Resource Database

This report explores issues for the UK water sector and those listed companies providing drinking water and waste water (sewerage, sewerage treatment and industrial trade effluent treatment) services. This is part of a series of 4 sector reports.

This paper examines five methods that can be adopted when making decisions concerning long-lived investments and accounting for the impacts of climate change. The five methods are examined: (i) selecting “no-regret” strategies that yield benefits even in absence of climate change; (ii) favoring reversible and flexible options; (iii) buying “safety margins” in new investments; (iv) promoting soft adaptation strategies, including long-term prospective; and (v) reducing decision time horizons.

This essay reviews the estimates of the total economic effects of climate change, then focuses on marginal cost estimates which are especially important for economists thinking about policy design.

This study provides an overview and evaluation methods of futures research and scenario analysis methods in particular in order to identify how these methods might be applied to research and policy advising in the policy development arena.

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that a move to a low carbon economy could be revolutionary for a number of mainstream industry sectors and therefore should be carefully managed. It sets out to quantify the level of opportunity and risk available to companies in different sectors depending on their situation and level of preparedness.

This working paper provides some overviews on the roles of climate scenarios in adaptation planning and what should be considered in using and generating climate scenarios, in a frequently ask questions style. Specifically, this paper tries to answer questions commonly addressed by non-climatologists when they want to address climate scenario in adaptation plans. It covers topics on the need of climate scenarios for adaptation, types of climate data or information we need, different types of climate scenarios, emission scenarios, choosing general circulation model (GCM), how to modify the spatial and temporal resolution of climate data, how to deal with uncertainties, and the progress of the climate models in assessing extreme events. The paper also provides additional information regarding tools and sources of data in relation to climate scenario.

This paper measures the economic impact of climate change on US agricultural land by estimating the effect of random year-to-year variation in temperature and precipitation on agricultural profits

This paper is a review of the literature on materiality in accounting. It examines the context in which materiality is relevant, and the problems arising from applying the concept in practice.

This paper presents a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of climate change on agro-ecosystems over this century, up to 2080 and at a global level. An integrated ecological–economic modelling framework is used - encompassing climate scenarios, agro-ecological zoning information, socio-economic drivers, as well as world food trade dynamics.

The report argues that scenarios represent heuristic tools that encourage social learning in climate impact assessment. The advantages and disadvantages of a scenario-based approach are explored using examples from regional climate impact assessment in the UK.

The need to factor climate risk into portfolio management is clear – the outstanding challenge is “how?” Unfortunately, there is no standardized guidance regarding means to include physical climate risk into institutional portfolio management.

In response, this paper presents Climate Risk Matrices as a practical tool for institutional investors to integrate physical climate risk into portfolio management. In brief, a Climate Risk Matrix identifies the top 1-2 means by which extreme weather events (e.g., flood, fire, extremeheat, etc.) may negatively impact a specific industry sector, while identifying actions that a company within that sector could be expected to take to mitigate these risks.