, that are above and beyond the city’s regular scope of operations.” (Moody’s). This follows the recent trend of rating agencies increasingly considering climate change and past extreme weather events in their evaluations of U.S. cities. While this consideration is an important step, their evaluations could be better informed by incorporating forward-looking comparable data on the climate risks that impact these municipalities.

Featuring Four Twenty Seven’s new local level exposure scores, our report Assessing Exposure to Climate Change in U.S. Munis, shares key findings from our scoring of all 3,142 U.S. counties and the 761 cities over 50,000 in population. The research results are based on Four Twenty Seven’s market-leading expertise in five major climate categories, including cyclones/hurricanes, sea level rise, extreme rainfall, heat stress, and water stress. “This new dataset provides a comprehensive suite of risk scores to better inform rating and pricing decisions,” says Emilie Mazzacurati, Founder & CEO. “We believe that our analytics will be very helpful for all market participants, including muni bond investors, local governments, and ratings agencies.”

This report highlights specific cities and counties most exposed to each climate hazard and also discusses regional trends and economic sensitivities that may exacerbate a muni’s vulnerability. “Climate risk is increasingly a part of our credit analysis for municipal issuers across the country,” said Andrew Teras, senior analyst at Breckinridge Capital Advisors. “The climate risk scores developed by Four Twenty Seven provide a comparable way to evaluate climate exposure and will give us another factor for assessing our investment universe.”

Key Findings

Sea Level Rise: The mid-Atlantic, particularly New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, has the highest exposure to coastal flooding in the United States, with the Bay Area and Pacific Northwest also highly exposed in several of their coastal cities and counties.
Cyclones/Hurricanes: The majority of cyclone risk in the United States is concentrated in the Southeast, given its geographic proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and the tropical Atlantic Ocean. The coastal Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are also exposed to cyclones, but they tend to be less frequent than in the Southeast and somewhat weaker on average after interacting with land or cooler ocean waters.
Extreme Rainfall: The Midwest is particularly exposed to heightened flood risk due to changing rainfall patterns. Recent advancements in attribution science show extreme rainfall to be the main driver of recent floods rather than 20th century agricultural practices, as was largely believed to be the case until recently.
Heat Stress: The highest heat stress scores tend to be centered in the Southeast and Midwest, concentrated in Missouri and western Illinois and fanning out to the Great Plains, Mississippi River Basin, and Florida.
Water Stress: Key watersheds for agricultural production such as the Central Valley aquifer system in California and the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains are highly exposed to water stress. The agriculturally-dominated areas of Bakersfield, Delano, and Visalia, CA along the Central Valley Aquifer are among the ten cities most exposed to water stress. Similarly, municipalities along the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains also rely heavily on agriculture and are among the most exposed to water stress.

Download the report.

Download the press release.

Using Climate Data – 427 Technical Brief

Posted on April 25, 2018June 4, 2018 by Natalie Ambrosio

April 25, 2018 – 427 TECHNICAL BRIEF. Financial institutions, corporations, and governments increasingly strive to identify and respond to risks driven by physical climate impacts. Understanding the risks posed by climate change for facilities or infrastructure assets starts with conducting a risk assessment, which requires an understanding of the physical impacts of climate change. However, climate data in its raw form is difficult to integrate into enterprise risk management, financial risk modelling processes, and capital planning. This primer provides a brief introduction to climate models and data from a business or government perspective.

The first of several reports explaining the data and climate hazards analyzed in Four Twenty Seven’s equity risk scores and portfolio analytics, Using Climate Data unpacks the process through which raw climate data is transformed into usable metrics, such as future temperature projections, to help financial, corporate and government users productively incorporate climate-based analytics into their workflows. Beginning by explaining what a global climate model is, the report explains climate data’s format, computational choices to hedge uncertainty and resources for aggregated climate projections tailored to specific audiences.

Key Takeaways

Climate models are simulations of the Earth’s future conditions. Climate projections are based on a compilation of many models and are publicly available.
Regional climate models and statistical downscaling improve the resolution of data produced by global climate models and are thus valuable options when projections are only needed for one location or several in the same region.
Climate models can be used to project future trends in temperature and precipitation, but can not project discrete storms or local flooding from sea level rise, which require additional data and analysis.
Different time horizons of climate projections have different strengths and limitations so it is important to select the data product best suited to a specific project’s goal.
There are several drivers of uncertainty in climate models and strategies to hedge this uncertainty can help users correctly interpret and use climate projections.

Download the Report.

Can Investors Anticipate the Impacts of Climate Change on Equities?

Posted on April 9, 2018September 27, 2018 by Natalie Ambrosio

427 ANALYSIS – The physical impacts of climate change drive millions of dollars of losses for corporations every year, as experienced by Honda and Toyota during the 2011 floods in Thailand. Investors equipped with data on corporate production facilities and climate projections can manage their risk exposure more effectively and reduce downside risk.

Risk is one of the most widely understood and discussed components of the investment management process today. Informed tradeoffs of risk and return are fundamental to modern investment practices across asset classes and investment styles. And yet, an important dimension of risk – physical risk from companies’ exposure to climate volatility – has yet to find its way into the mainstream investment process.

Monsoons Damage Automobile Manufacturers

Climate change’s influence on economies, sectors and companies is an increasingly important factor in identifying and balancing the tradeoffs between risk and return. For example, the heavy monsoon season that led to severe flooding across Thailand in late June 2011 through December, inundated 30,000 square kilometers¹and caused widespread economic damage. Automobile manufacturers such as Toyota and Honda were particularly affected by suspended operations and supply chain disruptions, which led to reduced production internationally and affected global sales and profitability long after the rains stopped.

Figure 1. Honda and Toyota facilities’ exposure to extreme rainfall. Orange dots represent facilities with higher risk.

As shown in Figure 1, both companies possess a diversified set of production facilities in the area affected by the flooding, including stamping facilities and sub-component manufacturers, which do not only service downstream processes in Thailand but in other production centers as well. These same facilities all score high for extreme rainfall in our global corporate facility database, signaling high vulnerability to flood risk for Honda and Toyota – a risk that will only worsen in the future.

Figure 2. Japanese Automobile & Components Manufacturers’ exposure to sea level rise by facility. Red indicates high sea level risk, while green represents lower risk.

Sea Level Rise in Japan

Investors must also anticipate forward-looking risks – what will climate change bring, and which companies are most affected? Understanding and preparing for volatility in returns requires an in-depth awareness of a company’s facilities and the climate risks which those facilities face. Given their global footprint, many businesses are exposed to diverse hazards such as extreme heat, water stress, cyclones and sea level rise, in addition to extreme precipitation. Thus, the factors we include to model a company’s physical risk to climate change include the sector characteristics, operational needs and the regional conditions where facilities are located. While flood damage and manufacturing delays in Thailand damaged Honda and Toyota, Figure 2. shows these companies are also exposed to sea level rise at hundreds of facilities in their home market of Japan.

Assessing Companies’ Exposure to Climate Risk

Our data interweaves climate analytics with financial markets data to provide a robust view of companies’ risks and identify those that are less likely to experience financial losses due to increasingly frequent extreme weather events. Facility-level assessment of these risks is an intensely data-driven exercise that requires the combination of terabytes of data from climate models with information on complex company structures. We translate this analysis into a clear result to inform financial strategy. Armed with this understanding, investors and corporations alike can achieve a new and more valuable balance of risk and return.

Figure 3. Global exposure to water stress of all facilities in Four Twenty Seven’s database.

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Four Twenty Seven’s ever-growing database now includes close to one million corporate sites and covers over 1800 publicly-traded companies. We offer equity risk scoring and real asset screening services to help investors and corporations leverage this data.

Emma L. Gale and Mark A. Saunders, “The 2011 Thailand Flood: Climate Causes and Return Periods,” Weather 68, no. 9 (2013): 233–37.

Newsletter: Are we doing enough? The state of climate adaptation in the US

Posted on February 6, 2018March 30, 2018 by Natalie Ambrosio

Four Twenty Seven’s monthly newsletter highlights recent developments in climate adaptation and resilience. This month, don’t miss a review of U.S. climate adaptation and a close look at opportunities to build resilience through collaboration.

In Focus: The State of Climate Adaptation

Are we doing enough? How is the field of adaptation developing in the United States? Rising to the Challenge, Together: A Review and Critical Assessment of the State of the US Climate Adaptation Field explores the field’s development, potential and challenges. Commissioned by the Kresge Foundation, the report was co-authored by Susanne C. Moser of Susanne Moser Research and Consulting, Joyce Coffee of Climate Resilience Consulting, and Aleka Seville in her capacity as Four Twenty Seven’s Director of Community Adaptation in 2017.

Based on a literature review and dozens of interviews with thought leaders and adaptation practitioners, this report finds that the emerging field of climate adaptation must continue to develop with increased urgency. Communities across the country are experimenting with adaptation, with the support of a growing knowledge base and suite of tools, and boosted by new actors including utility managers, private sector interests and philanthropy.

However, the field is largely crisis-driven and fails to adequately address the social equity aspects of adaptation choices, that should ensure all people benefit regardless of socio-economic status or race. It also lacks a shared vision, consistent funding and agreed upon best practices among other shortcomings, the report found. The report recommends aggressive acceleration of adaptation planning, coordination across jurisdictions, and implementation among advocates, planners, and funders. Read more.

Read the Report

The United States of Climate Change

With examples from every state in the U.S. this “United States of Climate Change” feature from The Weather Channel displays the vast, dire and varied implications of climate change. It also documents communities’ efforts to adapt to a rapidly changing world. From new species of pathogen-hosting mosquitoes flourishing in Mississippi to “flash droughts” threatening barley in small Montana towns that depend on selling the crop to beer brewers, there is a plethora of local stories highlighting cultural, social and economic impacts of climate change. The Washington Post reports on the thinking behind Weather.com’s framing of this feature.

For more examples of climate change’s local impacts, read about Four Twenty Seven’s work examining the impacts of climate change on Delaware’s workforce and our analysis of extreme heat and public health in Denver.

Working with businesses to build community resilience

As increasing numbers of climate disasters cause over $1 billion in damages, the economic impacts of these events are widespread and ongoing. California wine-growers will feel the financial effects for years as they work to rebuild their vineyards, while the communities that depend on this economy will also feel these consequences. Four Twenty Seven’s blog post “Working with Businesses to Build Community Resilience” outlines opportunities for local governments and businesses to support each other in adaptation efforts.

Businesses and communities depend on each other and have important roles to play in collaborative climate change preparation. While businesses rely on resilient infrastructure and city services, they can also support community recovery efforts and participate in planning. Likewise, local governments can create collaborative networks, share resources and engage businesses. Read more.

Read the Blog

Resources on Engaging Businesses in Adaptation

For more insight on corporate adaptation read the Caring for Climate report, The Business Case for Corporate Adaptation, which highlights the benefits for businesses to build their awareness of climate risk and opportunities for policymakers to encourage corporate adaptation.

Will Amazon HQ2 consider resilience?

Eager for an opportunity for up to 50,000 jobs and a potential $5 billion in investment, twenty cities received the anticipated advancement to the list of finalists for Amazon’s HQ2 last month. Among this short list is the Southeast Florida bid, a collaboration between Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties.

These counties have experience working together through the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, which also includes Monroe County. The compact’s Regional Climate Action Plan emphasizes the importance of regional strategies to build resilient economies and communities. Now the benefits of this collaboration are becoming increasingly clear, as many of the regional compact’s priorities, such as addressing sea level rise and improving infrastructure, are also important for bolstering economic success by helping to attract Amazon and other businesses to the region.

Inside the Office at Four Twenty Seven

Meet the Team: Lindsay Ross

Four Twenty Seven is delighted to welcome Lindsay Ross, who joins the team as a Senior Analyst, Macroeconomic Risks. Lindsay analyzes the economic impacts of climate change on corporations and financial markets. She studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), focusing on Energy, Resources, and the Environment as well as International Finance and Economics. Previously she worked for the U.S. International Trade Commission, assisting with research on the impacts of international trade on the U.S. economy.