Climate
Climate analysis of impact assessments, infrastructure resilience, carbon footprint and climate finance mechanisms applied to infrastructure projects.
Long reads
GHG emissions from tropical reservoirs: state of the science and G-res tool
A water reservoir is not climate-neutral. In tropical zones, submerged organic matter decomposes and releases methane. The question is no longer whether a reservoir emits, but how much, and how to demonstrate it to lenders increasingly attentive to the carbon footprint of hydroelectric projects.
Paris Alignment of DFIs: What the Developer Must Demonstrate
Lenders have committed to aligning their financing with the Paris Agreement. In practical terms, this commitment applies to each project under appraisal. The developer no longer faces a simple tick-box exercise. They must demonstrate, with supporting evidence, that their project is compatible with a low-carbon trajectory and resilient to climate change.
GHG assessment of an infrastructure project: boundaries, emission factors and reporting thresholds
Calculating a carbon footprint is one thing. Producing a GHG assessment that holds up under DFI review is another. Between the two lie a reporting threshold, boundaries to define and a construction phase where almost nothing is yet measured.
Physical climate risk analysis of a hydropower project
A dam is sized on decades of past hydrology. It will produce under a future climate that no longer resembles this archive. Between the two lies a gap that lenders now want to see quantified, tested and documented.
Green bonds and infrastructure: criteria, opportunities and limitations
Green bonds have structured a market worth several hundred billion dollars in a decade. They offer infrastructure issuers access to a broader investor base, sometimes at a favourable cost. Their credibility rests on a few transparency rules, regularly put to the test.
Biodiversity and climate: why the two agendas must converge in your impact assessments
Biodiversity and climate have been treated separately for thirty years. Two distinct international conventions, two teams of experts, two ESIA chapters. Reality is more integrated. Projects that maintain this compartmentalisation miss major opportunities and risks.
EU Taxonomy and project finance: what European DFIs expect
The EU Taxonomy was born of a regulatory intention: to harmonise what is called sustainable, to prevent everything and nothing from being so. For a project sponsor mobilising European financing, it has ceased to be a theoretical subject. It increasingly determines eligibility and access conditions directly.
Climate Resilience of Infrastructure: From Vulnerability to Adaptation
Infrastructure designed to 1990s standards can become hazardous by 2050 without anyone having made a mistake. The climate conditions it was dimensioned for will no longer be those it will face. Climate resilience translates this anticipation into design decisions.
Calculating the carbon footprint of an infrastructure project: scope 1, 2 and 3
The carbon footprint of an infrastructure project is not limited to construction equipment and electricity consumed. Scope 3, long neglected, is often the heaviest: cement production, steel manufacturing, material transport, end-of-life. A rigorous methodology changes the verdict.
Integrating climate analysis into an impact assessment: why and how
Climate analysis is no longer an optional annex to an ESIA. In a few years, it has become a component required by the main DFIs, structured around two distinct areas: the greenhouse gas emissions that a project generates, and the vulnerability it presents to future climate impacts.