Depending on projections from climate model(s) or from historical trends, climate change could lead to substantial impacts on properties, facilities, and the workforce or it may have minimal to no influence. The various outcomes reflect regional variations as well as uncertainties in the methods for estimating impacts. Whether the concern is physical, ecological, or human health impacts, catastrophic or mild effects, immediate or long-term consequences, there can be little doubt that climate change will affect the ways that companies conduct business and manage risk. The quantification of future potential impacts and associated uncertainties requires understanding the drivers, effects, and potential management strategies at regional levels for enterprise risk management.
Areas of particular importance for risk management include:
- Climate-related changes to the financial value or performance of client’s operations and assets
- Impacts of the clients’ emissions upon the biological, ecological, and physical environment
- Extreme weather events such as drought, flooding, and hurricanes
- Impact on company staff of infectious disease, heat stress, waterborne diseases, and injuries from extreme weather events
- Integrating climate change in traditional catastrophe modeling
- Liabilities associated with corporate climate change management
- Litigation associated with business continuity such as interruptions in the supply chain, utility services, and communications
- Litigation and liabilities associated with contract disputes from transactions and acquisitions
Climate change also presents business opportunities for new products and services for mitigating and offsetting greenhouse gases, and encouraging sustainable practices that lower risk profiles and vulnerability. Exponent provides energy industry clients with sophisticated analyses that combine the results and reliability of regionally-relevant climate models with available trend analyses. This analysis provides a range of predictions and associated probabilities along with the consequences. This information provides the technical bases for judging risks to assets and operations. It can also be used for estimating risk exposure and for developing appropriate risk management strategies meaningful to specific client needs and degree of vulnerability.
Exponent Climate Change Services
- Analysis of climate change models and uncertainty analysis within a regional context and in a format that can then be applied to management decision-making
- Application of a transparent and comprehensive vulnerability framework to provide risk analysis and risk management recommendations that are specific to the challenges facing a specific energy industry company, or the industry as a whole
- Economic exposure analysis from climate change risks
- Land-use planning and management analysis of natural resources such as forestry, agriculture, and wetlands to mitigate climate change effects
- Identification and analysis of sustainable business practices to decrease exposure to climate change risk
- Product liability analysis of green technologies
- Analysis of the liabilities that might arise from carbon-offset projects
- Creation of vulnerability maps for various outcomes and associated probabilities