Skip to main content

Missed our webinar on soybean climate resilience? See the recording here:Watch Now

ClimateAi Wins Agri-Investor’s 2021 Global Innovation of the Year

Himanshu Gupta • May 24th, 2022.

climate resilience

With the onset of more frequent extreme weather events, the agricultural industry faces momentous challenges in maintaining food security. Climate planning technology enables agribusinesses to protect their businesses and food supply at large in light of these challenges. The Inaugural Agri-Investor Annual Awards recognize those who make the biggest waves in the industry, pushing the boundaries of agritech and fostering climate resilience.

ClimateAi’s climate planning platform was one of those winners. It uses machine learning, climate models, historical climate data, and in-field satellite imagery to provide detailed insights into future weather patterns and their impacts on crop health. ClimateAi helps farmers make informed decisions about when and what to plant, how much and when to irrigate, and more key choices that build the future of farming.

What is Climate Resilience for Enterprises?

In sectors ranging from real estate development to tourism to fishing, stakeholders are weighing their capacities to anticipate and respond to climate-related obstacles.

Climate resilience refers to the ability to predict, plan for, and react to dangerous climate events and potential trend changes.

Agricultural operations are directly impacted by climate-related changes. Long-term investments and short-term growth decisions are based on weather patterns and trends — meaning climate resilience planning is an integral part of financial sustainability.

The Importance of Climate Planning

Climate planning is an umbrella term relating to measuring the environmental impact of operations, reducing those impacts, plus assessing environmental risks to operations and making changes to prepare for future climate hazards.

Being the main cause of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions are at the top of the list of climate change adaptations. Advanced planning can help farmers reduce greenhouse gas emissions before stricter regulatory caps go into effect.

The Main Functions of Enterprise Climate Planning for Resilience

Aside from the financial benefits, climate mitigation efforts for enterprises have several externalizations. Climate-conscious actions create jobs, improve public health, reduce air pollution, promote equality, and pave the way for a more sustainable future.

Analyzes Future Economic Impact

Putting a number on how much climate change will cost us gets heads turning. People pay attention when they hear how much change has to happen from an economic standpoint. The cost-benefit analysis of climate change adaptation allows analysts to see how future trends will affect business and how that risk can be turned into an advantage.

Prevents Loss of Investment

In 2018 alone, the United States experienced 14 climate disasters that cost over $1 billion. In 2022 there were 18 separate billion-dollar climate events. This increase isn’t going away any time soon.

In fact, the world’s largest 215 companies expect over $1 trillion in climate impact risks, with many likely to hit within the next 5 years, and $2.1 trillion in climate business opportunities.

Climate mitigation is about changing mindsets to turn these challenges into opportunities, and adaptation is about building resiliency to potential hazards.

Establishes Clear Goals and Targets

By conducting a comprehensive analysis of their operations, supply chains, and customer preferences, businesses can establish clear goals for sustainability and climate resilience. Climate planning targets help businesses reduce their carbon footprint, improve their environmental performance, and enhance their reputation among consumers and investors. By aligning their business strategies with the principles of sustainable development, businesses can position themselves for long-term success in a rapidly changing world.

Creates Investment Opportunities

By analyzing potential climate impacts on operations and supply chains, businesses can identify risks like resource scarcity, regulatory changes, and physical disruptions. Climate planning helps enterprises understand the financial implications of climate change and prioritize investments that will help them adapt to new market conditions.

For example, investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable agricultural value chains can reduce costs, improve resilience, and enhance brand reputation. By integrating climate considerations into investment decisions, businesses can also access new markets, technologies, and financing opportunities. In summary, climate planning helps businesses manage risk, seize opportunities, and create long-term value for their stakeholders.

Better Risk Reduction Strategies

All of this makes it possible to create strategies that reduce risk and impact before it’s too late.

For example, developers that foresee more intense rainfall events may calculate that new storm-water drainage infrastructure is necessary before the next rainy season to prevent flooding in their neighborhoods.

Growers can use climate planning to predict severe dry seasons and install new irrigation systems to avoid damage to crops and lowered yields.

Prevent Disruption to the Supply Chains

As we saw during the 2020 pandemic, global supply chains are sensitive to regional disruptions. Proactive measures like supply chain diversification, backup power investments, early warning systems, and contingency plans reduce risk exposure.

By taking these steps, businesses reduce the likelihood of supply chain disruptions and ensure business continuity. Considering the environment and planning accordingly can also create new opportunities for collaboration and innovation with suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders, helping to build more resilient and sustainable supply chains.

Better Risk Assessment

More powerful climate technology means better risk assessments and smarter preparations. The industry-wide goal is to prepare businesses for climate risks that lie ahead and that pose dangerous threats to humans and ecosystems. Risk mitigation, climate change reduction, and lower greenhouse gas emissions are all direct or indirect outcomes of these efforts.

Take Action to Mitigate Hazards Before They Happen

Inaction is costing communities millions in damages. The point of avoiding climate mitigation has passed.

For example, how states are mitigating the danger from wildfires is changing. After numerous Northern California wildfires, its primary utility company, PG&E, filed for bankruptcy in 2019 after hundreds of lawsuits and over $30 billion in liabilities. Their dormancy in the face of a changing climate cost them a significant amount.

Global Innovation of the Year: ClimateAi

Inaugural Agri-Investor Awards Recognize Climate Risk Startup’s Game-Changing Enterprise Climate Planning (ECP) Platform as Agriculture Faces Escalating Climate Risks

San Francisco, CA — May 3, 2022 — ClimateAi, leading supply chain climate risk platform provider, announced today that its Enterprise Climate Planning (ECP) platform was named the winner of Agri-Investor’s 2021 Global Innovation of the Year. This award recognizes the power of ClimateAI’s ECP platform, the only climate planning platform that can assess climate risk on specific business-critical dimensions, reliably forecast extreme weather from two weeks to four decades out, and offer actionable insights across a supply chain or down to a particular asset.

What is Agri-Investor?

Agri Investor is the dedicated source of insight and intelligence for private investment in agribusiness and agriculture globally. It is relevant to institutional investors, asset managers, advisors and operators focusec on agri investment. Agri-Investor’s news coverage delivers fresh reporting on the firms, the people, the deals and the data that are driving these communities and also showcase hand-selected, third-party commentary and research from industry thought leaders. Agri Investor is published by PEI, the only global B2B information group focused exclusively on private equity, private real estate, private debt and infrastructure, which formed in London in November 2001.

What is the award?

The Inaugural Agri-Investor Annual Awards spanned 31 categories, including 11 global brackets including Innovation of the Year, among others such as Institutional Investor of the Year and Deal of the Year. Agri-Investor received hundreds of nominations and hundreds of readers and industry stakeholders voted for the top sector standard-bearers in the months-long process. Agri-Investor is the leading global media and events platform for institutional investors, asset managers, advisors and operators focused on private investments in agribusinesses and agriculture globally. It covers areas including farmland, climate adaptation planning, timberland, agriculture and food technology, food processing, storage, water, and more.

“For the first time, we take this opportunity to recognize the managers, investors and innovators who pushed the boundaries and had an excellent year in their respective fields across the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific,” Agri-Investor wrote in the announcement.

“We’re proud to have developed the best-in-class climate risk platform for stakeholders across the agriculture value chain. This award confirms the need for a product like ours in the market.” —Himanshu Gupta, CEO of ClimateAi.

What is ClimateAi?

ClimateAi helps companies better manage climate risk with actionable intelligence and climate adaptation planning to design and protect global supply chains. Leveraging proprietary AI modeling, ClimateAI delivers unmatched weather and climate predictions and conversion into business impact that set a new industry standard for accuracy, precision and scale. Headquartered in San Francisco, ClimateAi is committed to working with industry leaders to standardize climate risk assessments across supply chains to help businesses adapt and bring climate resilience to our global economy. Learn more at www.climate.ai and follow ClimateAi on Twitter and LinkedIn.

How ClimateAi is Revolutionizing Agriculture

Coming in first in Agri-Investor’s Global Innovation of the Year category, ClimateAi’s ECP platform ranks as the best-in-class new technology for stakeholders across the agricultural value chain. The award shows that a growing focus on climate change mitigation is taking hold across the sector, at a time when it’s much needed. The recent United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report on the Impacts of Global Warming warned that the planet is already seeing the consequences of atmospheric warming of 1 degrees Celsius, with more frequent and severe weather, sea-level rise, Arctic sea ice melt, ocean acidification, land degradation and desertification, among other changes.

These impacts threaten the entire food and agribusiness value chain that depends upon the natural resources and land that are vulnerable to the physical effects of climate change and other stressors. These are critical for food supply, energy, construction materials, ecosystem services, and livelihoods around the world.

Advantages of Using ClimateAi

For agribusinesses to sustain, they must anticipate and prepare for climate risks. ClimateAi’s ECP platform helps them to not only understand but also to adapt to this changing world. Our customers can optimize their supply chain management — from production planning to demand estimation to inventory management — as well as identify new locations for climate-smart expansions on long-term timescales. ClimateAi’s vertical SaaS solutions have helped more than 20 processors, producers, seed companies and agriculture finance leaders mitigate climate risk while substantially improving the profitability and sustainability of their operations with respect to climate change.

Our Enterprise Climate Resilience Solutions

Food + Agriculture

Insights on crop variety and weather forecasting for any timeline: ClimateAi is helping the agriculture industry use changes in climate to its advantage.

Both small-scale farms and the world’s leading growers know that climate change resilience is non-negotiable. With our game-changing technology, they can plan for expected agriculture-specific parameters like Growing Degree Days (GDD) and Chill Hours. For long-term investments, our platform makes it possible to see potential outcomes and perform a cost-benefit analysis for every possibility.

How ClimateAi Helps the Food + Agriculture Industry

Our seasonal insights are 40% more accurate than historical data, and our 10-50 year predictions reduce uncertainty 85% better than the other top models. Farmers who choose us can use the most informed climate change mitigation strategies possible.

Our agriculture risk management tool offers:

  • Improved seed placement
  • More efficient water use
  • Smoother supply chain performance
  • Enhanced yield predictions based on precipitation

Finance

Climate change is now a major factor in the global investing world. Investors are beginning to shy away from projects that won’t hold up to the pressures of climate change or will appear too environmentally irresponsible.

From a financial standpoint, climate change adaptation is not only responsible but attractive to investors. It’s no longer feasible to rely on historical data as a basis for your predictive analysis.

How ClimateAi Helps Company Financials

Growers can now see traditional hazards in a risk-reward format. What was once a looming threat is now a potential opportunity for growth and change. With ClimateAi, farmers can leverage climate change software to invest smarter and save the company money.

The platform helps make agricultural value chains less susceptible to hazards, be they droughts, floods, storms, or heatwaves. Feel confident in your investment choices with the best weather predictor on your side.

Agri-Commodity Solutions

Agricultural commodities are products like crops, animal feed, and livestock. Every growing season, farmers make consequential decisions regarding watering, fertilization, and the timing of things.

Having a climate change plan means preparing for extreme weather events and climate parameters. ClimateAi can forecast weather events and improve decisions during growth, harvest, and pollination seasons.

How ClimateAI Helps with Agri-Commodity Solutions

Agriculture technology service providers like ClimateAi give growers seasonal and distant outlooks to build hearty strategies that hold up against volatile market changes. The platform predicts regional price fluctuations and anticipates supply chain shocks up to 6 months out. With this technology, agribusinesses can limit their exposure to market fluctuations while gaining a leg up on their climate change plan.

Water Risk Management

By 2100, research suggests that U.S. water shortages will lead to an unusual 30-year drought. In the next 25 years, crop shortages are expected to increase by 10%. Critical resources like water and electricity are already strained, becoming more costly and less reliable than we’re comfortable with.

Climate planning tools anticipate water shortages, yet another climate change risk.

How ClimateAi Helps With Managing Water Risk

One of the only location-customizable water risk management tools, ClimateAi offers site-specific stress testing that accounts for local reservoirs, groundwater, and development patterns. Water risk is a climate risk.

Weather-Smart Demand Planning

The weather hugely impacts supply chain operations on both the supply and demand sides. Production and inventory placement are dictated by weather patterns, as is consumer demand by season.

Climate resilience means knowing how to take advantage of demand spikes and avoid transport mishaps due to extreme weather.

ClimateAi Informs With Weather-Smart Demand Metrics

Our weather-smart demand planning platform separates climate influence from past sales data to unbiased and assess how large a role climate plays in operations. Easily customize weather alerts and other climate change adaptation tools that mesh with your team.

Climate Risk Management

The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, or TCFD, is mandatory for some companies. Climate risk tools can evaluate exposure in various areas of a business from supply chain to regulations. This allows managers to de-risk investments and locate specific areas with a higher likelihood of hazards.

How ClimateAi Helps Avoid Climate-Related Risks

Our climate risk management tool will perform a full portfolio analysis of climate change’s risk to business, even pointing out supply chain partners that are most at risk for bottlenecks. You’ll get a unified view of short and long-term exposure and the potential impacts on people, operations, and the environment.

Build Enterprise Climate Resilience with ClimateAi

ClimateAi is revolutionizing modern agriculture with the first and most accurate enterprise climate planning platform. Farmers can now climate-proof their businesses, get in front of risks, and implement a rock-solid climate change strategy.

While climate planning typically makes enterprises more environmentally conscious, it’s also essential for business stability. The path to climate resilience involves analyzing areas of risk exposure, determining the environmental impact of climate change, and establishing smart risk reduction procedures.

Help your company face the heat and let ClimateAi turn your climate risk into an advantage over the competition.

Ready to find out what risk-intelligence can do for your bottom line?

Talk to Us