Videos & Podcasts

Beyond Greenwashing: Proven Strategies to Protect Infrastructure from Climate Risk

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What can infrastructure companies do to adapt to climate change — and how do we know what actually works? The ClimaTech project was designed to answer this question with a structured, research-driven approach to physical risk mitigation and adaptation. While climate risks are widely acknowledged, there is still no comprehensive, sector-specific tool that links infrastructure type and exposure to the most impactful strategies for reducing risk. This leaves decision-makers without the granular, asset-level insights needed to take meaningful action.
Beyond Greenwashing - ClimaTech

On July 15, 2025, Nishtha Manocha (Project Lead, ClimaTech) and Conor Hubert (Sustainability Research Engineer) of the EDHEC Climate Institute presented a webinar entitled “Beyond Greenwashing: Proven Strategies to Protect Infrastructure from Climate Risk.” Drawing on two years of applied research, the session introduced the ClimaTech project—an initiative designed to identify, evaluate, and map effective strategies to adapt infrastructure systems to climate change risks.

The session addressed the persistent gap between climate risk awareness and the availability of actionable, sector-specific adaptation tools. While many organisations acknowledge the urgency of climate change, decision-makers often lack the asset-level insights necessary to implement robust, evidence-based strategies. The ClimaTech project fills this gap by providing a comprehensive database that evaluates the effectiveness of physical risk and decarbonisation strategies across diverse infrastructure types.

During the presentation, Nishtha and Conor presented key insights from the project and demonstrated how ClimaTech enables infrastructure stakeholders to systematically assess, compare, and select adaptation strategies. Key topics included:

  • Systematic Evaluation of Adaptation Strategies: Introducing a structured approach to mapping climate risks to corresponding mitigation and adaptation responses. The database includes 103 strategies evaluated across 101 infrastructure types and over 1,800 applications, covering both physical risks (such as floods, heatwaves, storms, and wildfires) and decarbonisation pathways (Scopes 1, 2, and 3).

  • Strategy Effectiveness and Technical Readiness: Assessing strategies based on their protective potential, implementation feasibility, enabling technologies, and cost considerations. This provides stakeholders with a transparent, comparable framework for selecting solutions aligned with their asset class and risk profile.

  • Use Case and Sector Applications: Highlighting infrastructure sectors such as transport and water treatment, where exposure to physical climate risks is acute. The speakers presented a use case demonstrating how publicly available data can be used in combination with ClimaTech to assess risk exposure and identify relevant adaptation measures.