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Energy | 
15/07/26

Extreme weather is the ‘new normal’: Is your organisation ready?

Our Net Zero and Sustainability Specialist, Elinor Brânesgyn, shares their thoughts on what this summer's extreme weather can teach businesses about climate resilience.

This is very likely the coolest summer for the rest of our lives. What does that mean for your organisation, and how can this extreme weather help to build a resilient business?

The last few weeks of high temperatures and stormy weather bring into stark reality the impacts of climate change on our daily lives and businesses. At the end of June after an unpleasantly hot day, I stood outside watching the storm clouds roll in like some kind of CGI portent of doom, followed by enough rain that the flash flooding almost reached the top of the doorstep for a short while before draining away.

This is the new normal described by the UK MET Office climate projections, caused by around 1.3 degrees of warming. Around the world, extreme weather events continue to increase in severity and frequency and the modelling agrees that what we are now experiencing would not be possible without climate change due to additional greenhouse gas emissions from human activity (AKA anthropogenic climate change).

For businesses the risks are present in both immediate safety and operational delivery, as well as adapting emergency response and continuity planning. As we come through this and likely more episodes over this year, it is important that businesses reflect on the experiences, the challenges and the impacts on sites, staff and operations. These are the foundations of climate risk assessment and planning, and it is vitally important that we don’t miss the opportunities to learn, accepting that this is now part of the normal, not a freak event.

Here is our reflection toolkit to help you take things forward while they are fresh in everyone’s minds.

Sites

  • How did your sites perform in the heat?
  • Were you able to keep work areas cool? If you used air conditioning or fans, what was the additional energy consumption compared to a typical summer day?
  • How did your sites cope with the sudden rainfall?
  • Were you at risk from electrical storms?
  • Have you experienced local wildfires that affected the site either directly or indirectly through smoke?
  • Are you seeing more rapid degradation of infrastructure or equipment than expected? How is this affecting your Planned and Preventative Maintenance (PPM) schedule and budgets?

Operations

  • Did your customer needs change in the heatwave?
  • Were you able to continue operations mostly as normal?
  • What did you have to alter/suspend? How long could that continue for before it was a business continuity risk?
  • What would it mean to adapt your working times to avoid the peak heat periods?
  • Has your upstream and downstream value chain been impacted by the series of high temperature events? Has it caused delays, damage or other increased costs? How resilient are your suppliers and distribution networks to extreme temperatures?
  • Are you able to monitor working temperatures and how would proposed maximums for safe working impact you?

Staff

  • How did you adapt to keep staff safe and maintain productivity? Did you consider commuting, home working and site working?
  • How could you better support mobile staff (e.g. drivers, technicians etc)?
  • How did the overall temperature (including high overnight temperatures) impact staff wellbeing, stress and absence rates?
  • Do you have any vulnerable staff that required additional support or accommodations due to the heat? Did school closures affect your workforce availability?
  • Can you quantify the costs of lost time and productivity?

By thinking about these questions now, and reflecting annually on the trends and impacts of extreme weather, you can better understand what your risk hotspots are, how much disruption you can weather for how long, and what the costs are. This knowledge feeds in to forward planning to make your business more climate change resilient, which will help you meet compliance objectives such as UK SRS and demonstrate preparedness to insurers and customers.

If you want to take this further, we can work with you on:

  • Climate risk mapping for sites, operations and supply chains
  • Risk forecasting and critical action timelines
  • Adaptation planning including cost of inaction comparison

If you're looking to engage your stakeholders, you can begin with a FREE climate risk screening through our partner, Redlines. It's a quick and practical way to identify potential risks and start building the evidence for action.

Alternatively, book a call with one of our climate risk and resilience specialists.