Measuring physical climate risk in equity portfolios
This white paper provides some of the tools that investors need to more accurately monitor and address the physical effects of climate change on investment portfolios. The objective is to satisfy institutional investors’ growing desire for more climate resilient portfolios given the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters.
This paper employs the 427 Equity Risk Scoring methodology, which identifies hotspots in investment portfolios by assessing the geographic exposure of publicly-traded companies to climate change. The methodology includes operations risk, supply chain risk and market risk. The methodology tackles physical risk head on by identifying the locations of corporate production and retail sites around the world and their vulnerability to climate change hazards, such as sea level rise, droughts, floods and tropical storms, which pose an immediate threat to investment portfolios.