Current Physical Risk Projects and Groups
The Real Assets Sub Working Group,
focussed on physical climate risk assessments for infrastructure assets.
We’ll soon be publishing a write-up of the challenges that the group identified, the potential solutions, and the working group chairs’ plans for 2025.
We’ll send that to all IGCC members, and if you’d like to join the next phase, please contact Marwa Curran.
Investor Expectations on Physical Risk,
a corporate engagement project.
This project will help investors with their engagement with companies so that, ultimately, companies improve their resilience to physical climate risk.
In September last year, this group settled on a draft set of investor expectations of companies’ physical climate risk management and resilience. Some of our members have been testing them with selected companies and we’ve been collecting feedback from all parties.
We will publish a final version of this guide in due course, bundled with case studies of companies’ physical risk management and resilience.
If you’re not already in this project, but you’d like to provide feedback on the guide, please contact Dani Siew for more information.
Policy Engagement and Advocacy
including on the National Climate Risk Assessment and the National Adaptation Plan
Our policy engagement on physical risk has mostly focussed on getting the forthcoming National Climate Risk Assessment and National Adaptation Plan to be as useful for investors as possible.
We had hoped they would be released late last year but both have been delayed by the electoral cycle. Nonetheless, and thanks to strong contributions from many IGCC members, we had very good engagement from the responsible ministers, their offices, and the relevant department.
We hope the end results, when eventually released, will meet some of investors’ needs and provide a foundation to build upon.
Building resilience to physical climate risk has tended to get support across the parliament, and we hope that continues under the next government. You may have seen Sydney independent Zali Steggall OAM MP releasing her own resilience plan, which includes some of investors’ priorities.
This will be an ongoing stream of work. Contact Michael Bones for more information
Potential resilience and adaptation projects
We are also chipping away at more projects based on the recommendations in last year’s Activating Private Investment in Adaptation paper and fitting within IGCC’s Road to Resilience Strategy.
Their priority will be informed by your feedback and our assessment of the industry’s needs and opportunities under the changing political and climate environments. Here are a few:
Review of Australia’s special investment vehicles’ governance on resilience.
Government funds including CEFC, Housing Australia, Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, National Reconstruction Fund deploy tens of billions in public finance and are often expected to “crowd in” private capital.
We’ve recommended their mandates and governance properly cover resilience and adaptation, but at the moment it varies. We want to understand this better, and assess whether there are useful ways of impacting that.
Masterclass on Resilience
In Q3 or Q4, we’ll run a masterclass on some aspect of resilience and adaptation. There are a few candidate topics, including IIGCC’s Climate Resilient Investment Framework (see below), revisiting scenario analysis (building on last year’s), or incorporating resilience into real estate valuations.
Policy developments through the year may suggest others.
If there is a different physical risk and resilience masterclass topic that you think our members would appreciate, please let us know.
Innovative Financial Mechanisms For Funding Adaptation
Resilience is often difficult to invest in, especially when the value is capital or cash flow preservation, when the benefits are shared across multiple parties, or when the business case relies on projections in changing systems.
We’re considering a ‘thought leadership’ type paper that builds on the “Activating Private Capital” paper, learns from any new projects, and provides some potential new models that address these gnarly situations.
Just Adaptation Landscape Review
As the physical impacts of climate worsen and spread, societies’ adaptation measures will accelerate. Unless the benefits and costs of that adaptation are equitably distributed, outcomes will be unjust, and societal stability will be endangered. Serious, but still entirely plausible, scenarios include total economic loss for large numbers of households, and forced mass migrations.
We’re thinking about what’s happening in this realm and whether IGCC has a role to play.
If you have questions or ideas about any of there, please get in touch with Fergus Pitt.