Climate Week NYC 2025 broke all records: with more than 1,000 events, it has become one of the world's largest gatherings of CEOs, investors, policymakers, and innovators.

The week has made one thing clear: amid a contested public debate around ESG, climate risk appears to be increasingly finding its way into board meeting agendas. Discussions centred on sustainable finance, disclosure standards and resilient infrastructure.

Overall, the discussion seems to be shifting: it is no longer about setting ambitious goals, but about demonstrating tangible progress – how both decarbonisation and adaptation strategies create measurable business value. At least, that was our impression from the Climate Week NYC sessions. Here are a few observations:

Investors and many companies are aligning climate action with ROI. Three changes were particularly noticeable this year:

• Decarbonization as value creation: Emission reduction plans are now linked to shareholder confidence, credit ratings, and long-term competitiveness.
• Adaptation as asset protection: Companies are integrating resilience into their operations – from weatherproof buildings and cooling systems to advanced forecasting that reduces downtime. For real estate players, this translates into concrete climate adaptation strategies for commercial real estate, ensuring that asset values remain stable in a volatile environment.
• Resilience as a financial strategy: Risk managers view investments in resilience not as additional costs, but as cash flow stabilisers and safeguards for business continuity.

At Risk Management Partners, a unit of Munich Re, we are seeing the same trend: clients want data that can be used to measure the effectiveness of their resilience strategies. Tools such as Location Risk Intelligence help translate climate fluctuations into clear financial metrics so that adaptation measures can be directly compared with other investment options

While Climate Week covered ten topics, from food systems to health, finance and energy dominated the agenda.

• In the financial sector, the pressure to comply with evolving disclosure requirements is growing rapidly. Frameworks such as IFRS S2 or TCFD are shaping expectations, yet global alignment remains a challenge. It appears that banks and insurers are navigating an increasingly complex regulatory landscape that demands detailed, data-based climate risk assessments.
  
  This is where tools like Location Risk Intelligence provide value: by delivering consistent, comparable climate risk data that supports portfolio assessment, resilience KPIs and more efficient reporting workflows.

• In the energy sector, demand is rising rapidly due to AI data centres, the introduction of electric vehicles, and electrification. The question is no longer whether clean energy can be scaled up quickly enough, but how resilient the power grid and infrastructure will be to climate shocks.

Here, too, there is a growing need for credible, comparable climate risk data. Without this data, neither investors nor energy suppliers can make informed decisions about capital allocation. 

Two innovation themes stood out in New York.

• Carbon removal is gaining traction as companies expand their presence. Demand is rising as companies consider carbon capture as a complement to their decarbonization strategies.
• Artificial intelligence is transforming climate and energy systems, from optimizing data centre efficiency to enabling predictive grid management.

At Risk Management Partners, we are also seeing how AI is changing risk modelling itself. By processing vast amounts of climate data, AI-powered analytics are improving portfolio forecasting and stress testing – a development that many risk managers will rely on in the coming years.

The big picture is clear:

• Climate risks are a strategic business issue, not just a sustainability metric.
• Profitability and resilience are converging as investors demand evidence that climate strategies strengthen long-term value.
• Compliance pressure is increasing as IFRS S2 and TCFD reshape reporting requirements globally.

Climate Week NYC 2025 underlined a clear direction: companies that integrate climate-risk insights into their core strategy might be better positioned to navigate uncertainty and strengthen long-term value. Resilience is increasingly viewed not just as risk avoidance, but as a strategic capability.

That’s why risk managers, investors, and companies increasingly need decision-relevant information: not just hazard data, but insights that link physical risks to financial and operational outcomes