The rising frequency of extreme physical risk events across the globe has transformed risk adaptation and mitigation from a sustainability consideration into a core economic priority for businesses.
Through a sectoral lens, WBCSD’s Energy Value Chain brings together practical approaches to strengthening physical risk management for the energy system — a critical piece of infrastructure that all businesses depend on.
The challenge
This workstream proposes to address two distinct but related challenges:
From assessment to action: The path from physical risk assessment to concrete action — and on to evaluating the impact of those actions — is often unclear.
Value chain visibility: Even mature physical risk assessments can leave major blind spots around interdependencies, resulting in supply disruptions, downtime, and revenue loss. Reliance on external infrastructure, especially electricity grids, combined with limited availability of local risk data, makes it harder to anticipate and prepare for operational impacts.
The business case
The solution
This workstream aims to collectively explore practical approaches to strengthening physical risk management by energy companies across the globe.
We facilitate a peer exchange on:
- Communicating the potential impact of assessed risks to key internal and external stakeholders, and enhancing its visibility.
- Extending risk visibility beyond one's own operations, with a particular focus on the shared infrastructure that energy companies depend on.
We aim to contribute business insights towards making physical risk management of energy infrastructure more transparent, interoperable and actionable.
