World energy perspective: The road to resilience - managing and financing extreme weather risks

This report seeks to identify how much additional infrastructure investment will be required to address emerging technical and physical risks in the energy sector. The atuors call for a move from ‘Fail-Safe’ systems that only look at single assets to ‘Safe-Fail’ systems which take a systemic overview of the energy value chain and a more strategic approach to identifying vulnerabilities. This new approach is required for the management and financing of energy infrastructures as companies and governments seek to meet the challenges of increased extreme weather risks.

This publication recommends the following:

• Energy companies and project developers must consider extreme weather in their planning, operation and maintenance, and implement adequate soft/hard resilience measures.
• Regulators must provide regulatory guidance for resilience and market regulation, and must open energy infrastructure to all investors.
• The financial services industry must develop models that fully reflect extreme weather risks and include soft/hard resilience in cost-benefit analysis.
• Insurance companies and banks must create additional risk transfer options for residual risks.
• Long-term and institutional investors must collaborate with other stakeholders to overcome investment barriers.