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How Real Estate Investors Use Climate Analytics to Navigate a Challenging Property Insurance Market 

by Sarah Peterson, Director of Sustainable Finance

With a cooling real estate market and a looming recession, insurance cost increases can no longer be offset by modest increases in rent or decreases in other operating expenses. Furthermore, extreme weather has depleted insurance reserves, setting the stage for another series of insurance rate hikes. Yet, insurance expense growth will not be uniform across markets and sectors. 

Savvy real estate investors can get ahead of the evolving insurance landscape by leveraging climate analytics to screen portfolios for risk, assess insurance policies for sufficiency, and take advantage of dislocations caused by climate change.

Future Growth of Insurance Premiums in the U.S.

Insurance rates are increasing nationwide, but properties in climate vulnerable regions such as South Florida and California are experiencing the most significant cost escalations. According to USI, a leading insurance brokerage and consulting firm, premiums for properties outside of catastrophe-prone zones are expected to increase 5% to 10%, whereas premiums for properties inside catastrophe zones are expected to increase between 15% and 50% during the first half of 2023. 

The rising cost of insurance will impact real estate investors differently. Real estate owners invested in property types like multi-family, condo, or hotel, will feel the pinch from premium growth the most because they cannot pass along insurance costs to tenants. By contrast, those invested in retail, office, or industrial, will not be as affected as much since tenants pay for insurance, either in part or whole. 

A 2021 report published by SitusAMC, a global commercial real estate solutions expert, expressed two notable concerns related to current insurance underwriting practices. Firstly, there is a large disconnect between insurers and real estate market participants about the magnitude of future insurance premium growth. Although the report does not share the premium growth rates modeled by market participants, it can be inferred from USI’s wide range that there’s considerable market uncertainty.

Secondly, there is also a disconnect concerning the persistence of rate increases. The same report also notes that appraisers are only modeling a one-year spike in insurance premiums, followed by a return to the annual inflation rate for the duration of the holding period. However, with global insured losses exceeding historical averages, it’s likely that premium increases will continue to outpace inflation for the next several years.

In combination, the differences between the estimated and realized size and persistence of insurance cost increases will likely result in an overestimation of net operating income, implying future write-downs for commercial properties. 

Climate Analytics to Screen for Risk & Resilience

Climate analytics serve as the first line of defense, helping real estate owners and investors identify exposure to high-risk locations. Properties that score high for climate risk are more likely to endure climate perils that will result in costly property repairs and a meaningful disruption to business operations;these high-risk assets are most susceptible to large and prolonged insurance costs increases. 

Real estate investors should also consider the resilience of a location, or its ability to manage disruption from climate perils and bounce back into good standing. Quality of infrastructure, recovery spending, and the underlying economics of the surrounding community are all important factors that determine resilience. 

Climate Alpha’s Resilience Index can score any location for climate risk, readiness and vulnerability.

Lastly, a sophisticated provider of climate analytics will allow investors to dissect their risk. In this regard, investors can break down climate risk by property-type to get a better idea of how much of the increase in insurance cost they will have to shoulder versus how much they can share or pass along to tenants.

Coverage Reduction and Policy Cancellations

Property insurers are not only increasing premiums, but they’re also reducing the degree of coverage provided. Examples of current coverage reductions include lower insured values, exclusions for water damage, and new sub-limits for named storms. Since commercial mortgage lenders require high levels of coverage, the new limits imposed by carriers may trigger a default or make some loans subject to costly, forced-place insurance. 

Another way insurers are protecting their balance sheets is by terminating policies in high-risk areas. Since admitted insurers are heavily regulated by the state, they must receive state approval before passing along costs to policyholders. If the state denies them, the insurer eats the cost, leading many carriers to opt for policy cancellation. The policy-termination trend spells trouble for commercial real estate valuations, since without proper insurance coverage properties are not eligible for loans. 

Climate Analytics to Assess Insurance Policies Sufficiency

Real estate investors can get ahead of the evolving insurance landscape by leveraging climate analytics to evaluate the sufficiency of their insurance policies. Climate data provides investors with a better understanding of what types of climate perils their properties are susceptible to and how the risk profile changes over time. Armed with this data, property owners can review insurance policies to ensure they’re appropriately protected. Since insurance contracts are renewed on a yearly basis, ensuring that coverage remains aligned with internal risk appetite as well as lender requirements will be a challenge. 

An advanced climate analytics provider will also help real estate investors quantify the financial impact of climate volatility. In this regard, property owners can compare the climate-adjusted value of a property against its insurable value and take appropriate action.

Climate Analytics to Identify Market Mispricing

Savvy real estate investors can use climate analytics to not only manage risk but identify markets that present the greatest opportunity for risk-adjusted returns, turning climate risk to climate opportunity.

Since economic outcomes are strongly linked to both geographic location and the natural environment, climate analytics help investors identify high-performing locations that financial analysts would not have been able to identify using traditional research and deal sourcing techniques. Investors have an opportunity to share in more upside by using climate data to identify and invest in mispriced, climate-resilient locations. 

Climate analytics empower real estate investors to navigate a difficult property and insurance market with confidence. By serving as the first line of defense, climate analytics help investors screen their portfolios for risk while simultaneously providing opportunities to take advantage of dislocations caused by climate change. 

For more information on how Climate Alpha can help you get ahead of the impacts from climate volatility book a consultation with our team.

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How Climate Change Will Affect the Top 5 New-Home Markets by 2030

It’s didn’t take long for Zonda’s Builder magazine to put Climate Alpha HOMES through its paces. Using our first-of-its-kind climate risk-adjusted valuation tool to fact-check the long-term prospects of the five fastest-growing regions, Builder found that the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler metro is best poised to thrive in 2030, with a positive price impact due to climate change of 1.2%.

If that weren’t surprising enough, three Texas metros are forecast to suffer negative price impacts: Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown (-0.13%); Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (-1.22%) and Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land (-7.97%). Taken together, the three demonstrate how America’s urban migration and growth trends will not necessarily last forever, and Houston’s decisively negative score — despite being the #2 market in the country — highlights how severe intra-state and regional differences can be.

See for yourself at homes.climatealpha.ai. Just as Builder felt compelled to stress-test the markets’ best guesses on the most valuable communities of 2030, out institutional clients are checking to see how much their portfolio assessments differ from our projection. Don’t wait for a climate disaster to reveal the gap between paper valuations and climate realities. Contact us to learn more about both our residential HOMES product and our more robust solutions for institutional investors.

https://www.builderonline.com/data-analysis/how-climate-change-will-affect-the-top-5-new-home-markets-by-2030_o
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Startups are using AI to help businesses weather the next climate catastrophe

Climate Alpha is featured in Tech Monitor’s survey of climate tech startups bringing AI to bear on future-proofing supply chains, operations, and real estate. Chief communications officer Greg Lindsay tells Stephanie Stacey the original inspiration for HOMES:

“As well as producing large-scale forecasts for developers, Climate Alpha offers a free digital product providing climate-adjusted property valuations for individual homeowners in the US and Canada. The startup developed this tool after being inundated by inquiries from families who’d lost their homes in Hurricane Ian. “They were just coming to ask us: Where should I move? Where should I retire? What value will be left for my kids?””

Check out HOMES and let us help you find the right time to sell and the best place to buy between now and 2040.

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Climate Alpha Partners with MIT Center of Real Estate

Since its inception in 1983, MIT/CRE has focused on how the built environment gets produced and changed. Today, its faculty and researchers are fully engaged in exploring how the fundamental nature of the real estate industry — location-based and capital-intensive — is critical to both mitigation and adaptation efforts.

As a partner, Climate Alpha contributes its resources and expertise to our shared mission to seek positive lasting change by bringing new knowledge, talented personnel, and innovative approaches to real estate worldwide. In that role, we are also proud to join MIT/CRE’s global network of researchers and industry leaders sharing their ideas and experience to quickly scale best practices such as climate risk modeling and pricing.

At an inaugural symposium held at MIT in December 2022, Climate Alpha’s chief scientific and commercial officer Dr. Michael Ferrari joined more than a dozen scholars presenting papers on the intersection of real estate and sustainability, which will form the basis of a special issue on climate change and real estate in the Journal of Regional Science. A “fireside chat” connected scholars and industry leaders in practical conversations about how to use research to aid practitioners.

“The event brought together a broad spectrum of participants with a variety of interests spanning property management and policy to data and infrastructure,” Dr. Ferrari said. “The common thread through all of the talks and sessions centered around creating value for property owners, asset managers and communities in a sustainable and resilient manner. The applied nature of the discussions certainly differentiated this event from many other academic conferences, which traditionally tend to lead to less practical outcomes.”

“Measuring the current and potential impact of climate change is crucial to accelerating adaptation, which Climate Alpha is dedicated to achieving. We’re excited to be a part of this vibrant and collaborative cohort of participants.”

ABOUT MIT CENTER FOR REAL ESTATE
The MIT Center for Real Estate (MIT/CRE) was founded in 1983 by MIT alumnus, Charles “Hank” Spaulding CE ’51. A prominent real estate developer himself, Spaulding had the vision to improve the quality of the built environment and to promote a more informed professional practice in the global real estate industry.

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How Climate Change Could Sink the US Real Estate Market

Before Liz Greene bought her home in Horry County, South Carolina, she made sure to ask the builder and real estate agent if the property was prone to flooding. “They said, ‘Not a drop.’” After the closing, it didn’t take long to prove them wrong. “I sit in water all the time,” she says today.

While Greene is determined to stay put, many of her neighbors would prefer to keep quiet and sell to new arrivals before more frequent flooding drives down the value of their homes, leaving their mortgages underwater, too.

Although that’s unlikely barring another storm like 2018’s Hurricane Florence, Greene and her neighbors are undoubtedly leaving money on the table. A home in her subdivision listed for $549,999 today — a price already reflecting pandemic-era inflation — can expect to see 8.71% shaved off its future appreciation by 2035, or more than $100,000.

That’s the unspoken risk premium Greene and her neighbors pay for living in a community rated by Climate Alpha’s Resilience Index™ as having moderate risks and vulnerabilities coupled with low readiness — a potentially catastrophic combination.

Ensuring prospective homeowners like Greene can protect  both their families and their nest eggs is why we’re launching Climate Alpha HOMES — the first tool of its kind to calculate future risks and losses in dollars and cents. Visit www.climatealpha.ai now to enroll in our open beta test and see for yourself how much you stand to lose — or gain — from climate change. 

#flooding #sunnydayflooding #hurricanes #climateadaptation #floodinsurance #climaterisks #realestate #resilience

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What the White House Economic Report States on Climate Risk

The White House Council of Economic Advisers published the Economic Report of the President this past Tuesday. Given the systemic risks to American homeowners, infrastructure, and the financial system, the CEA touted upgraded climate data-and-modeling as one of “four potential pillars” of a national climate adaptation plan.

“Thanks to strong Federal support, the United States is a global leader in climate science,” the report said. “But the modeling tools used to understand the global climate system are not yet designed to deliver the decision-specific information needed by most stakeholders to manage climate risk.”

In response, the CEA argued, the federal government should invest in catastrophic risk modeling, develop transparent standards for climate data and modeling, create clear criteria for public adaptation funding, and use federal funds to incentivize local efforts.

We couldn’t agree more, which is why Climate Alpha has published technical white papers and FAQs explaining our models; have partnered with Mastercard and Statebook to help guide state- and local elected officials on where to best invest their adaptation budgets; and will shortly launch HOMES — our free tool for homeowners and buyers calculating how much they stand to gain or lose from climate change.

Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about CA for Cities, enroll in the HOMES open beta, and download our technical papers. 

#climateadaptation #climaterisk #whitehouse #CEA #systemicrisk #climatedata #climatemodeling

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Scientists used AI to find planet could cross critical warming threshold sooner than expected

Using neural networks, Stanford researchers Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Elizabeth A. Barnes have pinpointed 2033-2035 as the years when the Paris Agreement is most likely to be exceeded. More ominously, they write, “our results suggest a higher likelihood of reaching 2°C in the Low scenario than indicated in some previous assessments,” which will in turn lead to catastrophic and potentially irreversible impacts, including pushing nearly half the planet into chronic water scarcity.

The authors’ sobering conclusion has profound implications for both climate modeling and global adaptation efforts, says Climate Alpha chief scientific officer Michael Ferrari. “This study supports the idea that the 2° scenario by mid-century may be the best-case scenario, and that climate models have actually been a little conservative regarding the timing and severity of potential impacts of climate change. It’s also a compelling use case on how to utilize artificial neural networks towards better assessing and refining climate model output.”

Climate Alpha’s own AI-powered platform combines standard climate models with socio-economic variables to model climate impacts under different scenarios, offering investors, public officials, and homeowners concrete risk-adjusted valuations. We believe tools such as our will be essential in guiding decision-makers on how, where, and when to invest in urgently needed climate adaptation efforts.

“Mitigation efforts are crucial,” Ferrari adds, “but we also need to be more responsible about identifying and addressing the adaptation side of the equation.”

Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about our approach to AI and how we can help you invest in the most resilient geographies of a rapidly warming world.

#IPCC #climatemodels #artificialintelligence #neuralnetworks #parisagreement #climateadaptation  

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Roubini Launches Alternative Haven Trade for the Era of Endless Inflation

In an interview with Bloomberg, he details the hedges his firm Atlas Capital is launching with Goldman Sachs — a suite of products combining assets such as short-term U.S. Treasuries, gold, and what he describes as “environmentally-resilient real estate.”

Climate Alpha is proud that Atlas Capital has been one of our first clients, partnering to create a first-of-its-kind REIT Sustainability Index scoring more than 200 publicly-traded REITs on the impacts of climate-related criteria to valuations. Our technology and methodology helps enable Atlas to dynamically respond to the shocks disrupting the global economy. 

Atlas Capital’s CEO Reza Bundy rightly notes that investors need protection against existential threats, including climate change. Our partnership aims to do just that, not only by creating financial products that hedge against volatility but also by pointing investors towards the most resilient geographies of the future. 

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Out-of-Towners Head to ‘Climate-Proof Duluth’

The New York Times’ Debra Kamin revisits Duluth, Minnesota — dubbed “climate-proof Duluth” by the paper in 2019 — to meet some of the hundreds of new arrivals who have bucked the pandemic-accelerated trend of moving to the Sun Belt in favor of “Minnesota nice,” affordable housing, and climate peace of mind.

“Real estate and climate change cannot be separated,” says UNLV professor of real estate and economics Shawn McCoy, who adds “the tug of war between risks and amenities” is slowly but noticeably beginning to favor communities such as Duluth.

Climate Alpha agrees. According to our proprietary Resilience Index™, St. Louis County possesses a low degree of risks (20/100), low vulnerability (39/100), and high readiness (70/100) — the latter of which is likely to be enhanced if Duluth Mayor Emily Larson is successful in her pledges to invest in solar power and build new affordable housing.

See for yourself with the public beta of Climate Alpha HOMES — a first-of-its-kind tool offering climate-adjusted real estate projections for every year out to 2040. We can help you put a number on what it means to live in a resilient community. Visit https://homes.climatealpha.ai to see what your home may be worth — or whether you should make the move to Duluth.

#realestate #climaterefuge #climateproof #duluth #climategentrification 

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How (and Where) to Avoid the Next Housing Crash

If this wasn’t bad enough, real estate as an asset class already lagged the overall market, delivering five-year average annual returns between 3% and 7%. With Goldman Sachs and Zillow forecasting modest gains in some markets and acute pain in others, residential investors would clearly benefit from novel forms of geographic and asset selection to achieve far higher returns.  Making matters worse, many real estate structured products and indices possess significant exposure to climate-stressed areas, suggesting more long-term suffering to come. 

For investors struggling to identify resilient housing markets from both a climate- and financial perspective, Climate Alpha offers solutions, tools, and data grounded in our “spatial finance” approach to drive outperformance. Spatial finance is predicated on the idea that location, the environment, and economic outcomes are intertwined. We use pattern-seeking machine-learning models to identify locations and then cross-check them against our proprietary Resilience Index™. Beyond physical risk exposure, we model impacts of second-order effects such as supply chains, insurance premiums, investment shifts, infrastructure investment, migration patterns, loan delinquencies, and more.

The latter can also prove useful in uncovering which high-risk areas to avoid. As an example, the map below features our analysis of core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) featuring both high mortgage delinquency rates and high climate risk. As one might expect, large swaths of coastal Florida and the Gulf of Mexico are endangered by storms and flooding, while much of inland and Southern California is at risk of fires and heat. But seemingly desirable areas of the Sun Belt, Rockies, and Pacific Northwest are threatened as well, challenging conventional wisdom and warranting further investigation.

Regular screenings of these areas can help investors avoid accumulating excessive risk in their portfolios. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to sign up for a free account and learn more how to analyze these results under different climate change and other scenarios. 

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La Nina, which worsens hurricanes and drought, is gone

“If the globe jumps into El Niño it means more rain for the Midwestern corn belt and grains in general and could be beneficial,” reports the Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein, attributing this observation to Climate Alpha’s chief scientific officer Michael Ferrari, who expands upon this comment below:

“I’ll preface this by saying no two ENSO [El Niño Southern Oscillation] events are ever alike, but there are some things we can expect and start to monitor.

“A positive phase ENSO will typically produce more precipitation in the western corn belt states, and may extend westward. Warmer surface waters leading to higher convective activity — and a more active jet stream — will increase the flow of moisture from the Pacific into the central U.S.

“So, this is favorable outlook for grains and oilseeds. But there is some risk to milk production. High daytime temperatures impact the physiology of dairy cows, particularly in regions where grazing is standard. As food prices are already high, this may play a factor in extending food price inflation.

“More important, these impacts can’t be viewed in isolation. As global supply-and-demand drives prices in most markets, global dynamics will be important. Corn stocks are at their lowest in a decade. Soybeans are at their lowest levels since 2014. Even with higher U.S. yields, low supplies elsewhere can still put upward pressure on prices. Add to that the potential for elevated oil prices — which will make corn ethanol more attractive — and we may see even more pressure on the markets.

“Needless to say, this will be a very interesting year.”

Dr. Ferrari’s efforts to model these complexities are at the core of Climate Alpha’s abilities to price the climate risk-adjusted valuation of American and Canadian cropland out to 2040. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to sign up for a free account and explore your own scenarios for the future of agricultural production. 

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Beating the Benchmarks: How to Achieve Resilient Alpha

Not that their performance was much better before these disruptions. Real estate as an asset class has lagged the overall market, delivering five-year average annual returns between 3% and 7%, while real estate ETFs have hovered around just 3%. With occupiers shedding office space in gateway markets while formerly white-hot industrial properties cool, investors would clearly benefit from novel forms of geographic- and asset selection to achieve far higher returns.  

This is doubly true once climate change is taken into account. Current real estate structured products and indices possess significant exposure to climate-stressed areas in the United States, suggesting longer-term returns will suffer from risk-adjusted impacts. Climate Alpha’s research on more than 140,000 U.S. properties across more than 700 REITs found a sizable portion have substantial exposure to physical climate risks such as fires, floods, and storms. (Ironically, real estate ESG indices purporting to be “climate aligned” have performed even worse due to a lack of financial materiality in considerations such as GRESB scores and green building certifications.)

For investors struggling to construct alpha-generating, climate-aligned portfolios, Climate Alpha offers solutions, tools, and data grounded in our “spatial finance” approach to drive resilient outperformance. Spatial finance is predicated on the idea that location, the environment, and economic outcomes are intertwined. We believe investors can achieve significantly more upside using the differentiated and climate-aligned selection criteria our model provides.

We employ pattern-seeking machine-learning models to identify benchmark-beating locations and assets that might escape financial analyst using traditional research and analytical methods. We then cross-check these locations against our proprietary Resilience Index™ to ensure climate alignment. Beyond physical risk exposure, we model impacts of second-order effects such as supply chains, insurance premiums, investment shifts, infrastructure investment, migration patterns, loan delinquencies, and more.

For example, in an experiment comparing REIT performance against an ideal benchmark portfolio composed of top to top-performing locations between 2016-2021, we found that: 

1. There is significant upside potential in constructing real estate investment vehicles with better geographic- and asset selection.

Our hypothetical Climate Alpha portfolio comprising properties from the 200 highest-performing ZIP codes across 20 major metropolitan areas delivered a five-year return of 78.99% and a 10-year return of 166.77% compared to a national average of 37.58% and 59.92% respectively. There is clearly room for improvement. 

2. Investors willing to buck consensus could have achieved higher returns in overlooked locations.

While REITS are overly concentrated in central business districts and other prime locations, in certain locations the top performers are located outside the center and popular sub-markets — such as Tacoma, Washington and Jefferson, CO in metropolitan Seattle and Denver, respectively.

3. In top-performing locations such as Florida and Los Angeles, investors can discover additional upside in overlooked areas.

The best returns to be found in greater Los Angeles, for example, are to be found in the Antelope Valley north of the San Gabriel mountains, where communities such as Palmdale and Lancaster have seen explosive growth in a search for affordability. Meanwhile, the best areas in the Tampa Bay area lie in outlying Hernando County, 50 miles north of Tampa proper.

4. Some markets are popular destinations for investors but lack any top performers — while others possess desirable locations where REITs are absent


 

For the identity of these locations as well as areas with high concentrations of both climate- and home foreclosure risks, enter your information to download the full article.

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The evangelist for climate migration

“Give everyone $250,000 and send them on their way. And say, ‘Here’s a map of resilient geographies. Here’s ZIP codes and counties that are not climate-stressed, where there’s building permitting, where there’s homes and schools, go live there and start a new life.’ Because otherwise you, as a human being, are going to spend 240 days a year just dealing with climate disaster. We’re Americans, we’re not meant to be survivalists, it’s not a way for a modern society to be.”

The data bears him out. Citing Climate Alpha’s analysis of southwest Florida following Hurricane Ian, he explains:

“We looked at the areas of damage and we’re like, OK, there’s a ring of ZIP codes inland from Fort Myers, Sarasota and whatnot, that actually have fairly high resilience characteristics. And they actually have good infrastructure. And if you had higher building permitting in those areas, you would actually want to right now go and build, like, 50,000 homes in those ZIP codes. So the people of Fort Myers could leave and reliably find a new place to live and never have to deal with the next hurricane.”

And we can help. Whether you’re a homeowner, investor, or mayor, visit www.climatealpha.ai to sign up for a free account and start planning for the future today. And coming soon is Climate Alpha HOMES — a free tool for prospective home buyers and seller to forecast the effects of climate on the future vale of their homes.

“People have to move,” Parag tells Politico. “People have to adapt.” Let us help you.

To read the entire interview, click here.

#climateadaptation #climatemigration #managedretreat #realestate #climatedisaster #reinsurance

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Remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen at the First Meeting of the FSOC Climate

“As climate change intensifies, natural disasters and warming temperatures can lead to declines in asset values that could cascade through the financial system,” she said, according to her prepared remarks. “And a delayed and disorderly transition to a net-zero economy can lead to shocks to the financial system as well.”

“These impacts are not hypothetical. They are already playing out. In the United States, there’s been at least a five-fold increase in the annual number of billion-dollar disasters over the past five years compared to the 1980s, even after adjusting for inflation. States like California, Florida, and Louisiana recently have seen especially severe storms and wildfires. And recent devastating tornadoes across the South and intensifying storms on the West Coast are reminders of how climate change is accelerating.”

“In addition to the terrible toll of these disasters on individuals and families, the economic and financial impacts of these events are significant. For example, in response to rising insured losses, some insurers are raising rates or even pulling back from high-risk areas. This has potentially devastating consequences for homeowners and their property values. Developments like these can spill over to other parts of our interconnected financial system.”

While government institutions such as the U.S. Treasury, SEC, and Federal Reserve have vital roles to play in mitigating the physical- and transition risks of climate change, they need the tools to do so. That’s where Climate Alpha comes in.

Our platform combining state-of-the-art climate models with socio-economic variables and quality-of-life indicators is already changing how customers such as Oaktree ($170 billion in assets under management), BentallGreenOak ($83 billion AUM), and Lennar (60,000+ new homes per year) are repricing risk and opportunities in light of the dangers and disasters Secretary Yellen described today.

Visit www.climatealpha.ai to sign up for a free account and learn how we can do the same for you and your business.

#climaterisks #riskmanagement #creditrisk #reinsurance

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Climate Alpha’s Guide to Climate Analytics

That’s what sets our platform apart from competing tools obsessed with only with climate risk and loss. We not only warn of underperforming assets but our proprietary Climate Price™ also identifies assets that outperform the baseline under various scenarios.

We do this by capturing both physical risks and their second- and third-order effects on the economy, insurance premiums, and migration patterns, and much more. Our ever expanding data lake is an exemplar of “wide data”: more than 1,500+ datasets spanning climate factors as well as socio-economic variables designed to measure local vulnerability as well as readiness.

We train this massive pool of data using machine-learning models that generate actionable results and attribution analysis to key drivers of valuation change. Our documentation makes Climate Alpha accessible rather than a black box.

These are only a few of the factors that set Climate Alpha apart from a previous generation of climate analysis tools that are too narrow, too opaque, and too focused on downside risks to capture the complex interplay of climate change, physical assets, and markets.

Download the detailed guide to our analytics — including how we can help your firm meet TCFD-recommended disclosures and other regulations.

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Hurricanes Moving Farther North to Pummel Millions More Homes in US

Hurricanes are generally poised to strike New York and neighboring states more often as storms track northward, according to the latest projections from the First Street Foundation. The non-profit estimates annual damages from high winds will increase by $1.5 billion to nearly $20 billion in 2053, with the large majority of damages remaining concentrated in Florida.

But the Mid-Atlantic will see the largest increase in maximum wind speeds — with some gusts 37 mph — while the Northeast is expected to see the highest spike in damages (87%). The top five counties by % increase in annual losses include both region: Brooklyn (Kings, NY); Nassau, NY; Monmouth, NJ; Newport News, VA; and York, VA.

That’s the bad news; the good news is that each of these counties has the resources to adapt. According to Climate Alpha’s scenario forecaster, four of the five counties are projected to shave less than 1% from their appreciation forecasts under even the worst scenario (RCP8.5) through 2040. (The exception is Brooklyn, with a 7.5% shortfall in appreciation.)

The takeaway? It’s critical to weight climate risks in context. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to sign up for a free account to see which way — and how hard — tomorrow’s wind is blowing.

#climateadaptation #hurricanes #wind #extremewind #propertydamage #casualtyinsurance

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An Interview with IPE Real Assets – Parag Khanna on Climate Risk

“A history of stability in real estate may be about to be challenged,” warns Climate Alpha’s founder and CEO Parag Khanna in a wide-ranging interview with IPE Real Assets.

Covering everything from the complexity of climate data to which places are sunk (New Orleans) and which might be saved (Miami), Parag underscores the importance of calibrating climate-risk models when balancing risk averseness with a hunger for yield. “The ESG team might be arguing ‘sell it now’, but the investment committee will push back with the question, ‘no, sell it when?’” he says.

Timing is everything, especially in communities with the political will and resources to adapt. Which is where Climate Alpha comes in, with our suite of tools combining climate risk with quality of life to create a more holistic view of assets under multiple scenarios.

“Ultimately, what we’re trying to produce is the climate price, by which I mean the deviation from the baseline expectation of valuation for any given year,” Parag says. “Not all assets will decline in value. The outcomes can be scary or they can be promising.”

See for yourself — visit www.climatealpha.ai and sign up for a free account, whether you’re an investor, public official, or homeowner and discover where your future lies.

#climaterisks #climateadaptation #flooding #rainfall #extremeheat #realestate

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Which “Zoomtowns” are Tomorrow’s Boomtowns?

Which cities possess the right combination of resilience, quality of life, plentiful housing, and accessibility to a major metro (and points beyond)?

Using Climate Alpha’s proprietary Resilience Index™ scores and forecasting tools, we’ve identified five communities across the U.S. poised to reap the long-term benefits of a remote future, ranging from cities such as Portland, Oregon and Colorado Springs to greener pastures in Michigan, Virginia, and Kentucky.

 

 

 

Enter your information to download the full article.

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Climate Alpha Expands Coverage to Canada

With this data in place, we’ve already created risk-adjusted real estate valuations across thousands of Canadian properties held by the country’s REITs.

Although Canada’s climate risks are generally not as severe as those of the US, Climate Alpha is currently working to model incremental changes in specific risk factors — such as the threat of storms and flooding in the Maritime Provinces.

The bigger challenge is modeling how Canada’s ambitious immigration targets, combined with both its crisis of housing unaffordability and its aggressive investments in energy infrastructure, will lead to changing settlement and investment patterns over time. We’re confident our tools are up to the task.

Visit www.climatealpha.ai and sign up now for a free trial to explore opportunities in the #NewNorth. 

#canada #flooding #climateadaptation #climatemigration #immigration

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“We’re Not Building Climate Models, We’re Building Future Scenarios”

Dr. Michael Ferrari has spent the last two decades working with — and in one notable instance, against — some of the world’s largest organizations to better understand the intersection of climate science and the economy. Reflecting his unique ability to see both sides of this particular equation, Dr. Ferrari joined Climate Alpha in January as both its Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Commercial Officer, in addition to his prior seat on the company’s board of directors.

In these roles, he works closely with Climate Alpha’s technology and growth teams to further refine how state-of-the-art climate models inform the risk-adjusted valuations of its Climate Price™, the scenarios of its patent-pending Scenario Forecaster™, and Alpha Finder™ location analysis tool.

Prior to joining Climate Alpha, Dr. Ferrari was the Chief Science Officer and Chief Data Scientist at Engine No. 1, the activist investment firm best known for successfully campaigning to elect three new members to Exxon-Mobil’s board of directors in 2021.

Before that, he had built and led data science teams at multiple companies, including Syngenta, Point72 Asset Management, IBM, Mars, and the Coca-Cola Company, as well as with several startups in the technology, fintech, and commodity sectors. He has also been an affiliate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the MIT Media Lab, and is currently senior fellow at The Wharton School.

We sat down with Michael to ask why this is the year adaptation takes center stage in climate efforts, how both climate models and Climate Alpha’s models are constantly improving, and what a mature version of the firm looks like under his watch.

Why join Climate Alpha now? And why is 2023 the year adaptation comes to the fore in the climate conversation? 

Honestly, every year is the year. Climate Alpha is built around issues I’ve been working on for 20 years — and for 19 of them, I’ve pushed this idea just based on conversations with prospects and partners and clients; only now is the market ready for adaptation, both from a physical readiness perspective and potential financial opportunities. We’re finally at a point where we have enough data and a few cases to demonstrate there’s a way to do this and still generate returns for investors whether they have a short-, medium-, or long-term horizon.

Look at California, where they recently received a year’s worth of rainfall in only a few days. Every time we have an episode like this, it’s just further confirmation that we need to adapt and evolve — otherwise, we’re going to keep having billion-dollar disasters. If you look at the charts of these disasters, the slope just keeps going up to the right. Regardless of what’s happening on the climate side, there’s a human component to infrastructure, and if we can help provide some insight on where to deploy capital, we might be able to put a lid on the number of billion-dollar disasters, and that’s a step in the right direction.

Q: How do you frame the climate change argument to clients in hopes of steering them away from multi-billion dollar unforced errors?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a climate argument. A lot of these things just make good financial sense. Obviously, if you buy into the idea that climate will continue to be volatile and unpredictable, scenarios help us understand the range of possibilities and entire distribution. But we’re not insisting every event is a climate change trigger. What’s driving valuations on a day-to-day basis are the factors that have always driven valuations, which is why this platform makes sense for anyone who considers themselves patient capital.

Q. What are the biggest shortcomings in the scientific field when it comes to tying climate models back to physical risk?

The market hasn’t cared about these things in the past. If you consider traditional risk modeling, they’re looking at what’s happened over decades — cycles of 10, 20, 30 years — and try to tie the climate trigger to the response, typically damages or losses associated with those events. And what happens is you have an event, the market reacts, and then they move on. But the broader financial trigger isn’t rooted in these singular events. They might be correlated, but there’s no causal link. If you build your approach based on misconstrued data, you’re going to over-fit models, make false assumptions, and have “right” answers for the wrong reasons. And that’s dangerous.

Our approach is to take the baseline valuations based on everything else we know is important — job growth, quality-of-living, things that matter on a day-to-day basis — and then layering in the climate. We’re not building climate models; we’re building future scenarios in which climate is an amplifier. That really resonates with our customers, and I think it’s the most exciting thing about our platform.

Q. If Climate Alpha isn’t building its own models, then what does it contribute in terms of understanding geographic and economic risks?

Think of a hurricane — when one starts rolling across the Atlantic, it has what’s called the “cone of uncertainty.” At the start, it could make landfall anywhere from South Carolina to the Gulf of Mexico. But after each run of each model, those error bands start to decrease and the cone gets a little tighter. So, within 48- or 72 hours, we have a very good idea of where it’s going to go — maybe not down to the house where the eye is going to make landfall, but close.

We look at climate models the same way. There’s no need to build our own — there are groups that all they do all day, every day, is build and refine biophysical climate models. We’ll take them as an ensemble and use them as our guide. Then, we can start to ask, “Which patterns in this region are repeatable?” and weight them accordingly. No one who builds climate models will tell you their model is perfect; they’re guides, and as they improve in accuracy, we can start to zero in on what’s happening in two-to-three years instead of decades-long scales.

Q. And how does Climate Alpha improve in turn?

It’s a never-ending cycle of iteration, data acquisition, and evaluation. As long as we ingest data in the right formats, these simulations can run on their own in the background, and eventually we’ll start to refine and focus on areas where they’re performing well and worse. Then we’ll know which data sets need improvement, where the gaps are, and what methods are appropriate. The more data we can ingest, cleanse, refine, and incorporate into our platform, the more it will increase our confidence in the models. But we’ll still need human eyes to check it. AI can help synthesize and distill these volumes of data, but ultimately we’ll still need to have a combination of human and machine.

Q. Climate Alpha is a startup; how do you envision a fully mature version of both the company and platform?

Whenever you have a new product or business, everyone wants to know what your TAM [Total Addressable Market] is right away. And I think we’re in an area where we don’t even know what the TAM is, because it’s so vast. After all, the total value of global land, property, and real estate assets is estimated to be more than $350 trillion. Climate Alpha can be one thing for investors, but it can also be a tool for governments, or a tool for homebuyers looking for a climate component alongside schools, walkability, and quality of life. We shouldn’t discount the importance of this for governments or NGOs when they’re making policy decisions on where to deploy capital over 10-, 20-, 30-, or even 40-year time horizon. We may have started with climate — it’s in the name — but this could ultimately become a guide for almost any financial decision someone could make.

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For Remote Workers, Which U.S. Cities Are Great Places to Live?

For this reason, the WSJ’s top ten list and Climate Alpha’s own preferred “Zoomtowns” varies considerably. While the former touts mid-sized metros that are affordable today — such as Springfield, MO and Lafayette, IN — we focused on destinations projected to retain (or enhance) their desirability in the future.

Using our proprietary Resilience Index™ scores as a baseline, we applied a methodology similar to the WSJ’s and arrived at a list ranging from Portland, OR and Colorado Springs, CO to the outskirts of Nashville and Columbus — along with the “west coast” of Michigan.

Visit www.climatealpha.ai to download “Which Zoomtowns are Tomorrow’s Boomtowns?” — our exclusive list of the communities primed for a future of remote work… and climate disruption.

#zoomtowns #remoteworkers #migration

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Climate Alpha’s AI Edge

Climate Alpha was founded to answer these questions and more. To do so, we’ve developed a suite of technologies to more accurately gauge the risks, vulnerabilities, and readiness of American communities for disruptions of all kinds from rising interests to rising sea levels – and to sift for opportunities to maintain the American Dream of appreciating home values in the years ahead. 

Inspired by Renaissance Technologies’ pioneering machine learning techniques that power its world-beating Medallion fund, our models identify signals pointing to investable assets that will outperform today’s real estate portfolios. And just as companies such as Palantir have become known for harnessing the widening ocean of unstructured data, our ‘wide data’ approach integrates thousands of datasets to establish correlations that give us greater confidence in our property market forecasts. 

Homebuilders, real estate managers, and financial investors are using Climate Alpha to determine where to build, which assets to hold or dispose, what REITs to invest in, and many other uses you read about on our customer case study page.

At the core of our platform is a patent-pending Scenario Forecaster™ using neural networks to discover hidden correlations between range of socio-economic and market indicators before blending them with climate-related variables to generate our unique Climate Price™ valuation forecasts covering all property types (residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural) across 40,000 US Zip codes and Canada. 

Scenario Forecaster
Scenario Forecaster

Given the complex and uncertain interplay of factors such as interest rates, tax policies, infrastructure spending, and migration patterns —not to mention climate disasters — our tools enable customers to test their assumptions under multiple scenarios such as the UN IPCC’s main RCP/SSP pathways), as well user-generated scenarios you can construct live on the Scenario Forecaster. Each location is also assigned a unique Resilience Index™ score that can be used by companies reporting their ESG metrics as well as towns and cities as a dashboard to prioritize their climate adaptation investments. 

And for those seeking to compare markets and invest in land or property, our easy-to-use Alpha Finder™ platform allows you to screen and compare every US zip code according to nearly one hundred filters ranging from wage growth to clean air and crime rates to fresh water supply to find and rank the locations that best meet your criteria. 

Climate Alpha’s suite of tools co-exist and work together on a single integrated cloud-based SaaS platform available anywhere, anytime – serving the world’s largest financial institutions as well as individuals and families. We’re here to help you move from climate risk to climate opportunity.

Want to see the software in action? Create a free account which includes sample properties and the ability to upload your own!

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Climate Change Could Turn Seattle Into an Umbrella City

The story of climate change is how the once-inconceivable  imperceptibly becomes inevitable. Ten or twenty years from now, extreme heat and flooding might reverse decades of Americans migrating from north to south. In the meantime, residents of Seattle might be forced to adopt antiquated technology to cope with increasing rainfall: umbrellas.

Axios reports that hotter average temperatures and heavier rainfalls have Pacific Northwest residents rethinking their hooded parkas. “It’s a double hazard to use an umbrella and look at your phone,” says local television host Knute “Mossback” Berger. “Maybe we need to license people to carry.”

Jokes aside (along with mixed metaphors), Seattle’s climbing umbrella population is another canary in the coal mine of climate change, underscoring how seemingly unbreakable social norms might flip in an instant. Will you be prepared when they do?

Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about our patent-pending scenario forecaster, which offers customers glimpses of potential futures and tipping points along the way. Don’t get caught in a storm without your umbrella.

#climateadaptation #flooding #rainfall #extremeheat #climatemigration

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What’s Going On With the Housing Market?

As the International Builders Show wraps in Las Vegas today, many attendees will leave asking the same question as the Wall Street Journal: What’s going on with the housing market?

Interest rates are high (albeit climbing more slowly after yesterday); and demand is accordingly low. But listings are  scarce and prices are sliding rather plunging — which is still enough to play havoc with iBuyers’ algorithms, to boot.

One thing that’s clear is that some of the pandemic’s hottest Zoomtowns are no longer boomtowns. “Some of the housing markets that posted the strongest home-price growth in recent years are leveling off the fastest,” the WSJ reports, including Las Vegas, Phoenix, Austin, Jacksonville, and Sacramento.

What regions, cities, and real estate will retain their worth in ten or 20 years, versus a momentary pop in value? Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn our own picks for the prosperous communities of tomorrow. And interested homeowners will have access to our proprietary suite of tools soon — follow this account for more details.

#zoomtowns #affordability #climateadaptation #ibuyers

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Study detects US climate migration away from Atlantic Ocean. Poor are left behind.

Drawing on U.S. Census data, they found that U.S. households subject to hurricanes and flooding were 1.6% more likely to move locally and 0.7% more likely to leave the area completely. Although the measurable effect is small, over time and at scale it has huge implications for coastal communities — particularly for poorer residents, who are less likely to move given fewer resources, and especially in areas prone to repeat disasters, where local adaptation efforts may not be up to the task.

“I think a smarter policy is to get people to move away from high-risk areas,” Sheldon told The Post and Courtier. “I mean, build back better? Are they going to rebuild a similar structure that is going to flood again?”

Natural disasters such as hurricanes are one thing, powerful and palpable, but the imperceptibly pernicious effects of repeated flooding (or extreme heat, or wildfire smoke) may play an even larger role in the long-term health of one’s home or community.

At Climate Alpha, our Resilience Index™ and risk-adjusted real estate valuations can help government officials identify where local adaptation efforts will go the furthest — and where residents in harm’s way should move next.

Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more how our tools empower investors, developers, public officials — and soon homeowners — to discover tomorrow’s more resilient communities.

#climatemigration #managedretreat #climategentrification #extremeheat #flooding

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Skipped Showers, Paper Plates: An Arizona Suburb’s Water Is Cut Off

For hundreds of Arizona homeowners, the American dream has become a climate-driven nightmare. A fierce competition for water amidst decades of drought has left residents of upscale Rio Verde without running taps. What is your half-million-dollar home really worth when your toilets are flushed with rainwater and you’re eating off paper plates?

“Is it just a campground now?” one resident asked The New York Times. The answer might be yes. As one of her first acts, new Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs unsealed a report concluding Phoenix’s fast-growing West Valley is well short of the 100-year supply of water required by law — a revelation throwing tens of thousands of planned homes into doubt.

“It’s a cautionary tale for home buyers,” Arizona State University’s Sarah Porter told the Times. “We can’t just protect every single person who buys a parcel and builds a home. There isn’t enough money or water.”

Clearly, the calculus for home builders and buyers alike has changed. Proper due diligence not only requires developable land or proximity to schools, but also secure supplies of fresh water and related climate adaptation measures. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about how our tools can help home builders — and soon, home buyers — incorporate these factors into future planning.

#climaterisks #megadrought #climateadaptation #extremeheat #watermanagement

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Big Banks Stress Over Fed Stress Test

The Federal Reserve’s mandate for America’s largest financial institutions to submit their plans for addressing climate risks now has a deadline: July 31. Six banks — Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo — are required by then to disclose how climate disasters such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, and other extreme weather will impact portfolios.

Banks have always stress-tested their assets to determine how financial shocks might ripple through their holdings. The Fed’s new “pilot climate scenario analysis exercise” takes this a step further with a specific climate wargaming exercise set in the northeastern United States, and a more general analysis of how the unfolding energy transition to renewables might leave their balance sheets full of stranded assets such as coal mines or natural gas plants.

The big six banks all have significant exposure to real estate securities as well as a large footprint of corporate property assets.
The big six banks all have significant exposure to real estate securities as well as a large footprint of corporate property assets. 

These disclosures address both sides of the risk coin: “physical risks” — climate risks tied directly to property, assets, and people — and “transition risks” arising from increasingly rapid decarbonization and the sunsetting of formerly lucrative fossil fuel infrastructure. The latter sends the signal that despite Chairman Jerome Powell’s insistence that “We are not, and will not be, a ‘climate policymaker,’” the Fed is serious about parsing the implications of 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.  

“This requirement is notable for several reasons, most specifically through the inclusion of transition risk,” says Michael Ferrari, chief scientific officer and chief commercial officer of Climate Alpha. “Addressing climate-related risks requires both mitigation and adaptation. With transition risks in the conversation, we can start to have serious discussions about the adaptation measures,” he adds.

Also notable is the Fed’s decision to model physical risks in a specific region prone to sea-level rise, hurricanes, and other disasters. Understanding how a singular event — such as a Category 5 hurricane landfall in lower Manhattan — might unfold in terms of immediate damage to infrastructure and real estate, followed by longer-term outward migration and declines in both economic growth and tax revenues, requires new tools combining both climate- and socio-economic variables.

“Modelling scenarios through 2050 is necessary, and mitigation measures need to increase, but these do not go far enough,” says Ferrari. “As we watch the frequency and severity of climate disruptions mount in real time, investors and regulators need new and better tools to understand consequences. This is why the adaptation requirement, which is so important, is starting to get the attention it deserves.”

As the first company of its kind to employ machine-learning techniques to combine hundreds of socioeconomic, demographic and market indicators with multiple climate scenarios, Climate Alpha stands alone in offering both the Fed and America’s biggest banks sufficiently complex forecasts of our climate-driven future.

“Climate Alpha is uniquely positioned to not only help large institutions, but all lenders, investors, risk managers, and property owners and buyers prepare for – and sensibly deploy capital under – the backdrop of future climate driven volatility,” Ferrari adds.

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Climate Data Startups Take Science Off Campus and Into Boardrooms

Bloomberg Green’s Eric Roston names Climate Alpha a startup to watch in Bloomberg Businessweek’s annual Year Ahead issue. “As climate science has moved out of the lab, private companies and nonprofits offering insights to decision-makers have proliferated, and demand for useful information will only grow in 2023,” he writes, noting roughly $375 million in VC and PE investment flowed into the sector during the first three quarters of 2022 alone. (Climate Alpha closed its own $4 million seed round in Q4.) 

“Climate science is in an awkward teenage phase,” says Kelly Hereid, director of catastrophe R&D at Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. “The next step is thinking not just about how the climate is going to change, but how that’s going to affect society.”

Exactly. As the only company of its kind combining migration and socio-economic variables with climate models, we’re uniquely positioned to help our customers understand the second- and third-order effects of a changing climate — starting with pockets of resilient geographies that were previously overlooked. Visit www.climatealpha.com to learn more about how our tools are already informing decision-makers in finance, real estate, insurance and government on what lies ahead in 2023 — and beyond.

#climatetech #climaterisks #climatescience #climateadaptation

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Resilient Cities Run on Climate Alpha

City and county public officials have a historic opportunity to invest in climate adaptation efforts ranging from planting trees to water conservation efforts to relocating vulnerable facilities. But where should they start?

Climate Alpha can help. Our Resilience Index™ offers a comprehensive dashboard of climate risk, vulnerability, and readiness scores for all 40,000+ US zip codes and 3,000 counties. We’re proud to announce special offers for city managers eager to assess risks, map hazards, and design adaptation strategies. Simply create a Climate Alpha account to receive complimentary headline scores, along with heavily discounted access to underlying datasets and indicator explanations.

Armed with these, officials might also leverage the Resilience Index to:

  1. Strategically allocate resilience grants from the federal government
  2. Reform urban and rural land-use policies
  3. Identify relocation sites for public and private facilities
  4. Conduct scenario-based exercises to prepare for extreme disruptions

Visit www.climatealpha.ai/cities to learn more about our special pricing for cities, or visit one of our partners. Mastercard City Possible members receive an exclusive discount code located under the Climate Alpha app in the Insights Marketplace, while Statebook customers will find Resilience Index™ scores integrated into their dashboards.

Together, we’re empowering cities to better understand the risks they face and how to optimally address them. A climate crisis is a terrible thing to waste.    

#climateadaptation #InflationReductionAct #resilience #landuse #managedretreat

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El Niño Is Coming—and the World Isn’t Prepared

After the hottest year on a record — a year in which heat waves scorched Europe and rivers evaporated; a year in which once again shattered the record for insurable losses due to natural catastrophes — what if the worst is still to come?

That’s because we’ve had it easy the last few years, with cool Pacific waters (“La Niña”) moderating global temperature rise by a crucial few tenths of a degree. But with ocean currents set to flip back to the better-known El Niño, we could see heat records shattered once again, argues Bill McGuire, author of “Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide.”

The result? Renewed droughts, falling crop yields, and higher food prices — which in turn fuel political unrest. Falling lake- and river levels in the American West threaten the hydro-electric dams California’s grid depends on. And warmer waters mean bigger hurricanes.

How these developments play out remains to be seen. But we can start to strategize now. Climate Alpha’s patent-pending scenario forecaster offers clients the ability to stress-test regions and real estate portfolios under conditions worse than even the most extreme effects modeled by the IPCC.

Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about how our AI-driven suite of tools is uniquely prepared to map the complexity of a climate-stressed future — and the opportunities others may miss.

#lanina #elnino #extremeheat #climaterisks #climateadaptation

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The First Microgrid Communities in California

KB Home has launched America’s first all-electric, solar-powered micro-grid neighborhoods at its master-planned community in California’s Inland Empire.

Designed in partnership with the US Department of Energy, SunPower, the University of California at Irvine, Southern California Edison, Schneider Electric, and Kia, each home boasts EV charger-ready wiring and batteries connected to a local smart grid.

It’s a win-win for all involved, as residents benefit from a potential 40% reduction in energy use while worrying less about more frequent blackouts. And for homebuilders like KB Home, the combination of rising interest rates, single-family rentals, and zero-energy ready home standards has made it easier than ever to build new, more resilient housing at scale. The only question is where.

And that’s where Climate Alpha comes in. For developers and homebuilders, our suite of analytics can not only identify the optimal regions for homes powered by renewables, but also calculate the risk-adjusted valuations out to 2040 that will help justify these investments in the present.

Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about how our tools will help found the resilient communities of tomorrow.

#realestate #climateadaptation #microgrids #ZERH #SFR #MPC

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Amid drought, Arizona contemplates a fraught idea: Piping in water from Mexico

Start the new year right with a jawdropping dispatch from our #climateadaptation future:

An Israeli-led group of private investors has made an unsolicited offer to build the world’s largest desalination plant on the Gulf of California to supply south- and central Arizona with 1 million acre-feet of water — an amount roughly equal to what the regions drew from the parched Colorado River last year.

The catch? Transporting the water would require 200-mile pipelines across an international border, through a U.S. national monument (and international biosphere reserve), and disrupt the salinity of one of the world’s most diverse aquatic ecosystems.

The other catch? The group — which is backed in part by Goldman Sachs — wants a pledge from the state of Arizona to buy the water at an unspecified price, which could run to billions of dollars per year. Despite this uncertainty, the state’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority unanimously voted in December to approve a non-binding resolution to continue studying the proposal, which would be financed entirely with private money.

The lesson? No matter how severe the heat and drought gripping the southwest United States, climate science isn’t destiny. Novel combinations of technology, finance, private investment, and public infrastructure will emerge in response to the pressures facing the region — some more effective than others.

That’s where Climate Alpha comes in. While others focus purely on climate risks, our Resilience Index™ incorporates infrastructure, public spending, and other socio-economic factors for every Zip code in the country — underscoring the uneven geography of the future.

Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about the index, our patent-pending scenario forecaster, and other tools for exploring how, say, the sudden appearance of the world’s largest desalination plant might alter your real estate’s future.

 #climaterisks #extremeheat #heatwaves #megadrought 

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When Housing Is for Locals Only, the Whole Country Suffers

“Exclusionary zoning harms the entire nation,” the editors of Bloomberg write. “It relegates the excluded to places with little opportunity and unhealthy living conditions. It aggravates global warming by redirecting population to car-dependent exurbs and relatively energy-intensive locales in the South and Midwest. It makes house prices and rents in desirable locations unaffordable for the typical family — which, in turn, stunts economic growth by preventing people from living where their talents can best be applied.”

These are excellent points, to which we would add another: it prevents new housing from being built America’s most climate resilient regions. Densifying existing cities is not enough — they can’t absorb all of the millions of new units necessary, when water supplies and other stresses are taken into account.

Which destinations have the right combination of affordability, sustainability, and amenities for tomorrow’s generations, and how do we begin clearing the ground for them now?

Climate Alpha’s suite of tools — starting with our Resilience Index™ scores for every U.S. county and our Climate Price™ risk-adjusted real valuations — help investors target the pockets of opportunity where it’s right to build. And where they have the right to build. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more how our tools can help you navigate the intersection of economics, climate, and policy.

#nimbyism #yimby #zoning #resilience #affordability

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What Extreme Weather Events Are Doing to Global Insurance Markets

As reinsurers such as Lloyd’s of London and Swiss Re reprice the risk of climate catastrophes following another year of record-breaking year of insurable losses, what role will insurance and reinsurance play in real estate and site selection going forward?

Appearing on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast, Artemis.bm owner and Reinsurance News found Steve Evans mused about the potential impacts of government-mandated climate risk exposure. 

“If you start to disclose that kind of thing and your shareholders are seeing these potential big negative numbers on your balance sheet — even if they don’t manifest it’s still something that really any sensible business owner should be taking steps to protect against. So, there’s also potentially going to be more demand [for insurance] that comes out of climate legislation as well.”

Growing demand at a time of soaring prices is guaranteed to help redraw the map of which regions, Zip codes, and buildings are considered trustworthy assets. Don’t wait for the insurance markets to do it for you — visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn how our Climate Price™ analytics produces risk-adjusted forecasts down to individual assets. Every place has a climate price — what’s yours? 

#climaterisk #insurance #reinsurance

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Americans Are Moving Into Danger Zones

Americans “are flocking to fire,” declares a new study documenting their decades-long migration to areas increasingly prone to extreme heat and wildfires. The attraction of these areas is well understood, but perhaps ignorance of the risks is also to blame?

“They’re attracted by maybe a beautiful forested mountain landscape and lower housing costs somewhere in the wildland-urban interface,” the paper’s lead author, University of Vermont environmental scientist Mahalia Clark, told Wired. “But they’re just totally unaware that wildfire is something they should even think about. That’s not really something that the realtor is going to tell them about, or that’s going to be on the real estate listing.”

But as Climate Alpha and others have found, when Americans are presented with data demonstrating the risks, they will take action. Before turning to disincentives and even managed retreat, as the study’s authors suggest, we need better tools for illuminating climate risks and affordable housing in more resilient regions. That’s why Climate Alpha has developed our risk-adjusted valuations for real estate — including residential property out to 2040 — and is working with customers such as Lennar to identify the fastest-growing markets of tomorrow. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about how we transform risks into opportunities.

#climaterisk #wildfires #extremeheat #climateprice #wildlandurbaninterface

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Catastrophe Reinsurance Set to Soar After Year of Extreme Weather

Natural catastrophes caused an estimated $115 billion in 2022, according to the Swiss Re Institute, with $50-$65 billion of that from #HurricaneIan alone. That’s nearly 50% above the 10-year average of $81 billion, and part of a steady 5-7% rise in insurable losses each year acording to the Financial Times.

That means a lot of pain for reinsurers like Swiss Re, which cover the risk for the insurers themselves. And that, in turn, means the cost of property catastrophe insurance is set to go up next — way up. British investment bank Peel Hunt estimates the cost may rise 30% in 2023, while Lloyd’s of London parent Beazly believes it could soar as much as 50%. As a result, the market for reinsurance is grinding to a halt as reinsurers and brokers tussle in repricing risk, with Aon’s top reinsurance executive warning of “friction and uncertainty.”

Clearly, this is no longer business as usual. As the soaring cost of reinsurance ripples through property markets, real estate in Florida and elsewhere will be repriced in tandem, while more resilient regions will look increasingly attractive in turn.

Our tools help reinsurers and investors alike understand the new realities of resilient geographies and arrive at the “Climate Price.” Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about how we can help you in the year ahead.

#climaterisk #creditrisk #reinsurance #riskmanagement #climateadaptation #catrisk

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Population Growth Is Making Hurricanes More Expensive

Why has the number of hurricanes causing $1 billion or more in damage more than doubled since the 1980s? And why has the total cost in damages risen eleven times?! The New York Times’ Ian Prasad Philbrick and Ashley Wu explore the “expanding bull’s-eye effect” — the tendency of population growth to make climate disasters costlier over time.

Coined by Villanova’s Steven Stader, the expanding bull’s-eye effect not only describes how urban sprawl makes regions more vulnerable to a mega-storm like #HurricaneIan, but also how development lessens the natural resilience of coastlines by transforming wetlands into impermeable asphalt.

The authors offer three potential solutions: mitigating greenhouse gas emissions; strengthening building codes; and encouraging migration away from high-risk areas. “But relocation is a tough sell,” they write. “Americans have flocked to Florida’s picturesque coast, despite its risks.”

They may not have that far to move. In our analysis of post-Ian Florida real estate trends, the Zip codes and counties poised to grow fastest in the next two decades are those farther from the coast. Read our analysis of how and why the smart money will escape the bull’s-eye.

#bullseyeeffect #climateadaptation #climaterisks #hurricanes

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How to Build a Better Future

#COP27 won’t save the world, Climate Alpha’s founder and CEO Dr. Parag Khanna writes for Semafor, and neither will any of its successors: “Every minute spent at such summits is therefore a distraction from the only two tangible activities that demonstrate genuine commitment to a better future: Moving people to resilient geographies or shifting technologies to people in need.”

The host of #COP28 — the United Arab Emirates — at least offers a glimpse of what such a future might look like:  “A melting pot in a melting geography, a mix of sea walls and air conditioning, the UAE is perhaps the foremost template for how more habitable regions will need to reprogram themselves into an archipelago of centers for our future civilization.”

This was the inspiration for Climate Alpha — creating the tools we’ll need to map humanity’s future. Click through to read more of Parag’s vision for tomorrow.

 #climateadaptation #climatemigration #resilientcommunities

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Can Cities Adapt to an Era of Extreme Heat?

As the northern hemisphere turns to winter, summer in the south half of the globe means another potentially devastating season of fires, drought, and extreme heat in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Australia, and beyond. Cities feel the latter most acutely, as urban heat island effects raise temperatures higher than their hinterlands and retain it in concrete and asphalt at night.

In response, seven cities around the world — including Melbourne and Santiago de Chile — have named “chief heat officers” to advise mayors and other elected officials on  public education, heat mitigation, and urban redesigns. With support from the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilience Center — whose director Kathy Baughman-McLeod sits on Climate Alpha’s board — these heat officers are rethinking how urban governance should function in a future of climate change.

There’s always bureaucracy and red tape that makes things slower,” Athens mayor Kostas Bakoyannis told The Financial Times. “Also, the fact that we’re living with the legacy of the economic crisis . . . We’re trying to move as quickly as we can.”

Climate Alpha offers tools for public officials and private investors alike helping to steer investments in climate resilience and understanding heat-induced migration. Our Resilience Scores identify local strengths and weaknesses, while our Climate Price™ analytics platform forecasts migration patterns to account for future shifts to cooler climes. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about how we can help you prepare for a warming world.

#extremeheat #heatwaves #climateadaptation #megadrought

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9 in 10 Large Companies Have Assets Located in the Path of Climate Hazards

Nine in ten of the world’s largest companies have at least one asset exposed to climate risk, according to S&P, and more than one-third of those companies should expect that asset’s value to drop by 20 percent or more. But where are those assets? And over what time frame? Esri covered new data from S&P Global Sustainable1.

The geospatial information experts at Esri recommend combining spatial analytics with #GeoAI to understand the intersection of climate risks and business operations. “What are the revenue impacts of closing a store that’s vulnerable to wildfires?” Esri’s Alexander Martonik asks. “How will customer spending change if we move a distribution center out of a region with worsening hurricanes?”

These are the right questions, but answering them will not only require climate and business data, but also a fine-grained understanding of adaptation efforts — how will local public- and private actors move to mitigate those risks? That’s where Climate Alpha comes in, bringing its unique tools to bear in helping customers refine their geospatial analysis to account for human intervention. Visit Climate Alpha’s Product Suite to learn more about how our SaaS offerings can help refine and enrich geospatial forecasts of the future.

#realestate #climateadaptation #climaterisks #riskmanagement

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Hurricane Ian is proof: The US needs a national disaster safety board

The Hill discusses how five years after #HurricaneMaria devastated Puerto Rico and destroyed much of the island’s grid, #HurricaneFiona struck, leaving thousands without power. Was this disaster avoidable? Yes, say the founders of Disaster Researchers for Justice, calling on the U.S. Senate to authorize the creation of the National Disaster Safety Board — a new federal agency tasked with learning from climate disasters and recommending policies to ensure they don’t happen again.

“The proposed NDSB,” the founders write in an op-ed for The Hill, “offers the chance to leverage decades worth of data, human capital, and technology to inform its investigative work. In a time when our national risk is increasing due to decades of bad development decisions, centuries of discriminatory policy, and climate change the need to transform how we address disaster is more urgent than ever.”

Whether it be a new federal agency or more local institutions, mounting climate disasters underscore the necessity for governments to stop reacting and start proactively planning for the future. To that end, Climate Alpha has partnered with Mastercard’s City Possible to offer its suite of tools — including county-level resilience scores and its scenario forecaster — at a discount to public sector customers. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about how we can help you learn from past disasters and avoid the next one.

#climateadaptation #resilientcommunities #climaterisks 

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Amid historic drought, California approves $140 mln desalination plant – Reuters

We took a look at Reuters’ recent article on desalination efforts in California. The original article can be accessed here.

First, it was approved only five months after a much larger privately-owned plant was rejected, pointing toward a near-term future of smaller, more local water infrastructure — rather than drawing on rapidly-depleting sources such as the Colorado River. “It’s more nimble. The future is going to be all about modular solutions,” Berkeley’s Newsha Ajami told Reuters.

Second, it underscores how climate change is not a one-way street — cities and states have the capacity to adapt to a changing climate… if they choose to. Climate Alpha’s models account for human adaptation as well as climate projections to identify the regions and communities taking the future into their own hands. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about how we can help identify the places ready for tomorrow.

#climateadaptation #megadrought #watersecurity #climaterisks #infrastructure

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A Climate Crisis “Worse” Than the 1970’s?


“People have stupidly moved from New York to Miami and from San Francisco to Austin,” he continued. “But Florida’s going to be flooded and Texas is going to be too hot to survive there. So there’ll have to be a massive migration from south and the coastline towards the only part of the US that is going to survive climate change. It’s the Midwest into essentially Canada. So there’ll be trillions of dollars of real estate assets that are going to be damaged by essentially global climate change.”
 
Climate Alpha is proud to partner with Dr. Roubini’s firm Atlas Capital to create the first-of-its-kind Sustainable REIT Index™ offering risk-adjusted valuation for 200,000 REIT properties under multiple climate scenarios, ranking and clustering funds according to location, property type, and other metrics, with regular updates based on the latest market data
 
“Literally there are maps that show that half of the US in the next 20 years are going to be either underwater on the coastlines or too hot or droughts or wildfires, to be living in it,” Roubini told Odd Lots. At Climate Alpha, we’re making those maps. Visit Climate Alpha’s Products Page to learn more about how we can do the same for you.
 
#realestate #flooding #climateadaptation #climaterisks #creditrisk #drdoom #sustainablereits #climatemigration

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The Uninsurables: How Storms and Rising Seas are Making Coastlines Unliveable

The Guardian investigated the coastlines of Canada citing figures from the Insurance Bureau of Canada, a trade body, these 800,000 homes concentrated in the Atlantic Provinces and other coastal areas represent 90% of the Canadian insurance industry’s financial liability. In response, the industry is pushing for a federal government-run insurance scheme similar to the United States’ own troubled National Flood Insurance Program.

“The private market, on its own, cannot handle the level of risk that’s escalating in the system without some sort of formal government backstop or direct participation,” the IBC’s Craig Stewart told The Guardian. Over the last 15 years, for instance, insurance claims from severe weather events have quadrupled, including September’s Hurricane Fiona.

Climate change poses a clear and present danger to a Canadian housing market already under severe stress due to rising interest rates, underscoring how simple rules of thumb — Canada is inherently safer than south Florida — are not just wrong, but also dangerous. At Climate Alpha, our models include variables such as the overall health and structure of housing and insurance markets to create more accurate forecasts of risk and opportunities in the decades ahead. Visit Climate Alpha’s Products Page to learn more about what our tools can do for U.S. customers — and soon, our Canadian ones.

#realestate #flooding #climateadaptation #climaterisks #creditrisk

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Why Ian May Push Florida Real Estate Out of Reach for All but the Super Rich

The New York Times discusses how Hurricane Ian’s record breaking cost will make it even harder for many to get insurance — Florida’s insurance market faces collapse as FEMA and reinsurers alike reprice the risks and race premiums accordingly. The result might be a housing market in which homeownership is the sole preserve of those with deep enough pockets to buy a house in cash and pay to rebuild at any price.

“Ian’s aftermath shows how climate change is increasingly eroding the financial underpinnings of modern American life,” writes The New York Times‘ Christopher Flavelle. “Without insurance, banks won’t issue a mortgage; without a mortgage, most prospective homeowners can’t buy a home. With fewer buyers, home prices fall, and new development can slow or even come to a stop.”

While Florida has held out against this vicious circle for decades, past results do not guarantee future performance. At Climate Alpha, our suite of tools help homebuilders, developments, asset managers, and reinsurers — not to mention homeowners themselves — understand these risks and steer them to neighboring opportunities. Visit Climate Alpha’s Product Page to learn more about how we can help you understand when — and where — the American Dream is at risk… and where it’s thriving.

#realestate #flooding #climateadaptation #climaterisks#creditrisk #sustainablefinance

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A “race for higher ground”: A new study shows how climate gentrification is displacing vulnerable communities

A “race for higher ground” has already begun around Tampa and in South Florida, as new arrivals and local businesses displace residents in lower-income areas less prone to flooding. Fast Company’s Adele Peters reports on a new paper by Tulane University‘s Jesse M. Keenan and Columbia University’s Marco Tedesco offering a “climate gentrification risk index.”

“I think we need to start planning today about land use decisions and movements in the future instead of just letting the market haphazardly create the situation we have,” Keenan says. “What we’ve learned here is that we need to be mindful of where these conflicts are arising today and tomorrow.”

Don’t wait. Our suite of tools — including our proprietary Resilience Index scores and scenario forecaster — can help governments identify gentrification hotspots now while steering investors and developers toward less obvious opportunities to adapt and build. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more about how we can help you win the race for higher ground — before it’s even run.

#climategentrification #climatemigration #higherground #climaterisks

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The U.S. is Running Short of Land for Housing

Improbably, America is running out of land. Developable land, that is.

“Land-use restrictions and a lack of public investment in roads, rail and other infrastructure have made it harder than ever for developers to find sites near big population centers to build homes,” writes Konrad Putzier in The Wall Street Journal. “As people keep moving to cities such as Austin, Phoenix and Tampa, they are pushing up the price of dirt and making the housing shortages in these fast-growing areas even worse.”

Vacant land prices in the Sun Belt have more than doubled in the last two years, even as Austin and Phoenix are becoming markedly hotter and Tampa lies squarely in the path of #HurricaneIan — potentially the worst storm to strike the city in a century.

Torn between the need for land in fast-growing regions and valuations that don’t take climate change into account, developers risk paying a premium today for discounted locations tomorrow. Fortunately, Climate Alpha combines climate, demographic, and economic data for a 360-degree view of the most desirable locations in 2040 and every year in between. Visit Climate Alpha’s Products Page to learn more before it’s gone.

#resilientcommunities #extremeheat #megadrought #climateadaptation #zoomtowns #climatemigration

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Billions in Climate Deal Funding – What it Means for U.S. Coastal Cities

The #inflationreductionact earmarks $2.6 billion for “#greeninfrastructure” — nature-based solutions for coastline- and habitat protection and restoration — which offers a markedly different approach to traditional engineering-based “gray infrastructure.” Advocates for this approach argue it is more cost-effective and sustainable than building levees or seawalls requiring continual maintenance. The New York Times reports on how hopeful communities look forward to programs that emphasize nature-based solutions

“You are seeing a lot more attention and acceptance of greener options,” Charles Lester, director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at UC Santa Barbara told The New York Times‘ Stephanie Lai. “It’s a spectrum of ways of responding to shoreline change, and this funding is causing us to think more completely and more holistically about all the different pieces of these puzzles.”

This is only one example of how climate models aren’t destiny. The future is a policy choice — where and how we choose to invest in climate #resilience and #adaptation changes its possible trajectories. That’s why Climate Alpha incorporate #demographics#infrastructure, and other socio-economic variables in forecasting tomorrow’s resilient geographies. Visit Climate Alpha’s Product Suite to learn more about we’re incorporating human agency into our scenarios of the future.

#resilientcommunities #climaterisks #climateadaptation #sealevelrise

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The U.S. is Teetering on the Brink of Large Water Crisis

The #climatecrisis is more complex than any single model can capture. For instance, the #megadrought gripping the West for the last two decades has caused the Colorado River to wither, causing the U.S. government to demand neighboring states cut their water usage by as much as 40%. But it gets worse.

As the Global Institute for Water Security (GIWS)‘s Jay Famiglietti illuminates in this interview with ProPublica‘s Abrahm Lustgarten, the peril to American agriculture is even greater than one might imagine, as farmers shift consumption from surface water to groundwater, accelerating aquifer depletion.

“I don’t want to be flippant,” Famiglietti says, “but people don’t understand the food-water nexus. Do we try to bring more water to the southern high plains, to Arizona, to California, because if the food system’s optimized, maybe that’s the cheapest thing to do? Or does agriculture move to where the water is? Does it migrate north and east?”

Climate models can’t answer that question. Climate Alpha can. Our scenario forecaster allows customers to explore the potential implications of these kinds of feedback loops. Visit www.climatealpha.ai to learn more.

#extremeheat #climaterisks #climateadaptation #watersecurity #climatemigration

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Cities Brace for This Season’s Colliding Climate Disasters

Bloomberg News Article on climate disasters has identified May to October as the “danger season” — when the US is most at risk of experiencing back-to-back climate disasters like heat waves, wildfires, drought and storms.

The real danger isn’t an isolated wildfire, heat wave or flood — but mounting, overlapping disasters that diminish the capacity to respond. For example, Bloomberg News CityLab’s Linda Poon notes that since May, 116 U.S. counties were under multiple alerts from the National Weather service, of which nearly three-quarters had concurrent heat + heat alerts, while 18 others faced flood + heat and another 15 counties had fire + flood.

While other tools can identify a region’s vulnerability to a single climate, our analysis platform at Climate Alpha is able to gauge resilience against multiple threats in light of multiple demographic and economic scenarios — helping make danger season a little less dangerous. Visit us at Climate Alpha’s Product Solutions to learn more.

#extremeheat #megadrought #hurricaneseason2022 #climaterisks #climateadaptation

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The “Zoom Revolution” enriched Jackson Hole. But What About Buffalo?

The Washington Post’s opinion article on Zoom towns contrasts the diverging fortunes of Jackson Hole, WY and Buffalo, NY in an era of “Zoomtowns” and remote work. While the former has seen an influx of workers trading urban life for majestic terrain (and soaring home prices), the aspiring “climate haven” on Lake Erie awaits its Renaissance.

But that could change, McArdle argues: “The Mountain West and the Sun Belt could probably do with less competition for scarce water, and the prosperous coastal cities would be better off with fewer people to house since they refuse to allow enough building to let supply meet demand.”

Any number of small cities have been touted as Zoomtowns. But which will offer the essential combination of affordability, job creation, and climate resilience? Don’t just speculate. We can tell you. Visit our Website at www.climatealpha.ai to learn more.

#zoomtowns #remotework #climatemigration #climateadaptation #realestate

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