- Category: Correntics news
- Industry: Power & energy
BKW partners with Correntics to quantify climate risks, to ensure a long-term reliable energy supply to customers
- Zurich, September 3, 2024
Around the world, societies are experiencing more extreme and frequent weather events. Landlocked Switzerland is affected by increasing temperatures, melting glaciers, changes in precipitation patterns, floods, and more variability in water levels in its rivers and lakes. It means that those responsible for core infrastructure – such as power generation – need to prepare and adapt to the changing climate reality.
BKW provides energy, grid operations, and services across Europe, with a diverse energy portfolio, including renewable sources such as hydropower, solar, and wind. BKW is the operator of Switzerland’s largest power distribution system – so ensuring a reliable, secure electricity supply, and efficient use of energy is critical to its business. The electricity infrastructure today is considered the backbone of modern society as it powers many of our essential services and industries.
A partnership to adapt to a changing climate
In June 2024, BKW and Correntics embarked on a long-term partnership to gain a deeper understanding of how climate risks could potentially affect BKW’s infrastructure and energy supply as well as the diversified services portfolio. Correntics and BKW have started working together to identify and analyse climate projections under different climate change scenarios, using insights from Correntics’ data-driven climate risk analytics platform. The insights show both short and long-term risks and challenges – those that could be material by 2030, along with possible consequences of climate change under different future scenarios until 2050.
Working with the Correntics platform enables BKW to better grasp the different impacts on their risk landscape across different climate scenarios. For example, the information that flooding or landslides may pose an immediate or longer-term risk to infrastructure, can be used in the planning of future projects. Correntics’ solution is needed to identify where disruptions could happen and – importantly – to quantify how these disruptions and chronic risks can affect electricity production and distribution. In turn, this allows to start mitigating these risks more efficiently.
Opening climate conversations within the business
In its selection of potential partners, BKW was looking for more than a climate risk analytics platform. The goal was to find a partner who is open to ideas and flexible to adjust to new business needs or regulatory requirements, as well as working closely with BKW’s own sustainability and enterprise risk teams.
«The solution has to be presented in a way that a broad variety of stakeholders in the business can understand it and gain helpful information for their needs» said Elena Knezevic, Sustainability Manager at BKW, Switzerland. «Correntics presents its analytics with a user interface that is easy to understand and provides a new level of transparency that encourages deeper conversations within the business.»
«Insight into future climate scenarios and potential weather impacts helps BKW increase resilience by preparing and adapting business strategies, manage impending risks, but also identify new opportunities» added Fabio Alfieri, Enterprise Risk Manager at BKW.
Correntics’ work provides an understanding of climate scenarios that help businesses to better foresee and manage risks in a changing climate. The quantification of these risks can help companies, in any sector, understand and reduce the potential financial impacts on their business and across their global value chain.
The climate scenarios that Correntics developed are aligned with the Swiss regulatory requirements, under the Ordinance on Climate Disclosures – a regulation that aims to create greater transparency on how companies manage climate issues. The regulation includes a binding implementation of the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Correntics’ risk analysis work also supports companies with new reporting requirements such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
Empowering companies with state-of-the-art climate analytics is only possible with a highly scalable technology platform. Since its incorporation in 2021, Correntics has leveraged Microsoft’s Azure cloud technologies to build its enterprise software.
«Correntics, an innovative Swiss startup and recent graduate of the Microsoft for Startups program exemplifies how Azure cloud technology can support enterprises in their climate resilience journey,» says Andrew Reid, Global Partner Solutions Director at Microsoft Switzerland. «Their capability to analyse billions of global climate indicators through AI-powered analytics highlights the scalability and robustness of our Azure platform and our collaborations with the startup ecosystem.»
About Correntics
Correntics currently works with clients across different sectors such as power and energy, agriculture, chemical, and finance. The company was founded in 2021 by Michael Gloor and Gaudenz Halter, and is supported by Innosuisse, ESA BIC Switzerland, and investors including ZKB, Serpentine Ventures, SICTIC, S2S Ventures, Venture Kick, Kickfund, and Respire.
Press Contacts:
Correntics AG
Schaffhauserstrasse 78
CH-8057 Zürich
Michael Gloor (CEO)
michael.gloor@correntics.com
+41 78 480 64 55
