home
news

How to Start Your Climate Risk Assessment: A Practical Guide for Companies

share this article

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.

What the guidance covers:

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.

The guidance is designed for:

  • Sustainability officers, ESG managers, and other professionals responsible for delivering climate risk assessments
  • Decision-makers who rely on climate risk information to inform strategy, including department directors and board members
  • Organisations at any stage of the assessment process - from first iteration to advanced quantitative analysis
Download the guidance

We are currently gathering feedback from companies, financial market actors and other experts. The guide is therefore subject to targeted improvements and updates based on input received. If you would like to contribute to the consultation, you can use this public form or contact david.nemecek@frankbold.org.
    (
)

You may also like these news

Mining in Turów: Seven demands for an agreement with Poland to protect the Czech communities

The Frank Bold Society and the Neighbourhood Association Uhelná called on the Czech government today to be more consistent in its negotiations with Poland over mining at the Turów brown coal mine. According to both organisations, the government did not have enough information or time to prepare an agreement that would truly protect Czech interests. Moreover, the government has acted in a non-transparent manner by failing to inform the public in advance of the terms of the agreement being prepared, which should lead to the withdrawal of the action against Poland at the EU Court of Justice. The organisations have therefore drawn up a document with seven basic demands on which the Czech side should insist.

Frank Bold points out non-transparent handling of ETS revenues and potential violation of EU law

The European Commission recently introduced a draft of the revised EU ETS Directive which, among other things, proposes that 100 % of ETS revenues should be used for environmental measures. We welcome this idea but we’re also sceptical about how the ETS revenues are used in the Czech Republic. Therefore, we have prepared an analysis mapping the use of ETS revenues in Czech Republic and sent it to the European Commission as an input for the recent public consultation. The main conclusions are presented below.

What data shall companies and investors report on sustainability? Guideline for upcoming EU legislations requirements

We have analysed hundreds of pages of technical documents and prepared a comprehensive overview of the sustainability reporting requirements under the forthcoming EU legislation. We summarise what ESG data will be critical for companies, banks, and investors in sustainability strategy and management and in the areas of climate change, environment, sustainable activities, employees and supply chains, due diligence, and anti-corruption measures.