Moody’s ESG Solutions Expands Physical Climate Risk Scores to Sub-Sovereigns

Moody’s ESG Solutions today announced that it is expanding its data coverage of the physical risks posed by climate change with new sub-sovereign climate risk scores. These physical climate risk scores quantify population-weighted exposure to floods, heat stress, hurricanes and typhoons, sea level rise, water stress and wildfires. The scores complement Moody’s existing coverage of physical risk data for locations globally, which includes scores for 200 sovereigns.

“Climate emergencies are already disrupting communities, economies, and supply chains—and they are going to increase in severity and frequency,” says Emilie Mazzacurati, Global Head of Moody’s Climate Solutions in Moody’s ESG Solutions Group. “Mitigating loss requires a forward-looking view on which geographical areas are most exposed to specific hazards. Our new sub-sovereign dataset enables users to better understand the level of climate risk facing their assets and investments based on location, informing proactive risk management and resilience investment.”

Moody’s innovative dataset leverages satellite imagery alongside global models to overlay population and economic information with granular climate data. Banks, asset managers, asset owners and other organizations can use the scores and underlying data to assess climate risk in specific areas, and create benchmarks for individual property assessments to understand how a specific asset may fare relative to others in the area.

The new sub-sovereign dataset includes United States municipal data at the state, county, urban area, metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, and zip code level; European Union coverage for all three subdivisions of countries, or “Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics” (NUTS 1, 2 and 3); and coverage of global states/provinces as well as administrative areas for 3,300 urban areas around the world.

Among other notable findings, the scores show that 26% of US zip codes are highly exposed to floods and 21% of NUT 3 areas (consisting of smaller regions in Europe) are highly exposed to heat stress, demonstrating the ability of Moody’s data to pinpoint the potential impact of individual climate hazards on specific locations. A recent Moody’s blog post leverages the new scores to explore physical climate risk exposure and mitigation for US semiconductor manufacturers facilities.

To learn more about Moody’s ESG Solutions’ climate risk data, visit: moodys.com/climate-solutions. You can find out more about Moody’s climate efforts on its Climate Hub.