Physical Climate Risk Is Rising. A New Report Maps the Fastest Path from Awareness to Action
C2ES–Systemiq assessment of 30 leading frameworks, standards, and tools finds the building blocks for enterprise climate resilience largely exist—but remain disconnected, with critical gaps in financial metrics and maturity benchmarks
To help close the gaps, C2ES and Systemiq publish open access resources to help companies perform a self-assessment, and navigate current guidance and resources
WASHINGTON – A new report published today by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), in partnership with Systemiq finds that the resources companies need to build resilience to physical climate risks largely already exist—but remain scattered across a fragmented landscape, disconnected from one another, and missing in the precise places where companies most need help turning risk awareness into funded action.
Drawing on in-depth interviews and roundtables with leaders from over 40 global corporations across a wide range of sectors, the report moves past the now-familiar finding that most companies are underprepared to address the physical risks and impacts from climate change and instead pinpoints exactly where companies face the largest barriers—and what it would take to help overcome them.
To steer companies toward both broader and deeper climate resilience strategies, C2ES and Systemiq, among additional recommendations, have published two new open-access resources:
- An easily browsable catalog of current tools, guidance, standards, and best practices related to climate resilience that companies can use; and
- A prototype of a climate resilience “maturity” self-assessment to help companies track progress to implementing deeper, enterprise-wide resilience.
“Resilience is becoming a defining test of corporate performance. As physical climate risks intensify, the companies that are able to deliver reliably through disruption; protect their supply chains and the communities they depend on; and maintain trust with customers, regulators, and investors will stand out among their peers,” said Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “The encouraging news from our research is that many of the building blocks to address key barriers already exist. What’s missing is the architecture to connect them and fill specific gaps—and that is something we can build together, starting now, to turn climate resilience into a competitive advantage.”
“Physical climate risk isn’t a standalone issue; it’s a threat multiplier running through every other disruption companies face,” said Jeremy Oppenheim, Global Managing Partner of Systemiq. “The market is already starting to price it: over the past decade, companies with low climate risk exposure returned nearly twice the value of their more-exposed peers. Yet too many companies still treat resilience as a cost to manage rather than an advantage to build. The firms that grip this reality early won’t just protect value; they’ll out-compete the ones that don’t.”
To understand what resources companies can use to build climate resilience, C2ES and Systemiq conducted a structured assessment of 30 frameworks, standards, tools, and market analyses—spanning international standards bodies, investor-facing frameworks, business-coalition guidance, commercial risk analytics, and independent research. The assessment evaluated each resource against six stages of a proposed corporate climate resilience journey, starting from assessing risk through to engaging the broader ecosystem to build system-level climate resilience.
The synthesized findings point to several common barriers:
• A valuation and financial-language gap. Companies often lack the ability to express resilience benefits—avoided losses, operational continuity, durable competitive advantage—in terms finance teams trust. Without that, resilience investments remain lower priorities when compared to nearer-term growth and productivity investments.
• An ownership and integration gap. Physical climate risk cuts simultaneously across operations, workforce health and safety, supply chains, and finance—but responsibility is fragmented across functions, and few companies have a senior owner positioned to coordinate it as an enterprise priority.
• Challenges navigating existing corporate-focused resources. The landscape of tools, guidance, and standards is expanding quickly and is strongest on risk assessment, but companies lack a mechanism to bring the available resources together to help them articulate the value of investing in resilience across their operations, value chains, and communities where they operate. As no single resource offers end-to-end support, companies need to stitch together guidance built for different audiences and purposes.
To help corporate leaders and the broader community of practice move from awareness of risk to scaled action, the report concludes with four recommendations:
1) Development of a navigable map of existing guidance and tools: To help a company navigate today’s growing guidance landscape, the paper’s authors recommend the development of a one-stop resource that clarifies what resources are useful in making specific assessments, decisions, disclosures as companies build out their enterprise-wide climate resilience. Such a tool would reduce duplication and help practitioners find what they need when they need it. C2ES and Systemiq seek public input and collaboration on the newly launched catalog of existing resources, which is a first step toward development of a more comprehensive navigator tool.
2) Development of a resilience “maturity” model: Many companies lack a clear understanding of what “good” looks like in practice when building climate resilience across their organizations. A resilience maturity model could offer a way for companies to assess where they are on their resilience journey and what it would take to progress. It would translate best practices into observable indicators across governance, strategy, operations, procurement, finance, engaging external partners and key stakeholders, and disclosure. To begin development of such a model, C2ES and Systemiq seek public input and collaboration on the newly launched climate resilience self-assessment prototype.
3) Development of a broadly accepted overarching and holistic corporate climate resilience framework: A common framework for how to assess, value, and disclose decision-useful resilience measures would help align boards, executives, risk leaders, operators, and finance teams around the same questions: what resilience means for the enterprise, how it is measured, and how investments are prioritized. C2ES seeks to engage companies and other stakeholders on the development of such a framework (stay tuned for updates on how to engage); and,
4) Development of sector-specific resilience pathways and playbooks: Sector playbooks could translate the general adaptation planning process into industry-specific pathways outlining what to watch for and what works in a specific industry for specific assets. While specific guidance has emerged from some industries, such as electric utilities, a need exists to create guidance for a myriad of sectors.
To discuss this paper and its recommendations contact Allison Dennis at press@c2es.org.
About C2ES: The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES)—or C2ES—champions policies and technologies that foster thriving economies and shared prosperity, founded on abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy and a safe climate. Founded in 1998 as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, C2ES is known worldwide as a thought leader and trusted convener. C2ES works with policymakers and leading businesses in the United States and around the world to forge durable, effective, and ambitious solutions to climate and energy challenges. For more information on C2ES resources on integrating climate resilience into corporate business strategies, visit https://www.c2es.org/building-climate-resilience/advancing-business-leadership-on-climate-resilience/.
About Systemiq: Systemiq is a systems change company that works with businesses, policymakers, investors and civil society organizations to reimagine and reshape the systems that sit at the heart of society – energy, nature and food, materials, built-environment, and finance – to accelerate the shift to a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive economy. Founded in 2016, Systemiq is a certified B Corp, and has offices in Brazil, France, Germany, Indonesia, Kenya, the Netherlands, the UK and the United States. Find out more at www.systemiq.earth or via LinkedIn.
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