Climate Change Adaptation Plans

Climate Change Adaptation Plans

Industry:
Cement

Service Area:
Climate Change
ESG
Sustainability

Client's Challenge

ALL4 was asked to develop climate change adaptation plans for six of the client’s facilities by reviewing past climatic and meteorological events that had impacted the business, reviewing the potential for an increase in those events in the future due to climate change, and recommending strategies to mitigate or prevent their impact on the facilities in the future. This evaluation included not just direct impacts to the facilities themselves but also supply chain and end-user impacts as well.

ALL4’s Solution

ALL4 performed a thorough review of past severe weather and climate events that impacted the business, either by disrupting operations at the facility itself or by impacting the supply chain, energy supply, end-users, etc. The tasks performed for each plant included:

• A thorough review of past outages to determine whether they were caused by severe weather or climate events, how long the disruption lasted, and the monetary impacts on the business.
• A review of severe weather and climate event frequency and severity in the region of the facility, whether the individual events directly impacted the facility or not.
• Using a scoring system, determined which of 18 different climate/weather events were the highest impact in the past, or were most likely to affect business in the future. Established a score threshold above which that event would be more closely reviewed for the facility.
• Reviewed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models to estimate whether these events are predicted to become more prevalent in the future as the climate continues to warm.
• Developed recommended adaptation and mitigation methods to reduce the impacts of those events in the future. Some of the mitigation efforts included construction of seawalls, hardening of supply roads, updating emergency procedures, etc.

The Results

For each facility, ALL4 developed a comprehensive adaptation plan based on the above tasks including recommended mitigation strategies, the potential timeframe for addressing each strategy, and (where feasible) approximate costs of the effort. The reports also included templates to assist in tracking those efforts by assigning timeframes, responsibilities, and setting milestones. ALL4 is continuing to work with the client in reviewing and modifying these plans based on the recommendations.