Climate risk is now a core business issue. Climate change is reshaping the business landscape, through physical disruptions to assets and operations, accelerating the urgent need to transition to a low-carbon economy. For companies of all sizes, understanding and managing these risks is no longer optional.
Climate change creates severe risks on companies’ assets, sites and business activities both in direct operations and across value chains. These may originate from physical hazards such as floods or droughts, as well as transition pressures that include new regulations, carbon pricing, or shifting market conditions. These risks can significantly affect business viability, while lenders, investors, and regulators are increasingly expecting companies to identify, assess, and disclose them.
Yet for many organisations, knowing where and how to start remains the biggest challenge for many organisations.
To help address this, we publish a practical guidance on conducting climate risk assessments, which looks at the needs and critical steps for both small companies and those with more companies handling complex business models. Our aim is to make the process more accessible, proportionate and focused - whether businesses are running a first screening or refining an already established methodology.
The guidance walks through the full assessment process step by step: from defining the project objective and selecting sites and economic activities, through mapping climate hazards and transition events, to conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis and presenting results. It also addresses how to use assessment findings effectively, embedding them into risk management, resilience planning, transition strategies, and sustainability reporting.
A key principle throughout is proportionality and prioritisation: the guidance is designed to be useful for organisations with straightforward business models and limited resources, as well as for larger companies with complex operations and geographically dispersed assets. The aim is to move beyond a tick-box exercise and help organisations treat climate risk assessment as a genuine strategic tool.
More than a half of the energy consumed in the EU is used to heat and cool homes, offices, shops and other premises. In the context of the EU's efforts to reduce emissions, the decarbonisation of the heating sector is therefore inevitable. But how to achieve a successful transformation of the heating sector in the Czech Republic? We have reviewed examples of community heating plants abroad and outlined solutions applicable in CZ as well.
By the end of July, the European Commission is expected to adopt its first set of sustainability reporting standards (ESRS). The standards will impact 50,000 European companies and thousands international corporate groups. As part of the EU Corporate Sustainability Directive (CSRD) ecosystem, they will require large companies to report information on their sustainability impacts on people and planet as well as their sustainability-related risks and opportunities.
Last Friday, the European Commission published for public consultation a draft Delegated Act on the first set of European Sustainability Reporting Standards. NGOs, civil society groups and investors associations are very concerned with the significant reduction of the ambition compared to EFRAG’s technical advice and urge the Commission to introduce a robust, mandatory and consistent reporting framework and to not allow greenwashing.
