ESG data provider GRESB announced that it has launched the GRESB Climate Risk Platform, providing asset-level intelligence across multiple climate scenarios and time frames. The company also announced that Munich Re, one of the world’s leading providers of insurance-related risk solutions, is the first data provider on the platform.

The physical impacts of a changing climate pose significant challenges to real assets. The chaotic nature of climatic patterns and increasing extremes — combined with the long lifetimes and limited mobility of real assets — mean that more uncertainty must be taken into account when making investment and development decisions. Understanding physical climate risks, from the asset level up, is crucial to implementing well-informed risk management practices and increasing the resilience portfolios. 

Leveraging both extensive hazard databases and forward-looking climate models, Munich Re’s physical risk exposure data ranges from the present to 2100, across three different climate scenarios, at resolutions down to 30m. This flexibility and detail will help platform users to identify which of their assets are most exposed to physical climate risk, allow for long-term planning, and improve investment and development decisions.

The new GRESB Climate Risk Platform is designed to provide a clear picture of portfolio exposure to a wide variety of physical climate risks. The information will enable asset managers to:

• Identify the risk exposure of individual assets, determining which are most exposed
• Stress test portfolios against multiple climate scenarios
• Plan for the long-term with multiple time horizons
• Report in line with TCFD recommendations
• Improve investor engagement

With the upcoming release of the 2020 GRESB Assessment results in the fall, asset owners will be able to benchmark against peers as well as download custom reports. The climate risk data is available for all real estate portfolios, including portfolios that do not participate in the GRESB Real Estate Assessment.