Analyst: Climate Resilience
Analyst: Climate Resilience
WHO WE ARE
Cadlas is a dynamic start-up advisory practice focused on the rapidly expanding field of climate resilience financing. Our mission is to help build a climate resilient future, by helping capital to flow towards activities, assets and technologies that build resilience to the impacts of a changing and more variable climate.
We advise businesses, financial institutions, investors, markets, regulators, policymakers and international organisations on climate resilience analytics, definitions and mechanisms, on climate resilience impact and strategy, and on the evolving regulatory landscape. Our work ranges from bond markets and impact investing, to investment strategy and financial supervision, and beyond.
WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR
This is an outstanding opportunity for a postgraduate candidate wishing to gain experience and pursue professional development in the field of climate and sustainable finance.
- You’ll have a passion for climate resilience, climate action and sustainability, and a solid understanding of climate change impacts and their significance for economic activity and financial markets.
- You’ll be comfortable working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment with the ability to handle multiple assignments at once.
- You’ll be resourceful, a quick learner with a good eye for detail, able to take initiative and work both independently and as part of a team, and have excellent communication skills.
- You’ll be hardworking, loyal and committed to delivering work to a high standard.
WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING
The successful candidate will be involved in supporting the design and delivery of an exciting range of client assignments, as well as contributing to wider research and analytics.
- Providing technical input and analysis
- Producing data analysis and concise report writing
- Conducting research into topics of emerging interest
- Preparing and managing spreadsheets, databases, and analytical tools
- Contributing towards reports, presentations and analytical products
- Managing tasks to time while ensuring high quality
WHAT YOU'LL BRING
- A Master’s degree or equivalent in a relevant topic such as climate change, environmental science or engineering, finance, business or other relevant field
- At least two years’ professional working experience in a relevant capacity and/or organisation
- Passion for and deep understanding of climate change issues, especially climate change impacts, climate resilience / adaptation, and implications for business, finance and economic activity
- Experience of project management, with an organised and methodological approach to planning and delivering work of a high quality
- Excellent self-motivation, a can-do attitude, and ability to work effectively both independently and as part of a team
- A high level of accuracy and attention to detail, along with the ability to deliver high quality of reports and presentations
- Excellent verbal and written English communication skills, with other language skills considered as a very welcome plus
- Competent user of Microsoft Office, including Word, PowerPoint and especially Excel. Additional IT skills such as database design/manipulation, coding, artificial intelligence, etc. will be considered an advantage.
Candidates must have the right to live and work in the UK.
WHAT WE OFFER
-
This is an initial one year contract offer, with the potential for extension and career progression possibilities for the right candidate and subject to performance, as part of a fast-growing start up firm in a dynamic and fast-evolving business area.
- A varied and autonomous job in a dynamic, growing start-up
- An exciting, flexible and multicultural working environment
- A supportive and enabling corporate culture with a flat hierarchy
- Career progression opportunities including potential management roles for the right candidates, subject to performance
- Active work-life balance through flexible working hours, various working time models and mobile working
- Competitive salary
Cadlas is a firm advocate of a flexible working arrangements, which allow our team members to perform their roles and make their contributions in the way that works best for each of them. As a baseline, team members are typically expected to work one day a week in in our central Cardiff office. Beyond that, we encourage a flexible hybrid mix of office-based working, home working and other remote working, which can be tailored to individual needs.
Cadlas ensures that all of our colleagues, future colleagues, and applicants, as well as our clients and other partners, are all treated equally regardless of age, gender, marital or civil partnership status, colour, ethnic or national origin, culture, religious belief, philosophical belief, political opinion, disability, gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation.
Analyst: Climate Resilience
LOCATION
Cardiff / flexible hybrid working
REPORTING TO
CEO
SALARY
Competitive salary range starting from £25,000 (gross) p.a. depending on skills and experience
LOCATION
Cardiff / flexible hybrid working
REPORTING TO
CEO
SALARY
Competitive salary range starting from £25,000 (gross) p.a. depending on skills and experience
If you are interested and would like to join us, please email [email protected] with your curriculum vitae and covering letter, stating the earliest possible starting date and confirming that you have the right to work in the UK. There is no set deadline for this role.
Once you have submitted your application we will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview and may be requested to provide samples of written or other relevant work.
Investment for a well-adapted UK
The UK’s Climate Change Committee has set out its strategic vision for the vital role of investment in ensuring that the United Kingdom is well prepared for a changing and more variable climate. Cadlas CEO Craig Davies was a member of the independent expert advisory group that contributed to this strategy. Understanding and removing the barriers to investment – especially private investment – in climate resilience is crucial for unleashing the greater volumes of investment that will be needed over the years and decades ahead.
The full report is available here on the Climate Change Committee website.
Supporting capital markets in responding to the climate crisis – towards a Resilience Taxonomy
Mobilising capital markets is crucial for building resilience in an age of increasing climate volatility. Global financing needs for climate resilience are immense, while existing financing flows and instruments fall far short of what is needed.
Cadlas is therefore delighted to be working with the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) on the development of a Resilience Taxonomy that will start to set out definitions and criteria to help investment flow towards activities and entities that contribute towards building climate resilience.
More details are provided here on the CBI Blog.
Financing climate resilience: a challenging but necessary pathway
In the run-up to COP27, Cadlas CEO Craig Davies shares some thoughts with Responsible Investor on current trends and opportunities in climate resilience financing. While there is still much more to be done to develop the analytics and instruments that the investment industry needs, the trajectory towards internalising physical climate risk and channelling capital towards climate resilience is both necessary and inevitable.
‘Psychological barrier’ hindering investment in climate adaptation
Towards a Climate Resilience Investment Framework for Institutional Investors
Physical Climate & Sustainability Disclosures
As the need to address the physical impacts of climate change becomes more urgent, how is this being reflected in emerging sustainability disclosure frameworks? Physical climate coverage is better than it was several years ago, with a degree of coalescence around three core topics: exposure to physical climate risks, alignment with climate resilience (or adaptation) solutions, and capital deployment associated with physical climate. This creates potential for generating a clearer picture of market exposure to physical climate risks, the potential business and financing opportunities, and financing flows towards building climate resilience (adaptation finance). However, there is significant room for further advances, especially around more granular physical climate risk assessments, clear definitions of climate resilience opportunities, and the links to adaptation finance flows. Ultimately, it will be the way that these disclosure regimes are implemented and enforced that will determine the contribution they make towards more consistent and impactful action on climate resilience.
There is reason to be hopeful of a significant scaling up of sustainability-related information flows over the years ahead, with the development, adoption and harmonisation of a number of sustainability disclosure frameworks. This includes, not least, the emerging ISSB standards on climate and sustainability, while the EU sustainability disclosure regime also continues to advance, and in the USA the SEC has released for consultation a proposed climate disclosure rule. A number of national jurisdictions (France, Japan, New Zealand and the UK) have already introduced mandatory TCFD disclosure requirements, with the entire G7 expected to follow their lead in the coming years.
At the same time, the physical climate change impacts continue to rise up the agenda. The IPPC paints a sombre picture of accelerating global heating, while the WEF has identified global climate action failure and extreme weather as the two most severe global risks over the next decade. In June this year, UN climate talks in Bonn ended in acrimony, with clashes over climate finance flows driven by the concerns of vulnerable countries facing severe physical climate risks.
So, how is physical climate featuring in these fast-evolving sustainability disclosure frameworks? Is it still the poor cousin to carbon-related disclosures, or is it beginning to catch up? Cadlas takes a closer look
The story so far
There has been some progress over recent years, driven largely by the continued evolution of TCFD recommendations. While physical climate has always been part of the TCFD framework, its prominence was limited at first. However, things quickly advanced in the years following the TCFD’s launch in 2017. This included the emergence of physical climate analytics service providers, and a number of initiatives by organisations including the EBRD and the Global Centre on Adaptation, and UNEP-FI.
As climate risk become mainstreamed into financial supervision, physical climate assumed a central role alongside carbon transition. This was evident in the comprehensive climate-related requirements of prominent supervisors such as the Bank of England, Banque de France and the European Central Bank, as well as influential international bodies such as the NGFS and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.
An important step forward occurred in 2021, when the TCFD updated its guidance on metrics and targets. This has influenced the inclusion of physical climate in other disclosure frameworks such as the ISSB, EFRAG and SEC, and climate disclosure regimes in the UK and elsewhere that follow TCFD recommendations.
Key common features
So how is physical climate is being treated in the main sustainability disclosure frameworks?
One general theme is that they all call for physical climate to be mainstreamed across climate-related disclosures, typically following the TCFD structure of governance, strategy, risk management and metrics & targets. In practice though, physical climate is often overshadowed by carbon transition and suffers from a lack of guidance on precisely how it should be assessed and disclosed. In line with the direction set by the TCFD, three broad categories of disclosures, which are either directly or indirectly related to physical climate, are emerging as broadly common across all the main frameworks.
Exposure to physical climate risks: this refers to extent to which business operations (assets, revenues, turnover or other activities) are exposed to material physical climate risks. However, there is significant room for interpretation in the scope, boundaries and granularity of physical climate risk assessments, the climate models, scenarios and timescales used, the definitions of physical climate hazards used, and the criteria used to assess the materiality of physical climate risks.
Alignment with climate resilience opportunities: while the cross-industry TCFD metrics refer to climate-related opportunities in general, this clearly includes opportunities associated with climate resilience (or adaptation), for instance an agricultural company’s revenues from the sale of drought-resilient seeds. This calls for clear and widely understood definitions of climate resilience opportunities. Relevant taxonomies such as the EU Taxonomy may help to provide this necessary clarity, although it may take time for the necessary market familiarity with its adaptation requirements to evolve.
Capital deployment associated with physical climate: again, the cross-industry TCFD metrics refer to capital deployment towards climate-related risks and opportunities in general, and once more this also clearly covers physical climate. This could include, for example, capital deployed for making infrastructure more resilient, or towards investment in efficient irrigation or weather monitoring technologies. Such disclosures may provide incentives for organisations to report private adaptation finance flows, thereby filling a significant information gap in the climate finance landscape.
Application across different sustainability disclosure regimes
While the overall direction of travel may be broadly consistent, there are some differences in the approaches being taken by the various emerging sustainability disclosure regimes.
The draft ISSB climate standard is closely aligned with the updated TCFD requirements and mirrors its cross-industry metrics on physical climate risk exposure, alignment with (physical) climate opportunities and capital deployment for (physical) climate-related risks and opportunities. At the industry-specific level, the draft ISSB climate standard refers directly to the SASB industry standards, although only some of these cover exposure to physical climate risk (e.g. agricultural products).
Within the evolving EU sustainability disclosure regime, the existing non-binding guidelines on climate-related reporting follow a roughly similar pattern to the TCFD, calling for information on exposed to physical climate risk, and on the percentage of turnover and of investment or expenditures that qualify as climate resilience opportunities by meeting the criteria for Substantial Contribution (to adaptation) under the EU Taxonomy. However, these will soon be superseded by EFRAG’s draft climate change standard, currently under development. This sets out a more granular approach that, in addition to the above points, also covers policies, targets, plans and resources related to climate (including, presumably, physical climate). This standard will naturally reflect the EU’s commitment to double materiality (i.e. sustainability matters that are both financially material to businesses and material to the market, the environment, and people), although precisely how this concept applies to physical climate requires further consideration and discussion.
Looking forward
It is no longer true to say that physical climate is being left out of climate and sustainability disclosure frameworks, nor that physical climate requirements are completely unambitious – in fact, if the requirements of the above disclosure frameworks on physical climate were to be followed to the letter, then this would be considerably challenging for most organisations, under current conditions. However, there remain important areas whether further advances are still needed:
- More consistent and granular requirements and guidance on physical climate risk assessments, including scope, boundaries and the definition of physical climate hazards, the climate models, scenarios, timescales and materiality criteria used.
- Clear differentiation between carbon transition and physical climate in disclosures of climate-related opportunities, and better application of taxonomies and definitions for climate resilience opportunities.
- Clear differentiation between carbon transition and physical climate in disclosures on climate-related capital deployment, and clear linkages made between capital deployment for climate resilience and adaptation finance tracking.
The absence of any mention of impact metrics in any these frameworks also needs to be addressed. These are needed for expressing how physical climate risks are managed and how climate resilience is advanced, and are also necessary for making adaptation taxonomies fully operational.
Finally, the extent to which any of these disclosure frameworks meaningfully address physical climate will ultimately depend upon the way in which they are applied, monitored and enforced by regulatory or supervisory authorities. If they choose to pay due attention to physical climate in sustainability disclosures, then this could play an important role in helping markets adjust to the reality of a changing climate, and to contribute towards building more climate-resilient economies.