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Companies are reshaping operations to cope with a changing climate
ECONOMY
Companies are reshaping operations to cope with a changing climate
Changes are slow; some see profits to be made.
By David J. Lynch
July 25, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Major utilities are relocating substations to escape rising waters and wildfires. Manufacturers are establishing redundant production lines to guard against storms that could idle their plants. And a top investment bank is stress-testing portfolios to see if they would survive a warming climate’s wrath.
The moves illustrate how companies are changing the way they do business to cope with increasingly frequent episodes of extreme weather, such as the heat wave that broiled much of the United States this month. The global average temperature on Monday made it the hottest day on record, breaking a planetary mark established just one day earlier, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union’s climate monitor. ... Executives are grappling with a range of climate-related threats to the bottom line, including droughts in Mexico and the Panama Canal, forecasts of an unusually active hurricane season, and record-setting heat from Sacramento to D.C.
In Houston, a company called UPG, which makes precisely formed plastic parts, lost almost two weeks of production after powerful storms knocked out power three times in the last four months. For the company’s owners, the serial outages were the latest evidence that business as usual was no longer an option.
“It’s getting to the point where the impacts are making us miss our forecasts. It’s hurting us financially and it’s affecting our customers,” said Scott Bekemeyer, co-chairman of the Partner Companies (TPC), a consortium that owns UPG and nine other manufacturers.
{snip}
By David J. Lynch
David J. Lynch is a staff writer on the financial desk who joined The Washington Post in November 2017 after working for the Financial Times, Bloomberg News and USA Today. Twitter https://twitter.com/davidjlynch
Companies are reshaping operations to cope with a changing climate
Changes are slow; some see profits to be made.
By David J. Lynch
July 25, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Major utilities are relocating substations to escape rising waters and wildfires. Manufacturers are establishing redundant production lines to guard against storms that could idle their plants. And a top investment bank is stress-testing portfolios to see if they would survive a warming climate’s wrath.
The moves illustrate how companies are changing the way they do business to cope with increasingly frequent episodes of extreme weather, such as the heat wave that broiled much of the United States this month. The global average temperature on Monday made it the hottest day on record, breaking a planetary mark established just one day earlier, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union’s climate monitor. ... Executives are grappling with a range of climate-related threats to the bottom line, including droughts in Mexico and the Panama Canal, forecasts of an unusually active hurricane season, and record-setting heat from Sacramento to D.C.
In Houston, a company called UPG, which makes precisely formed plastic parts, lost almost two weeks of production after powerful storms knocked out power three times in the last four months. For the company’s owners, the serial outages were the latest evidence that business as usual was no longer an option.
“It’s getting to the point where the impacts are making us miss our forecasts. It’s hurting us financially and it’s affecting our customers,” said Scott Bekemeyer, co-chairman of the Partner Companies (TPC), a consortium that owns UPG and nine other manufacturers.
{snip}
By David J. Lynch
David J. Lynch is a staff writer on the financial desk who joined The Washington Post in November 2017 after working for the Financial Times, Bloomberg News and USA Today. Twitter https://twitter.com/davidjlynch
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