Our Climate as an Infrastructure Asset

The report frames the climate as a critical infrastructure asset, asserting that the economic costs of inaction—comprising direct physical losses, indirect growth reductions, and market uncertainty—are significantly higher than the costs of preventive climate action. It provides specific financial projections for the United States, noting that value-at-risk for all assets could reach $5.2 trillion under a 4.5°C warming scenario and $17 trillion under a 6.0°C scenario. Conversely, it highlights that targeted investments, such as building retrofits and grid upgrades, offer positive financial returns, and a $50/ton carbon tax could generate $180 billion in annual revenue from 2020-2029 while helping avoid trillions in climate-related costs.

• The cost of climate inaction is categorized into direct costs (physical losses from extreme weather), indirect costs (reduced economic growth and asset values), and the cost of uncertainty (market destabilization).
• Direct economic losses from extreme weather are increasing; from 2008 to 2018, these disasters cost an average of $84 billion annually, and the present value of direct costs is projected to reach $112 billion by 2050 and $156 billion by 2090.
• In the United States, the value-at-risk (VaR) for all assets (public and private) is estimated at $5.2 trillion if temperatures increase by 4.5°C from 2015 levels, rising to $17 trillion under a 6.0°C warming scenario.
• Strategic climate investments are presented as financially viable: deep building retrofits could cost $350 billion but yield $1.4 trillion in net value by 2050, and grid upgrades costing $476 billion over twenty years could deliver $2 trillion in benefits.
• A carbon tax of $50/ton is estimated to reduce emissions by 39-46 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and could generate $180 billion in annual revenue between 2020 and 2029.

APA

RMI (2020). Our Climate as an Infrastructure Asset. https://rmi.org/resources/our-climate-as-an-infrastructure-asset/

Chicago

RMI. Our Climate as an Infrastructure Asset. 2020. https://rmi.org/resources/our-climate-as-an-infrastructure-asset/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Our Climate as an Infrastructure Asset |date=16 January 2020 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/our-climate-as-an-infrastructure-asset/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2020our, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Our Climate as an Infrastructure Asset}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2020}, month = jan, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/our-climate-as-an-infrastructure-asset/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }