Integrating Copernicus Climate Data in the Sustainable Asset Valuation
This project provides governments, investors, and project developers with critical insights into why low-carbon, resource-efficient, and climate-resilient infrastructure offers returns to both capital holders and citizens alike.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and KnowlEdge (KE) are proud to announce that we have contracted with the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), one of the six thematic information services provided by the EU’S Copernicus Earth Observation Programme. Under the contract, we are connecting authoritative data on climate in Europe and the rest of the world to the Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi).
C3S’s mission is to provide authoritative and consistent climate data and stimulate the market for climate services. To this end, C3S, which is operated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), offers the Climate Data Store: a single entry point for continuously updated climate data and products on the past, present, and future, obtained from satellite and in-situ observations and models.
SAVi calculates the costs of environmental, social, and economic risks and externalities and demonstrates how these costs affect the financial performance of infrastructure assets. We built SAVi to prove that unless infrastructure is low-carbon, climate-resilient, and resource-efficient, it will not be financially viable, even in the immediate term. Visit the SAVi website for more details.
Over the last months, IISD and KE integrated authoritative climate data from the Climate Data Store to generate sophisticated SAVi analyses on the costs of climate-related risks and climate-related externalities. Then governments, investors, and project developers have cutting-edge insight into why low-carbon, resource-efficient, and climate-resilient infrastructure bring the most attractive returns to both capital holders and citizens alike.
This project includes four use cases to demonstrate the use of the Copernicus climate data when integrated into the simulation models of SAVi. These cases also show the added value of using the Copernicus Climate Data Store as a single entry point for climate data, helping it to reach new audiences and inform decision making on infrastructure investments worldwide. These use cases are the following infrastructure projects, which are currently in the design phase:
- New and upgraded housing and commercial developments in Johannesburg, South Africa
- Stormwater management upgrades in Johannesburg, South Africa
- The 87-megawatt Kakono hydropower project in the Kagera River, Tanzania
- Support in the implementation of the renewable energy and climate plan of Welkenraedt, Belgium, including nature-based solutions for climate proofing of urban infrastructures.
Infrastructure is at the core of combating climate change and achieving sustainable development-oriented objectives. Concerns also persist over the global infrastructure deficit, which the New Climate Economy forecast in 2014 to be USD 90 trillion. It is therefore critical that we steer capital away from carbon- and resource-intensive assets; otherwise, we will neither achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals nor the targets of the Paris Agreement.
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