Episodit
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Climate adaptation technology isn’t getting a lot of love from markets right now.
Extreme weather shocks may be on track to inflict some US$560bn or so of losses on listed companies every year by 2035, but so far very little early investor money is going into adaptation and resilience (A&R) solutions.
That’s according to new analysis by Tailwind Climate, an adaptation-focused advisory and investment firm, which last week released a 112-page playbook on A&R tech and financing.
In this episode of Climate Proofers, Emilie Mazzacurati — Tailwind’s Co-Founder — joins to discuss the playbook’s contents, and some of its findings on government, consumer, and corporate spending on climate-proofing goods and activities.
She also shares what A&R solutions have got her excited, and ideas on how to unlock many more millions of dollars for startups and innovations in this space.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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"Climate change" is likely to become taboo under the second Trump administration. The incoming president believes global warming to be a “hoax”, and Project 2025 – the right-wing blueprint for his second term – calls for erasing climate change references from absolutely everywhere.
However, climate-related disasters will not go away just because the federal government refuses to accept their root causes. There is, and will continue to be, a need for policies, finance, and innovation to address climate impacts to communities and businesses, and to adapt to higher temperatures and more frequent weather extremes.
How will climate adaptation and resilience evolve under the new administration? How could state and local governments step up to better climate-proof their constituents? And how might private investors and startups dedicated to adaptation and resilience adjust their strategies in a transformed policy space?
These questions and more were answered by an expert panel at the first Climate Proof Adaptation Salon, held in New York City on December 4. This edited recording of that conversation is bursting with insights and opinion on the path ahead, with a fair dose of optimism mixed in despite the rather ominous tone emanating from the Trump transition team.
Speakers:
Sharai Lewis-Gruss, Co-owner and Principal, Two Degrees Adapt
Jeff Schlegelmilch, Director at National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Earth Institute, Columbia University
Daniel Murphy, Risk & Resilience Specialist, World Economic Forum
Stacy Swann, Resilient Earth Capital
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Wildfires are on the rampage across North America.
Canada and the US are battling blazes more often and for longer periods. This fall, wildfires have burnt on East and West Coasts alike. Even New York City, that vaunted concrete jungle, has succumbed.
The increase in frequency and ferocity of these disasters is one of climate change’s most harrowing consequences, and is spurring governments and businesses to do more to fight back.
Today’s Climate Proofer is part of this effort. Jonathan Bowers is the founder of Path & Focus, a Canada-based firetech company committed to improving access to actionable wildfire data and analytics.
He talks with Louie about the scale of the wildfire challenge in Canada, the value in making wildfire maps and simulations available to communities and government authorities at speed, and the gaps in the current firetech ecosystem.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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How did COP29 advance (or obstruct) the climate adaptation agenda?
While the conference produced a controversial new climate finance goal, this had little to offer developing countries working to climate-proof their populations. On the other hand, agreement on a way forward for the Global Goal on Adaptation, a central plank of the Paris Agreement, offers hope that countries will be better able to measure adaptation progress – and demand the finance, expertise, and technologies they need to round out their national adaptation plans.
In this episode, Louie is joined by Ana Mulio Alvarez, a researcher focused on the UNFCCC, adaptation, and Loss and Damage at the international think tank E3G. Ana was on the ground at Baku for the entirety of the Baku summit, and has unparalleled insight into the adaptation and resilience negotiations that took place.
She unpacks her adaptation wins and fails of COP29, and offers her expert opinion on whether these summits are still worth the struggle.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Investment professionals can't bury their heads in the sand when it comes to climate risks. Extreme weather shocks are inflicting billions in losses to physical assets and businesses — losses that flow through to financial instruments like bonds, loans, and equities.
By the same token, they shouldn't sleep on adaptation. Investors who bet on climate-proofed companies can lower the overall exposure of their portfolios to worsening storms, floods, and wildfires. They can also capture underpriced opportunities by investing in those businesses providing adaptation goods and services to global markets.
Impax Asset Management is an investment company that gets this. In today's episode, Julie Gorte — Senior Vice President for Sustainable Investing — talks about how she engages with the adaptation and resilience theme, and how her company has gone about engaging with portfolio companies on their own climate resilience.
As a bonus, we also unpack the potential implications of Trump 2.0 on the climate investment space in the US, and touch on ways in which political discontent can harm efforts to build resilience.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Parametric insurance is all the rage in climate resilience circles. This is a financial product that pays out to policyholders upon a triggering event – like after a certain amount of rainfall hits an area, or if temperatures exceed a certain threshold for a number of consecutive days.
Nakita Devlin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ric, a parametric insurance startup that caters to individuals caught in rainfall-induced flooding events. She talks with Louie about the current vogue for this type of insurance, why established carriers and startups alike are excited by its potential, and the tech and policy hurdles – and opportunities – she faces.
Nakita also discusses how parametric insurance fits in with the broader ecosystem of climate solutions, and the importance of community-based resilience.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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The insurance industry is on the front lines of climate risk. In order to write profitable policies in high-risk zones, carriers need data and insights that give them an edge – and customers who know how to build climate resiliency.
Enter Faura, an InsurTech startup co-founded by today’s guest, Valkyrie Holmes. Her team have pioneered a new way to produce “survivability” assessments – a measure of a property’s resilience to natural disasters – that has caught the attention of both insurers and real estate professionals looking to navigate an increasingly hazardous market.
Valkyrie unpacks the concept of “survivability” and its importance to those writing and seeking insurance, and explains how Faura’s assessments empower homeowners to proactively reduce their own risk. She also reflects on the insurance industry’s appetite for innovation and the challenges involved piloting a disruptive startup in a heavily regulated and complex sector.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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London has sustained a barrage of climate shocks in recent years – from devastating heat waves to flash flooding and a string of “rain bombs”.
The metropolis has to defend itself against these shocks. As the engine of the UK economy, anything that happens to the capital reverberates throughout the country. Hence the London Climate Resilience Review, a first-of-its-kind analysis commissioned by Mayor Sadiq Khan and chaired by today’s guest, Emma Howard Boyd CBE.
The Review, published earlier this year, assesses the UK capital’s climate resilience and makes over 50 recommendations on preparing the city for worsening climate impacts. Emma puts the Review in context, takes us through some of the top recommendations, and highlights the importance of joined-up governance and the sharing of best practices across cities to building long-lasting resilience.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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City leaders are up to their necks in climate risks. They need help to harden their people and places against floods, storms, and heat waves.
Why not call Adam Freed? Today’s Climate Proofers guest is a Principal at Bloomberg Associates, an organization which provides adaptation and resilience consulting to Mayors and their staff – pro bono.
Adam breaks down the reasons why cities are susceptible to climate shocks – from outdated infrastructure to rapid urban growth – and the changes in governance and governing that could help scale resilience solutions.
He also shares some success stories, like London’s flood prevention efforts and Phoenix’s ambitious shade plan, and touts the opportunities for governments, businesses, and startups that are piling into the urban resilience space.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Cities are magnets for climate risks. We’ve designed metropolises that intensify hazards like floods and extreme heat, and have to nurture and scale solutions to address their impacts – fast.
Hence the importance of accelerators: programs that support the rapid growth of new technologies for addressing climate change. Michael Jacobs oversees the IBM Sustainability Accelerator, which works to scale climate solutions from nonprofits and governmental agencies using IBM technology and AI know-how.
To date, the IBM Sustainability Accelerator has supported 15 global projects across three active cohorts focused on sustainable agriculture, clean energy, and water management. The focus of its latest cohort? Resilient cities.
Michael joins Climate Proofers to discuss how the Accelerator got its start, how participants benefit, and the massive potential of AI to build more climate-resilient cities.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Climate change is injecting volatility into geopolitics, with worrying implications for international relations and the (already fraying) rules-based order. Physical climate risks also have the potential to catalyze future geopolitical shocks – which could in turn lead to armed conflicts between nations.
Alan Leung works at the global financial institution Macquarie Group as head of the threat intelligence team, and writes the informative newsletter Securing Our Climate, which focuses on the intersection of climate change, security, geopolitics, and finance. He joins Climate Proofers to discuss the climate impacts he believes could upend global security, highlight the new geopolitical fault lines that could open up as the world warms, and describe the collision of climate change and corporate operational risk management.
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Catastrophe (or ‘cat’) models are essential tools for estimating losses from natural disasters. With the rise of climate risk management as a discipline in its own right, efforts are underway to harness these tools to guess the effects of human-induced warming on hurricanes, floods, storms, and other catastrophes.
However, in the rush to develop effective climate risk analytics, we may be trying to force cat models to do things they weren’t designed to – and promoting a flawed way of thinking about the link between climate change and financial loss in the bargain.
Thomas Mortlock, from reinsurance broker and risk solutions company Aon, joins Climate Proofers to explain what cat models can and can’t do, unpack the relationship between climate risk and insured losses, and get into the knotty problem of slow-onset events, like sea-level rise.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Kathryn Brown is a true climate adaptation veteran. For the last three years, she's been tackling climate change impacts with The Wildlife Trusts, a federation of UK charities focused on making a positive difference to wildlife and future generations.
Prior to this role, she served nine years with the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent body that advises the UK government on its climate actions and researches the country's preparedness for climate shocks.
Kathryn talks about the role of climate adaptation in wildlife habitat conservation, the difficult trade-offs involved when it comes to preserving ecosystems, and her experiences working as Head of Adaptation at the CCC.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Bill Green is a veteran infrastructure investor, one who understands that we need to change our approach to building (and financing) the basic facilities and systems that undergird our daily lives in response to rising climate impacts.
As Managing Partner at Climate Adaptive Infrastructure, a fund dedicated to climate resilient, low-carbon projects, Bill and his team have pioneered a unique methodology for assessing potential investments based on their ability to withstand the 'triple threat' posed by climate change.
In this episode of Climate Proofers, Bill takes us through the fund’s process, talks about some of his recent investments, and offers his take on the current state-of-play in climate-aware infrastructure investment.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Extreme heat wrecks lives and livelihoods throughout the Global South. Women are especially vulnerable to high temperatures because of an array of physiological, cultural, and economic factors – but also find it harder to access the resources needed to increase their resilience to this peril.
Climate Resilience For All is a non-profit dedicated to the protection of women and vulnerable communities from extreme heat and all its impacts. Their tagline is: “When women are climate resilient, we will all be climate resilient,” reflecting a belief that by supporting women against heat impacts we can strengthen communities as a whole.
Kathy Baughman McLeod, the CEO of Climate Resilience For All, joins today’s episode to talk about how the group came about, the importance of promoting heat resilience among women, and what financial solutions are proving effective at supporting vulnerable populations.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Michael Berkowitz is spreading the gospel of climate resilience across academic disciplines, communities, and industries.
As Executive Director of the Climate Resilience Academy at the University of Miami, he’s responsible for driving problem-driven research and education on climate adaptation and resilience and training the next generation of climate proofers.
In this episode, he talks about the idea of “resilience dividends” — the spillover benefits that come from investing in resilience — and the ways in which they can be captured and monetized by private and public actors.
He also explores why Miami has emerged as a hub for climate resilience companies and takes us through some of the adaptation innovations being pioneered in southern Florida.
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There are few champions of the adaptation economy with a resume like Jay Koh. The storied investor racked up years in the financial industry before serving as Chief Investment Strategist at what is now the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).
Koh now leads The Lightsmith Group, a global investment platform laser-focused on opportunities in the emerging adaptation economy. The private equity firm boasts a range of investments in climate-proofing technologies covering agriculture, wildfire, water, and more.
He sits down with Louie to talk about how the adaptation investment landscape has transformed in recent years, to describe Lightsmith’s investment thesis, and explain why investing in climate adaptation is a far surer bet than wagering on interest rates, inflation – and even Taylor Swift’s next boyfriend!
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Technology is crucial in the effort to prepare for, and protect from, climate risks. However, we’re still in the early stages of figuring out how to think about climate adaptation technology (or ‘CAT’) as an investment category – and how to direct early-stage capital into this vital space.
John Robinson, a technology investor with Mazarine Ventures, joins this week’s Climate Proofers to talk about his research into CAT, and go over the findings of Mazarine’s surveys of early-stage investors on this crucial theme.
Louie and John also discuss water-related climate adaptation tech, one of the hottest CAT subcategories, and dive into the market initiatives, public policies, and regulatory efforts that could spur greater engagement by VCs in climate-proofing activities.
Learn more about Mazarine Ventures at www.mazarineventures.com
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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Africa is a magnet for climate risks – from floods to droughts to storms like Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which displaced half a million people in Malawi last year.
However, the continent’s vulnerability has also made it a hotbed of climate adaptation. Thousands are joining (or starting) businesses to climate-proof the continent – and investors are taking note.
In this week’s episode, Louie is joined by Maëlis Carraro, managing partner at The Catalyst Fund, a pre-seed VC fund and accelerator that supports African climate adaptation startups. They discuss how Catalyst started, the importance of adaptation-focused funds, and what startups are making waves throughout the African continent.
They also get into the landscape for blended finance and what needs to be done to crowd more private capital into climate adaptation companies.
Learn more about The Catalyst Fund at www.thecatalystfund.com.
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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]
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US home insurers suffered their worst underwriting loss this century in 2023, as claims came pouring in for storms, floods, wildfires, and more.
Inflation and the crowding of high-risk areas contributed to the red ink, but extreme weather events were also a factor. These are due to become more frequent and severe because of climate change.
Nancy Watkins specializes in climate resilience, insurtech and catastrophic property risk at Milliman, the actuarial consultancy. She joins Climate Proofers to discuss the headwinds facing the US insurance market and the resilience measures that individuals, communities, and public authorities could take to ease the emerging affordability and availability crisis.
We also examine the role of catastrophe (or ‘cat’) models in the insurance industry, and their importance in a climate-transformed world.
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