The Adaptation Days conference delivered a call for better regulation, a higher profile for adaptation in corporate climate plans, and more awareness of the financial impact of extreme weather events

The EU programme JASPERS (Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions) has 500 ongoing assignments in which experts from the European Investment Bank advise national, regional and local authorities on ways to align their projects with EU standards so that they’ll have a better chance of securing EU funding. Every single one of those 500 projects involves climate adaptation.

But it’s still not enough.

“We need to do more,” said Ambroise Fayolle, the European Investment Bank vice-president responsible for climate action. “More projects, more assignments, to make our societies and economies stronger, better prepared for the climate change impacts that are already materializing.”

Better regulation, a higher profile for adaptation in corporate climate plans, and more awareness of the financial impact of extreme weather events and other climate change impacts are crucial. That’s the message of speakers at the European Investment Bank’s Adaptation Days, held in Luxembourg on 24-25 April, who warned that the costs of inaction would, ultimately, outweigh investment made now.

• Check out the panels on the first day of the Adaptation Days

Climate adaptation planning

The Adaptation Days gathered experts from government, corporations and multilateral investment banks, such as the host. Roman Röhrl, a European Investment Bank adaptation expert, told the conference that the EIB Group’s Adaptation Plan, which was adopted in 2021, as having three main goals:

• supporting smarter, more systemic adaptation
• financing faster adaptation
• accelerating international action on adaptation

So far, adaptation is often a small component of bigger projects, Röhrl said. “We would like to see more bespoke investment programmes where adaptation comes first,” he added. “We see projects where, for example, a section of a motorway is upgraded and adapted. What we want to see is the adaptation of the whole network.”

Climate adaptation demand

Often national or supranational programmes spur cities or companies to action on adaptation, which is action taken to adjust to the present and future impacts of climate change. (Climate mitigation, by contrast, refers to projects that reduce carbon emissions and, thus, slow mankind’s contribution to global warming.)

Violeta Gonzalez Alenar manages European funds and project finance at ADIF, which runs Spain’s railway network and stations. She told the conference that Spain’s national climate adaptation plan pushed the company to address its own vulnerabilities, with the help of the JASPERS programme. “The demand comes from Europe,” she said.

Similarly, JASPERS worked with the government of the Lisbon metropolitan area on a range of investments, including a tsunami warning system for the Tagus estuary. 

If the danger of a tsunami in Portugal surprises you, listen to Carlo Buontempo, a director at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, who presented alarming data about just how much our climate has already changed. Average temperatures recently were “the warmest months ever recorded in the last 100 000 years,” he said.

Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, Buontempo added, with 10% of the volume of glaciers in the Alps lost between 2022 and 2023.

Corporations see climate adaptation opportunity

Many corporations grasp the extent of the danger.

Bouke de Vries, an advisor to the board of Rabobank, said that banks and the financial sector can help change the system fundamentally. But first they need more clarity from governments. “We don’t often ask for regulation, but here we do,” he said. “We asked the government to pinpoint where we should not build anymore, and where we can, with modifications.”

But corporations also see this as a new market.

Rabobank is working with business parks and homeowners in the Netherlands to offer programmes tailored to adapting to climate change. “Climate mitigation and adaptation need to be seen as an opportunity, not just a risk,” de Vries said.

Not everyone is keeping up, however. Christopher Perceval, senior market engagement director S&P Global Sustainable, says that half of all corporate adaptation plans “underestimate the potential impact of climate.”

He adds that corporations have focussed on climate mitigation. They need to look more closely at adaptation. “Everybody speaks about decarbonization plans, but few speak about resilience plans,” he said. “There is a gap there.”

Climate adaptation versus costs of inaction

Regardless of whether corporations find opportunities in adaptation, they need to act now.

Eliza Mahdavy, corporate social responsibility director for Enedis, which operates 95% of France’s electricity distribution system, said that the huge investments required to adapt to climate change needed to be seen in the context of the cost of inaction. “All the investment decisions we make will have an impact on the tariffs that electricity consumers have to pay,” she said.

“The challenge for us,” she added, “is how use all the data and work with governments, investors and insurers to ensure that the energy transition is just.”

Alexandrina Boyanova, head of the climate office in the Operations Department at the European Investment Bank, said the adaptation conference has three objectives: “projects, projects, projects.” She encouraged people to reach out if they want to do more work on adaptation.

“If there are some of you who got inspired by these sessions or who have project ideas, please do not hesitate to talk to us,” Boyanova said. “We have mobilised colleagues, loan officers, sectoral experts as well as advisory experts to help you do something more concrete with those ideas and to make projects out of them. Projects that we, as the EIB, can finance.”