Revamped Finance Alliance Highlights Resilience, EU Climate Risk Framework Feedback, Neural Earth Closes Seed Round, and More

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Data centers are fast becoming Americans’ most disliked neighbors. These gargantuan structures are seen as essential for powering the country’s AI boom, and hyperscalers are promising hundreds of billions to put spades in the ground and get servers humming (though the degree to which these pledges translate into new assets remains to be seen).

But recent polling shows that fewer and fewer regular Joes and Janes want these vanguards of the new economy in their backyards. A new survey by Heatmap finds that 51% of respondents either somewhat or strongly oppose a data center being built near where they live, up from 42% in September 2025. And people aren’t just griping to pollsters about the buildout, either. Heatmap has also reported that 25 data centers were blocked after community pushback last year — four times as many as in 2024.

What’s driving data center antagonism varies from place to place. Concerns about what these energy-sucking goliaths could do to electricity prices for ordinary families are front of mind, for sure. But it’s also true that now and in the future, unscrupulous data center construction could undermine local climate resilience. After all, each of these typically massive buildings consume land and water at a prodigious rate, and may contribute to the erosion of natural ecosystems. Taken together, these resource demands could leave communities more vulnerable to extreme weather threats and slower moving climatic changes.

Data center owners are aware of their own exposures, here. For example, in its most recent annual filing, Equinix — the world’s largest data center operator — talked about enhancing its green finance program to incorporate projects “that advance decarbonization, resource efficiency, and climate resilience.” This is for their benefit as much as anyone else’s, since if data center builders do not address community concerns, their social licenses to operate could evaporate. Small wonder that one of the few booming areas of climate tech is focused on optimizing data centers’ resource consumption.

But there’s another way these builders could win their would-be neighbors to their side — by proactively investing in local climate resilience before (or at the same time as) submitting their construction plans. Put simply, an Equinix, Google, Meta, or similar could ‘buy’ themselves into a community’s good graces by bankrolling local solutions for heading off potential climate-related impacts — especially the kinds their projects might intensify, such as drought pressure or grid instability.

Right now, data center leaders don’t seem particularly worried about rising local opposition to their expansion plans. Perhaps because, while growing, the pushback has been small so far. Sure, 25 data centers were scrapped last year — but that’s a rounding error next to the nearly 3,000 facilities planned or already under construction.

Still, with public opinion souring on the industry, it’d surely be better for the tech giants to generate some goodwill now — by engaging directly with communities on climate resilience and putting some of their financial heft behind real solutions.

Louie Woodall
Editor, Climate Proof

The Net Zero Asset Managers initiative relaunched last Wednesday with more than 250 signatories backing an updated Commitment Statement, which includes a pledge on supporting climate-resilient investment.

The embattled climate finance alliance returns after a six-month strategic review — and the loss of a number of major US backers including BlackRock, Vanguard, and JP Morgan Asset Management.

The pared-down alliance reduces members’ commitment actions from ten to seven and explicitly broadens its scope beyond portfolio decarbonization. Transition investing, climate solutions, and adaptation and resilience are now named investment frameworks within the commitment.

Notably, the second of the seven commitment actions directly names climate-resilient investments alongside transition finance as a way in which managers can support client climate goals. “[T]he new statement reflects the evolution of climate investing from an original focus on decarbonizing portfolios, towards a broader set of approaches…[including] adaptation and resilience. This recognizes that these frameworks have complementary strengths across different asset classes, investment styles, and client objectives, supporting a more sophisticated mix of climate investment integration,” said Dan Grandage, Chief Sustainable Investment Officer at Aberdeen Investments, one of the signatories.

Other signatories include European players Amundi, Nordea Asset Management, and Storebrand, who framed their recommitment as essential to meeting their fiduciary obligations to clients.

UK pension funds are beginning to price natural capital like a core portfolio allocation, according to new research from Pensions for Purpose. A majority are targeting 8%-10% internal rates of return for these commitments, with some seeking up to 20% in emerging markets. Forestry and sustainable agriculture are prominent among current allocations, with these being pitched as inflation hedges with low correlation to equities and bonds. (Pensions for Purpose)

Property insurer FM has published its 2026 Resilience Index, which shows how countries that better manage fire risk, water stress, and climate exposure are becoming more attractive business environments. Europe claimed nine of the top 10 spots, with Denmark retaining the crown for a third straight year. The annual ranking of 130 countries draws on property-loss data and measures including climate risk exposure, climate risk quality. and fire risk controls. FM claims locations in the top 50 recover more than 30% faster from property losses than lower-ranked peers. The US placed outside the top 10, reflecting mixed performance on physical and macro risk factors. (FM Group)

WWF launched the Nectar Fund last Tuesday to support early-stage climate-adaptation enterprises in Africa and make them more attractive to private capital. The new fund, backed by a three-year NOK 60mn (US6.2mn) commitment from Norway’s Norad and development finance institution Norfund, will stand up at least 14 businesses in Kenya, Tanzania, and Madagascar in its initial phase, with Norfund providing deal-selection expertise and pipeline sharing. (WWF)

Mars Inc. will deploy US$85mn in philanthropic capital through 2027 under a newly launched Mars Impact Fund, starting with a US$3mn, three-year grant to scale financial inclusion and climate resilience programs in Indonesia’s cocoa-growing regions. The funding, granted to Save the Children, will expand 85 Village Savings and Loan Associations reaching 17,250 farmers and support disaster preparedness planning and climate-smart agriculture. (Mars Inc)

Europe’s insurance and risk management have opposing visions for closing the climate-related insurance protection gap that a new European Commission initiative is looking to tackle.

The Commission’s public consultation on its promised climate resilience and risk management framework closed last Monday, having received responses from dozens of individuals, trade groups, and companies. One contributor was FERMA, which represents corporate risk managers across Europe. Its response calls for a European public-private reinsurance mechanism “to pool risks, stabilise capacity, and operate as a last-resort safety net”.

This is contrary to the position of Insurance Europe, the industry's main trade body, which questioned in its own contribution whether a centralized EU pool would deliver benefits beyond what national schemes and private markets already provide. “[E]xperience and analysis suggest that such a system would not, on its own, address the underlying challenges posed by accelerating climate change,” the group wrote.

The divide reflects a broader tension in EU climate finance policy between harmonized pooling and subsidiarity. FERMA wants risk, data, and incentives aligned at the EU level, arguing that natural catastrophe risk is systemic and cannot be absorbed by individual companies or national markets acting alone. Insurance Europe agreed on the diagnosis, but argued adaptation strategies should be tailored to national and regional conditions — and emphasized a “prevention first” approach.

The Commission intends to publish its framework in Q4 2026.

The US Supreme Court said it would hear arguments from oil giants Exxon Mobil and Suncor as they seek to block a Colorado climate damages suit from proceeding in state court. The case could influence roughly three dozen similar lawsuits nationwide aimed at recovering mounting climate risk and adaptation costs from fossil fuel producers. (New York Times)

Another federal appeals court is taking on the Trump administration’s cancellation of US$20bn in green bank grants, with a 10-judge en banc hearing replacing the three-judge panel that ruled last September the case belonged in a different court. The grants — awarded to eight non-profits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s US$27bn Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund — have been frozen for over a year, gutting the organizations meant to deploy them. (New York Times)

The US House unanimously passed the ACERO Act, directing NASA resources towards modernizing aerial wildfire coordination. Current federal and state agencies rely on fragmented communication systems that hamstring multi-agency aerial response — this bill mandates improved real-time data sharing and airspace management standards. The legislation requires annual progress reports to Congress through 2030 and bars NASA from procuring drones from foreign adversaries. It now heads to the Senate. (Congressman Vince Fong)

The European Council agreed to roll back two landmark sustainability directives as part of its Omnibus I simplification package. The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), intended to scrub companies’ supply chains of environmental harmful activities, now applies only to companies exceeding 5,000 employees and €1.5bn (US$1.8bn) in annual turnover, up from 500 employees, removing an estimated 85% of previously covered firms from scope. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which details climate mitigation and adaptation disclosure requirements for firms, has seen its threshold rises to 1,000 employees and €450mn (US$530mn) turnover, curbing the the amount of company and supply-chain sustainability data that investors and risk managers had come to rely on. Maximum penalties are capped at 3% of global net turnover, enforced at member-state level after the EU harmonized liability regime was also dropped. The compliance deadline shifts to July 2029. (European Council)

The UK government has finalized its Sustainability Reporting Standards for companies and financial institutions, adapted from global requirements laid down by International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). Though endorsed for voluntary use, the government has made plain there is a route for mandatory disclosure via financial and corporate regulators. (UK Government)

Australia’s insurers are lobbying for the creation of a A$30bn (US$21.3bn), decade-long flood defense fund by state and federal governments to protect climate-vulnerable communities. The Insurance Council of Australia said extreme weather has generated roughly A$28bn (US$20bn) in economic costs since 2022, with floods alone accounting for A$12.9bn (US$9.2bn) in insured claims. The proposed fund would finance large-scale flood defenses, home retrofits, and buybacks in high-risk areas, plus the completion of a national hazard baseline to inform land-use planning and capital allocation. (Insurance Council of Australia)

Climate scientists are calling for the first internationally mandated global climate risk assessment, arguing that existing scientific assessments leave policymakers without the severity and probability framing needed to spur adaptation action. Writing in Nature, the researchers say such an assessment should be characterized by the careful evaluation of worst-case climate scenarios, the leveraging of multiple expert disciplines, and high-level institutional backing — for example through a UN secretary-general-appointed climate risk advisory council or a coalition led by bodies such as the World Meteorological Organization. (Nature)

Neural Earth has closed a US$9mn-plus seed round to scale its AI-powered geospatial risk platform for property and casualty insurers and institutional real estate firms.

While the company did not name its investors, it said backers include executives from insurance carriers, real estate investment firms, and technology companies. Proceeds will fund go-to-market expansion into reinsurance and real estate investment trusts and more in-depth model development for property-level climate risk and extreme weather signals.

Neural Earth’s platform unifies satellite imagery, environmental sensor data, and proprietary datasets to generate risk scores across flood, wind, wildfire, and other climate perils. It also utilizes natural language querying, allowing users to ask questions of complex geospatial datasets, reducing the technical burden that has typically limited adoption of these tools at the portfolio level.

Google.org is deploying US$30mn in grants to accelerate AI-driven research in climate resilience and health sciences for non-profits, social enterprises, and academic institutions. The open-call program is accepting applications through April 17, and pairs funding with six months of pro bono technical support from Google engineers and access to Google Cloud infrastructure. (Google.org)

Norway's NMBU has launched ClimateDataForBuildings, a free, open platform delivering climate and energy insights for more than 3,600 European locations. Engineers, planners, and policymakers can leverage these inputs for building energy simulations at continental scale for the first time. Built on high-resolution CERRA reanalysis data, the platform offers both a 30-year baseline and a 15-year recent baseline, allowing users to quantify how shifting conditions affect design assumptions. (NMBU)

Australia’s Monash University and India’s National Institute for Plant Genome Research are jointly funding AI-driven efforts to engineer heat-tolerant rice varieties, sharing a A$3.8mn (US$2.7mn) through the Australia India Strategic Research Fund. The project uses CRISPR-based genome editing guided by AI to identify temperature-responsive plant proteins and make targeted genetic modifications — an approach researchers say is more precise than existing crop modification techniques. (Monash University)

A coalition of scientific, policy, and civil society organizations — including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the American Geophysical Union, and India's Council on Energy, Environment and Water — have announced the Solar Geoengineering Research Governance Platform, a voluntary framework designed to impress transparency and accountability standards on solar radiation management research. The Platform is slated to formally launch in July this year. (NRDC)

Opportunity windows accelerate action and expand options for climate adaptation in Europe (Communications Earth & Environment)

Increasing synchronicity of global extreme fire weather (Science Advances)

Unlocking capital for climate adaptation: How financing costs exacerbate needs, and ways to address them in EMDEs (I4CE)

An Artificial Intelligence approach for coastal structures adaptation to climate change: Insights from a case study in the Mediterranean Sea (Journal of Marine Science and Engineering) 

Modeled and observed stratospheric temperature changes: Implications for fingerprint studies (AGU Advances)

Optimal choice of proxy for cloud condensation nuclei reduces uncertainty in aerosol-cloud-climate forcing (Science Advances)

Rising air-conditioning use intensifies global warming (Nature Communications)

Thanks for reading!

Louie Woodall
Editor