Rémy Estran-Fraioli, CEO of Scientific Climate Ratings (SCR), an EDHEC venture, participated in a high-level panel at the OECD Infrastructure Forum in Paris on 24 April, where he presented the agency’s cutting-edge methodology assessing the financial impact of climate exposure in infrastructure projects. 

Estran-Fraioli introduced a novel methodology developed by EDHEC Climate Institute, which assesses the financial materiality of climate risk, in the session titled “Accelerating Resilient Infrastructure”:

1. Quantifying Financial Exposure: Using a net asset value (NAV) model , infrastructure cash flows are projected and discounted without climate risks, then recalculated by integrating both macroeconomic scenarios (like GDP or inflation from NGFS or Oxford Economics) and highly granular, asset-specific physical risk data, such as flood exposure based on 10-meter precision hazard maps. The result is a comparative risk profile that helps determine climate vulnerability.
2. Evaluating the Benefits of Resilience Strategies: EDHEC’s ClimateTech database catalogues decarbonisation and resilience strategies across infrastructure subclasses, detailing both their costs (as a share of total assets) and their effectiveness (measured as reductions in potential damages). This empowers investors and policymakers to make informed decisions that maximise impact and minimize long-term losses.

The SCR CEO emphasised that such analysis is essential to prioritising investments where they deliver the greatest benefit, particularly for vulnerable populations and communities.

“Stakeholders can now critically evaluate the cost of inaction versus the cost and effectiveness of resilience strategies—and allocate investments where they can have the greatest impact on people”, he said.

The session brought together international experts to explore strategies for embedding climate resilience into infrastructure investment.

Rémy Estran-Fraioli was joined on the panel by George Karagiannis from the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI); Takahiro Konami from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism; Francisco Lozano Gamba of Colombia’s Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional; and Régis Thépot from the Association Française de Prévention des Catastrophes Naturelles et Technologiques (AFPCNT). The session was moderated by Robert Addison of the OECD Public Governance Directorate.

For more information on the conference, visit the OECD Infrastructure Forum website