How consultancies can use climate intelligence to gain a competitive advantage

Climate risk is business risk. Consultancies that offer sustainability services can help clients build climate resilience as the world transitions to a low-carbon economy. Through creating new sustainability strategies, mandatory reporting, and also, having on-demand access to science-backed, decision-useful climate intelligence (CI), they guide clients through their climate risk landscape.

The environmental services industry has a key aim for its clients: to help firms ensure that their physical assets are more climate resilient than before. Thus, allowing their clients’ businesses to remain hardy and robust.

Consultants need to ensure that their clients act on the changing climate immediately, by screening for climate risks and having solid sustainability strategies in place. The consultancies that blend a summary of climate risks and opportunities into their overall services will deepen their relationship with clients – developing a competitive advantage by helping companies to become more climate-resilient in the face of climate change.

Organizations are already being impacted by climate change: their physical assets, supply chains, and utilities, in particular. Cervest’s Climate Intelligence Outlook reports nine out of 10 US- and UK-based firms say that at least one physical asset has already been affected by extreme weather.

Climate shocks such as heatwaves and floods, and stresses like rising average temperatures or sea levels, are forecast to become more frequent and severe. Companies that don’t act now, adapt, and build resilience into their portfolios and supply chains will suffer the consequences, a drought may force a water-intensive factory factor to pause operations; a typhoon could close a port and hold up components; and flooding could spoil a warehouse’s entire inventory. This climate disruption will impact their bottom line.

Consultancies with environmental services must help organizations to educate their teams to have a comprehensive understanding of climate risk – for the present day and the long-term. For regular business duties such as asset, portfolio, supply chain management, and ESG reporting, this knowledge is essential.

As climate change continues, integrating climate intelligence into future sustainability strategies helps to safeguard companies against physical risks, non-compliance penalties, and loss of business. Climate insights are crucial for resilience planning – companies can tap into the intelligence provided to make the best decisions on investments and divestments.

Climate intelligence (CI) is the superpower that consultancies need when they are offering environmental services. It can help to transform a client’s climate adaptation plans. And consultancies that offer sustainability solutions such as climate risk screening and assessments will deepen their alliances with their clients.

Accessible through EarthScan™, Cervest’s CI product, these climate risk insights give consultants a competitive edge – they offer a comprehensive view of climate risk across an organization – screening clients’ physical assets, portfolios, and supply chains, across multiple timeframes, climate hazards, and emissions scenarios. Cervest CI is made possible by pioneering technology, cutting-edge machine learning techniques, and advances in climate science. Grounded in irrefutable science, it offers both robust analysis and decision-useful insights into the climate hazards that assets (and businesses) are likely to be impacted by.

With this climate risk knowledge, clients can gain a single source of truth. They can create and implement effective mitigation and adaptation strategies to protect their global physical assets and supply chains – and the consultants that provide these insights can form long-lasting client relationships.

Learn how you can add climate intelligence to your offering by downloading our free ebook, Giving your environmental services a competitive advantage using climate intelligence.