Climate Risk Assessment for Global Forest Products Leader

RYAM, a forest products material supplier with a global footprint, selected Woodard & Curran to perform a multi-scale portfolio assessment to identify climate change liabilities and mitigation opportunities. With an operational footprint spanning several continents and an international cohort of suppliers and clients, the business leveraged our Climate Change Risk and Vulnerability Assessment services and dashboard to achieve a broad understanding of potential disruptions to business continuity under future climate scenarios.

Physical Climate Risk Analysis

Woodard & Curran leveraged Global Climate Model output to analyze individual facility locations based on climate variables like temperature, wind, and precipitation and climate hazards such as coastal/riverine inundation and drought. The project team evaluated multiple climate scenarios as appropriate to determine the potential climate change impact at each facility for these scenarios for several periods through the current century. Relative risk for each case due to individual climate stressors and statistics was quantified and tabulated for all facilities evaluated and ranked from highest to lowest relative climate stressor risk.

We also developed a Microsoft PowerBI dashboard with geo-referenced site locations and interfaces to the risk rankings. This approach provided RYAM with the ability to query the evaluated facilities and global portfolio risk database toward a detailed and comprehensive understanding of climate change’s impact on its global portfolio. The dashboard interface allows on-the-fly analysis by RYAM of all evaluated locations filterable by dimensions like climate stressor, facility type, and outlook term.

Given RYAM’s main resource is timber, we evaluated the vulnerability of key forests in addition to more typical physical assets. Using a similar process to risk assessment for facilities, we identified climate vulnerabilities and quantified a score for each forest. This supported the client’s objective to capture a broad scope of opportunities and vulnerabilities, which included up and downstream supply chain, markets, and customer sites.

Transitional Climate Risk Analysis

In addition to physical risk assessment and mitigation recommendations, Woodard & Curran also assessed applicable Global Energy and Climate Model datasets under multiple climate scenarios to consider in the evaluation of transition risks and opportunities. We followed this with analysis of model inputs and implications to elucidate impacts associated with carbon cost, energy cost, and population growth trends and linked all data to climate-related risks and opportunities to highlight quantified impacts that could be incorporated into RYAM’s reporting materials.

Our team collected model inputs and data for multiple global regions relevant to RYAM and generated maps of variables (e.g., carbon cost, fuel cost) under multiple climate scenarios that allow for application within RYAM’s risk management process and the identification of regions of significant transition risk or opportunity. Using his data, we delivered a summary memorandum outlining sources of data, scenarios considered, and transition risk and opportunity implications.

Since Woodard & Curran delivered RYAM’s custom database, the company has begun to integrate reports into capital planning. Visuals and data from the assessment also featured heavily in RYAM’s latest sustainability report. Additionally, being able to answer climate scenario-related questions increased our client’s point potential between 19% and 33% at each level of the CDP Climate Change Questionnaire, enabling RYAM to achieve a higher overall score.