Pension Funds Tell SEC to Save Climate Rule, Federal Watchdog's FEMA Warning, BNEF Adaptation Tech Investment Analysis, and More

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Public pension funds are pressing the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to preserve its 2024 climate disclosure rule, arguing repeal would raise costs and degrade investment-decision data. 

In response to the agency’s proposal to scrap the rule — passed under the Biden administration in 2024, but yet to be put into effect — CalPERS, the largest US public pension fund with US$637bn under management, told regulators the move would shift the financial burden of understanding corporations’ climate risk exposures onto investors and lead to a fragmented reporting landscape, with some states requiring more disclosure than others. New York City and Maryland’s pension systems joined the opposition, alongside Seattle’s retirement fund, Sweden’s AP7, and Canada’s University Pension Plan Ontario.

Environmental groups also lobbied the SEC to keep the rule. Earthjustice, the Environmental Defense Fund, Clean Air Task Force, and the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote that rescission “would harm American investors”, arguing that climate risk information is “plainly material” to investment decision-making. Moreover, without appropriate disclosures, investors could unknowingly pump up a “climate bubble”, where asset values “do not reflect firms’ exposure and efforts (or lack thereof) to manage such risks.”

On the flipside, a raft of comment letters from business groups and trade associations support ending the disclosure rule. The Business Roundtable — representing more than 200 CEOs at large US companies — favors scrapping the regulation, claiming the costs of reporting would be burdensome and that the benefits of increased transparency are unclear. The US Chamber of Commerce argues that the rule exceeds the Commission’s statutory authority, saying “federal securities laws do not authorize the Commission to impose a sweeping, prescriptive, climate-specific disclosure regime of this kind.” 

The SEC proposed rescinding the rule on May 29, with Chair Paul Atkins calling it regulatory overreach. Comments closed August 3. 

The rule has faced a volatile path — adopted by a 3-2 vote of the Democrat-led Commission in March 2024, it was immediately challenged in court, then abandoned by the SEC itself after the Trump administration took office in 2025. An appeals court ordered the agency to resolve the rule’s status by September.

Wildfires across Europe have caused an estimated US$18-22bn in total damage and economic loss this year, AccuWeather said, with blazes fueled by record heat and drought scorching more than 530,000 hectares in the European Union alone. France and Spain bore the brunt: a Bordeaux-area fire burned 162 square miles and displaced over 224,000 people. The estimate spans property damage, crop and vineyard losses, business interruption, and long-term health costs from smoke exposure. AccuWeather’s forecast shows extreme fire danger persisting across western and central Europe into fall, with elevated risk extending to Scandinavia, Italy, and the Balkans. (Accuweather)

French utility EDF will spend €8.7bn (US$10bn) by 2040 hardening its nuclear, hydropower, and island generating activities against weather extremes, plus €15bn (US$17.3bn) at grid operating subsidiary Enedis, which plans to adapt 15,000km of its network to climate risks each year by 2030. The utility disclosed the figures as part of its half-year results, where it also revealed that in June and July extreme heat forced three reactors offline and cut output at nine more under French environmental rules. These disruptions did not stop EDF from meeting energy demand over this period, however. (Groupe EDF)

EU banks’ climate risk exposures held steady in the second half of 2025, according to the latest ESG risk dashboard from the European Banking Authority (EBA). Banks’ exposures to physical climate risk remained unchanged in most jurisdictions, though country-level shares still range from under 10% to above 55% on average. Austrian banks reported the highest median exposure, at 54% of assets, and Icelandic banks the lowest, at 2%. (European Banking Authority)

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published a dedicated climate adaptation and resilience web page, telling regulated firms how flooding and other physical risks could reshape property values, insurance availability, and mortgage lending decisions. Drawn from FCA engagement with lenders, it highlights how shrinking insurance affordability could constrain future mortgage lending and customer outcomes. (FCA) 

UK home insurers paid £72mn (US$97.3mn) for domestic subsidence claims in the second quarter of 2026, with the average payout hitting a record £20,000 (US$27,000) — up more than 10% from a year earlier, according to the Association of British Insurers’ Property Insurance Tracker. The claims follow England and Wales’ warmest spring on record, with prolonged dry weather increasing ground movement risk. Weather-related damage claims for flooding, storms and burst pipes rose 12% year-on-year to £8,548 (US$11,500). (Association of British Insurers)

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) committed its first-ever loan to South Africa: US$500mn to support climate-resilient urban services across the country’s metro areas. The tranche, part of a US$3bn program led by the South African government, supports an additional US$925mn from the World Bank and US$1.58bn in domestic funding. Proceeds will go toward water conservation, reducing electricity losses, and upgraded waste operations. (AIIB)

The Nature Conservancy is expanding NatureVest, its nature finance arm, adding Jennifer Louie as Managing Director of Nature Finance alongside two senior sovereign debt hires. The unit has deployed over US$4bn across 25-plus countries since 2014. Louie will oversee TNC’s Nature Bonds Program, which has closed six debt-for-nature conversions in Seychelles, Barbados, Belize, Gabon, the Bahamas, and Ecuador. New Director Matthew Newman will lead large-scale sovereign debt deals in emerging markets, while Heather Bateman joins to structure Green Climate Fund investments for climate resilience. (The Nature Conservancy)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is entering the 2026 hurricane season with a depleted, underprepared disaster response workforce, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found. 

More than 4,300 employees separated from the agency in fiscal year 2025, a 55% increase from the prior year, leading to “a loss of institutional knowledge and experienced personnel” and worsening “longstanding workforce challenges”, the federal watchdog wrote.

FEMA also rescinded its latest five-year strategic plan in May 2025 and has yet to issue a replacement, leaving workforce planning rudderless. The GAO — an independent watchdog that publishes non-partisan information for Congress and federal agencies — recommended that lawmakers require future decisions on FEMA’s workforce to be grounded in formal analysis, and for the agency to report on workforce planning before each hurricane season. 

The report landed the same week that Cameron Hamilton took the helm as FEMA Administrator, having been confirmed by the Senate on Friday. Hamilton — a former Navy SEAL and the organization’s onetime acting chief — was ejected from the agency last year after publicly opposing the administration’s push to abolish it, saying “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate FEMA.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot block US$20bn of climate mitigation and resilience grants disbursed through the Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a federal appeals court ruled last Tuesday — frustrating the Trump administration’s year-long effort to claw back funds from a program it claimed to be rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. The DC Circuit’s 10-judge panel upheld a lower court injunction against the EPA’s attempt to stop eight non-profits from accessing the grants, which were earmarked for a wide range of decarbonization and climate resilience initiatives, including infrastructure upgrades to harden communities against extreme weather and natural disasters. The EPA has until Tuesday to appeal to the Supreme Court. (New York Times)

Brussels will press European Union governments to boost nature investments to head off wildfire risks, environment commissioner Jessika Roswall told Reuters in the wake of runaway blazes in France, Spain, and Greece. Roswall called the investment need “really urgent” across all 27 member states, with climate change pushing wildfire risk further north into countries like Finland and Sweden. The European Commission will track how governments spend EU funds on prevention and ensure national plans for complying with the bloc’s nature restoration law consider wildfire prevention. The Commission has proposed devoting 35% of its next budget to climate and environment. (Reuters)

Hungary began restarting a second turbine at its Paks nuclear plant on Monday after water levels in the Danube River rose above a recent record low caused by extreme heat and drought conditions. The dry-up robbed Paks of water for cooling, forcing it to curb output to just 10% of its full capacity. The plant supplies nearly half the country’s electricity. Prime Minister Peter Magyar called the rising water levels temporary and said the government is reviewing cooling-water dependency in the planned Paks 2 expansion. (Reuters)

UK Green leader Zack Polanski called for higher taxes on oil and gas profits to fund wildfire prevention and climate adaptation in the wake of record-breaking temperatures this summer and a blaze that scorched 150 hectares in the county of Suffolk. At the press event last Wednesday, Polanski also urged the government to spend on household heatproofing subsidies and free cooling spaces in every local area. (Green Party)

China will relocate 50,000 households from landslide-prone areas under a five-year climate resilience plan running through 2030, the Ministry of Natural Resources announced last Tuesday. Engineering works will target more than 4,200 sites prone to “geological disasters” and address safety risks at over 6,100 others. The plan also orders research into disaster dynamics driven by whipsawing weather conditions. Beijing will also build a national geological hazard information platform using big data and large AI models, linking national and provincial monitoring. China had identified nearly 280,000 hazard sites by end-2025, threatening more than 11 million people. (Xinhua) 

India added heatwaves and lightning to its official list of natural disasters eligible for relief under the State and National Disaster Response Funds, Union Minister Nityanand Rai told Parliament on August 4. This implements a recommendation of the 16th Finance Commission, which cited rising extreme weather frequency tied to climate change. Funds can cover response and recovery to eligible natural disasters, though long-term adaptation and resilience measures have to be paid out of separate financing. (Mongabay)

A ‘Super’ El Niño could push at least 49 million more people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027, according to World Food Programme (WFP) modeling across 45 vulnerable countries. Hungry populations in these countries would climb roughly 22%, to 274 million. Central America faces the largest proportional rise at 83%, while east and southern Africa account for more than 18 million additional people. The WFP has triggered anticipatory action plans in six countries since May, spending US$14mn to reach half a million people, and maintains such plans in over 50 countries. (UN World Food Programme)

Physical climate risk alone rarely makes adaptation technology investable, according to a new BloombergNEF (BNEF) report, with economic considerations more often driving investment. 

The analysis centers on three case studies covering microgrids, renewables, and air conditioning, unpacking the extent to which capital flows to these technologies in response to escalating climate hazards versus traditional market signals. While BNEF finds that climate change creates new demand, “investable growth depends on unlocking the means to adopt new technologies.” 

For example, when it comes to air conditioning, rising incomes have a stronger influence on market growth than rising temperatures. Vietnam’s AC penetration hit 40%, from near zero in 2000, as wages rose. Policy changes also matter. Mitsubishi Electric is expanding its production base in Turkey less in response to rising heat stress in the region, and more to take advantage of increased demand from Europe’s decarbonization policies.

In the case of microgrids, BNEF found that in California, installations jump after large wildfires. But the CEO of microgrid developer BoxPower, Angelo Campus, told BNEF that while resilience is a driver “it’s rarely what closes the deal.” Utilities instead turn to microgrids because they defer costly grid upgrades. In addition, the AI buildout has utilities scrambling to expand access to power — which microgrids can do at speed.

“Adaptation markets are indeed growing, but they’re not growing proportionally to the rise in climate hazards just yet,” Danya Liu, Climate Adaptation Specialist at BNEF, told Climate Proof. “This report pushes back on the intuition that growth of adaptation markets is pegged to rise in physical risks. They are of course linked, but often in complex and indirect ways,” she added.

Weather intelligence company WindBorne Systems raised a US$37mn Series B round to enhance its network of autonomous sensing balloons and AI forecasting platform, WeatherMesh. The start-up now flies more than 600 devices around the world, with the data collected flowing into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Forecast System. The company counts trading firms among its early adopters, though government demand is accelerating too. The fundraise was co-led by Khosla Ventures and Galvanize, with participation from TransLink Capital, Lux Capital, and existing investors. (WindBorne Systems)

San Francisco-based ClimateAi has shut down after eight years, joining a growing list of adaptation software failures. CEO Himanshu Gupta cited “geopolitical and climate headwinds” in a LinkedIn post confirming the closure, which a former employee said took effect on July 31. The company raised roughly US$38mn, including a US$22mn Series B in 2023 backed by Four Rivers Group and Neotribe Ventures, among others. Its predictive analytics served agriculture and finance clients including Dole and Nuveen Natural Capital. (Climate Proof)

Buzz Solutions, the AI-powered grid intelligence start-up, has closed a US$20mn Series A, led by S3 Ventures with GoPoint Ventures, HearstLab and Blackhorn Ventures also participating. The Palo Alto start-up’s PowerAI platform translates inspection imagery into decision-useful information, and is helping utilities including Dominion Energy, American Electric Power and the New York Power Authority prioritize maintenance across transmission, distribution and substation assets. (Buzz Solutions)

Ranchbot, an agtech platform for monitoring the water use of livestock, raised over US$15mn in Series B funding led by Lewis & Clark Partners and Fulcrum Global Capital. The company’s IoT and satellite-connected sensors track water infrastructure for over 12,000 customers managing roughly 10 million cattle and 15 million sheep. As part of the investment, Ranchbot has established a new Delaware-based holdco to complete its transition from an Australia-based outfit to a global ranch technology company. (Ranchbot)

Adaptation-focused agtech Mitti Labs closed a US$9.5mn Series A led by Saudi oil giant Aramco Ventures. The India-based start-up creates “digital twins” of rice fields using satellite imagery and on-the-ground measurements, which unlock insights on improving irrigation and reducing climate-harming methane emissions. The company says its programs have saved 500 billion liters of water to date. Backers besides Aramco include Lightspeed India, Godrej Industries, and the Cisco Foundation. The proceeds will fuel expansion in India and greenfield projects in the Philippines and Indonesia. (Mitti Labs) 

Global vulnerability assessment of mobile telecommunications infrastructure to climate hazards using crowdsourced open data (Nature Communications)

AI-boosted rare event sampling to characterize extreme weather (Physical Review Letters)

Climate change means extreme fire seasons in Canada are here to stay (World Weather Attribution)

How does climate risk shock affect corporate carbon performance? (Humanities and Social Sciences Communications / Nature)

Public perceptions of extreme heat: A review (Environmental Science & Policy)

Assessing the integration of older adults’ vulnerability in climate adaptation policies in a developing country (Climate and Development)

The impacts of concurrent heatwaves and droughts on global wheat production and trade (Environmental Research Letters)

Rapid increase in tropical humid heat stress and its predictability in a warming world (JGR Atmospheres)

Socioeconomic and demographic vulnerabilities as primary determinants of heat-related mortality in the US (Environmental Research Climate)

Thanks for reading!

Louie Woodall
Editor