Insights

Good afternoon for those of you just joining now. We we give it just another, two minutes to give people time to log on. We're probably starting two minutes past. And apologies if I, break out into bouts of coughing, And, I probably sound a little bit congested, but it's that time of year, unfortunately. But it's better to have it now, I suppose, than during holidays. So just, be patient if I do break into a bout of spluttering, but I think I'll I'll manage it for thirty minutes not to do so. Just give another minute, and then we'll get cracking. Okay. I think let's start. Welcome to the next thirty minutes where we'll be discussing resilience in twenty twenty six with a particular emphasis upon the energy and transport sectors. It's a complex subject matter, and I think one that is gaining relevance day by day, particularly after a a very volatile twenty twenty five. Just a note on this picture, when I was wondering what picture to choose to represent resilience, should it be a picture of a risk or a hazard, but ultimately should be an image depicting a well functioning system. Because ultimately, that's what a resilient system is. And I think this picture illustrates a well functioning system. Today, I'm joined by Ask Brüel, who's global head of energy and utilities, and Friedeman Brockmeyer, who's global head for transport infrastructure mobility. It could be about ten to twelve minutes-ish of a presentation from me, and then, fifteen, twenty minutes depending, on a discussion with both ask and freedom and from their respective sectoral expertise, what they believe to be the key issues for 2026 when looking at resilience. But jumping in, I think when we look at what we mean, the last twelve to eighteen months has been hugely volatile. The array of incidences, of issues, the complexity of risks, the introduction of new risks in a way, is at a level that I don't think that I've witnessed in my professional career, and I don't think that's if you'd ask me eighteen months ago, what I've been talking about e regulatory transition as a risk, supply chain, that that will be a trade war, resulting from, Trump's White House that, you know, we would have an escalation of sabotage to the extent that we do, that climate risk would be escalating to the to the extent that we are that they are. So we end up at a level of volatility that I don't think, we've experienced, and I think this graph beautifully illustrates this. Now I dug this out a few months ago. You can see the source in the bottom right, and I think it explains where we are today as an economy and a society. And it also it explains some of the anxieties that we've been feeling. All of these issues that are quickly rifled through developing and evolving at a scale that we've never experienced before, a, individually, but most importantly, as a collective, Multiple spinning, spinning, spinning. And and as a result, there's no sign of this actually changing as we move into twenty twenty six. Hence, the whole realm of resilience, research and a organizational integration is moving a to a level of importance never seen before. I also think though that we all have a fair idea of what we mean by resilience, but we also all give it a slightly different definition depending on what perspective we come from. Now if I was to walk down the corridors of my office here in Ramboll and stop ten random people, I would get ten different answers. Yes. Similar, but also slightly different. So what I would like to do just next minute is just to give a layered introduction as to how I and how we describe resilience and how I and we describe resilience fits for the 2026 agenda. So, of course, you look at an organization, you look at the hazards, but hazards only becomes a risk based on likelihood and magnitude, exposure and vulnerability, and then do you have the risk. However, the organizations themselves in today's world are highly complex and intricate. And I feel when we look at the organization, we need to look at it to the prism of multiple organisms. And we're looking at how resilient an entity is or an organization is. We need to examine the organization through the prism of the different organs. So in this instance, have governance, physical assets, digital systems, operations, supply chain, employees. Each will behave differently to the risks. Each will have different levels of exposure and vulnerability to the risks, and so each needs needs to be a evaluated independently, but then also collectively. However, it doesn't stop there because I think the evolution of resilience expectation, I wouldn't even say resilience thinking per se, but actually expectation, is that there also needs to be a greater understanding of the recipients of the cascading risk because that's ultimately why resilience is so important particularly for critical entities is the recipients of the cascading risk. So that can be the public and households, other critical infrastructure, essential services, public authorities, industry, municipal services such as schools, universities, etcetera. But however, there's another layer that then is a little bit missing as well and that's interdependency going back up. So if this was the transmission system operator, that transmission system operator relies on other entities to feed itself so that does that interdependency between them. So I think when we think about resilience, we need to see the organization as a complex entity. We need to run diagnostics via the different elements and organs of that entity. We need to understand that their vulnerability and exposure will be different to different levels of hazards, but also probably most importantly leading into 2026, the dependencies, the recipients of the cascading risk and indeed interdependencies becomes more pronounced with respect to its importance. That's something that we'll come back to later. Also, disrupted travels and I think the narrative around resilience and how we explain it and how we describe it is going way beyond a particular technical disturbance which will affect that particular organization, but then there's a ripple effect out into society. And particularly when we talk about critical infrastructure, understanding the cascading risk throughout the economy, our society, but also to be able to quantify and qualify the impact as we as we move out beyond the core functions of a particular asset or a entity becomes really, important in understanding its overall societal obligation is a good way to describe it. So when we're looking at risk, a, yes, v, the organism and its relationship with the hazards above us, but also how its inability to operate can ripple out true society is really, really important. Now I have four rungs here. You could quite easily have five. So but this becomes really important particularly when we're talking about critical infrastructure on and with respect to the critical entities, resilience directive, which I'll touch upon in a minute. But a question that I'm asked continuously is okay. We you know, as an organization, we're continuously assessing our exposure to different hazards. We're quantifying risk. We're analyzing our relationship with those below us and those above us with respect to dependencies and interdependencies, but it's still not quite clear what does good look like. What is a mature entity with respect to resilience and what indeed is an immature entity? But ultimately, when I am asked now with respect to what do I mean by resilience, as apart from going along the more traditional line of the ability to bounce back and bounce back stronger, I actually think it's epitomized in the ability to sustain critical services under stress, I.e., performance. That to me is resilience in 2026, but, of course, there's other elements. The credibility issue is huge. Culture. The people's ability to respond and operate themselves under stress, the ability to anticipate, to adapt, etcetera. So it's it's quite a multifaceted overview of what it is. But still, I think, for me trying to understand where companies sit, we need to put them into categories. Indeed, there's one missing over on the left, what I would call developing. So reasonably new entities, be it defensive, you've adaptive, and you've strategic. I think most entities would sit somewhere between the gray and the blue, lesser solely in the blue, and very, very few over to the right under strategic. And it is the ambition, I think, in 2026 to move from defensive to certainly to adaptive and even some that already adapt to to move to strategic is the ultimate goal. But still, the question would be asked, how do I measure it? And I'll go through these quite quickly. This would be sent to you afterwards, by the way, so don't be trying to to zone too much into the text. But, ultimately, we need to assess the entity via its organs, as I said earlier. So we need to understand a its governance structures and assess the maturity of that. We need to to look at its assets, physical and otherwise. We need to review its processes to be able to operate under stress, its crisis readiness, its continuously planning. Cyber, of course, goes without saying, but I think we need to assess its relationship with its suppliers, with its buyers, the interdependencies dependencies. Number six is what I would call resilience intelligence. Is the is the entity mature in how it thinks about resilience and anticipating it and predicting it? And, ultimately, how mature are its people to respond? Now when we're assessing maturity of an entity, we'll need and indeed, by the way, you could have an eighth or a ninth or a tenth depending on how complex your organization is here, but it's via these prisms that we need to assess how mature one is and how and then how how far do they have to go to improve to particularly meet the adaptive middle box and never mind the strategic box. So a very brief introduction just now into what it is. Importance to look at the organization as a series of organs that needs to be diagnosed almost individually as well as the collective, understanding what does good look like and what kind of definition do you put on that. But, of course, as as we move into twenty twenty six, the critical entities resilience directive would begin to take hold. Now some of you may be aware of this, but I would imagine a great number of you are not. Now to my most recent understanding, this has been transposed in pretty much all Northern European countries by now. I'll come to some dates in a second. But this is essentially what the critical entities resilience directive does. Everything that I talked about is now puts into a a legal framework. The definition on the left, critical entity meaning a public or private entity that has been identified by a member state as providing one or more essential service, the disruption of which would have significant consequences for public safety, security, health, or the economy. And here you can see that there's eleven sectors broken down quite specifically. And at the back of the directive, there's an annex that gives a very detailed breakdown of each sector. So transport, ports, rail, roads, airports, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Same goes with energy. There's multiple different types of of entities that is that's specifically categorized. This is what it does. Mandatory risk assessment, resilience measures planned, financed, and implemented, governance and accountability structures clearly defined and communicated. Excuse me. And ultimately, it will be supervised. It will be audited, and it will be enforced. Quick idea of dates. Should have been transposed in all EU countries by now. In January, you'll see your national governments, publish strategies and then the final list being published in July. However, I think eighty percent of those that would be on these lists will know that they're on them now. And going back to what I mentioned earlier about understanding how mature you are, such assessments take time. So you will find probably in early q one that a large number of entities will start moving into the preparation phase to to truly understand what this directive means. Now that was a a very, very quick introduction to a complex matter in fifteen minutes, which was exactly what I had. So what we'll move to now is some of the questions with ask and Friedemann. I'll just go back to my screen. Gentlemen. Thanks, Patrick. Welcome. Let's start with you, Friedemann. What do you think will be keeping transport leaders awake in twenty twenty six with respect to resilience? I think that, what will keep them awake is that we are in a situation right now in, as in most of Europe, at least, where we are running our current performance versus still sustaining, is but it's more than ever to go to the limits of finances, to the limits of assets, to limits of staff availability. So we are already running a system which is very close to elements. And if something happens on top, then we can imagine, we can see relatively shortly massive breakdowns or big operational disturbances. We can see that all over in the rail industry. We can see that at airports. There have been numerous examples in the last couple of months that small failures, technical failures lead to a complete disruption of transport operations. And Ask, from an energy perspective, how would you see 2026? What would be keeping the leaders awake at night? Thanks, Patrick. And I would just, build a bit on on on what Friedemann has said. I think, I mean, we have seen a threat picture that has significantly changed and evolved and will do so continuously. And to some extent, happened way faster than we can actually keep up and regulation to some extent as well. I think we'll come back into that later on. But I think what really pops to mind first for me is how do we cope as an organization with this rapid change and evolving threat picture? How and what if multiple elements happen at the same time? What you mentioned here, Friedemann, well, what if things come on top here? How do we continue to deliver our critical service, whether that being energy or transport? And that means really to understand what threat picture look like and from a company perspective, but also the triggers and how those element cascade across the system and supply chain. And then I would say, if I may, Patrick, please interrupt me if I speak too much but also navigating regulation. I think, again, we have you mentioned some new regulation coming out, frameworks at an EU level, at a national level and national security requirements. I mean getting a grasp of, to some extent, overlapping and to some maybe abstract regulation, what does that actually mean? Concrete, you mentioned also, Patrick, early on, what does that actually look like in practice? I think that is something that is is quite a big thing. And how do we then implement that into our organization? But and at the start, I show that volatility graph. And if somebody had said to me eighteen months ago, you know, that it would be like that, you'd have said that's crazy. From your perspectives, let's start with you, Friedemann, what have been the biggest shifts in the last twelve months? Why has resilience gone from, yes, being important to now being, invert the commas, mission critical in the last twelve months? What has changed so much? I think what changes with geopolitical circumstances and it's now a different mindset in public opinion and there's no political, it's in a political observation. I think we are already struggling for for, in some, at least in some geographies in Europe, already for more than a decade about different problems we have on asset deterioration, on limited budgets. So I would say the topic as per se is not new, but given the fact that we now have even the geopolitical situation, it's not new. It's already at least under the table since two thousand fourteen. But since we have now these minor attacks, the system minor attacks, have some drones on Copenhagen Airport. We have we have cables which are burning somewhere at the s train system in Berlin. All this happens now and leads to these disruptions, and this gives this gives the management new attention. So I would say that we are now what we can observe is we are talking with the boards of directors, which is changing. In the past, they had plans for, let's say, for some very unlikely potential threats, like a terror attack, for example, on a metro system. All of the big operators have that plan if something happens, like in Madrid or London. But now we are talking about these everyday threats and this is changing, and we are not talking any longer about what you've called the protective, resilience. We are talking now about adaptive resilience, how long we need to replace something. Yeah? Because we are talking about consumables sometimes. You can easily destroy consumables and to have a big problem in your transport system. And but what do we need to be readied? So in the future, it's much more about business continuity, operational continuity, how long do we need and how we have to communicate. I think this is still something missing in most of, at least, of our clients. We need proper communication plans, because if you have an asset failure, if you have an operational problem, this is not an issue. Everybody will understand if you can communicate in the right way and if you can communicate in a in a way of empathy and to to propose maybe a new date where we will be fully operational again, and please adjust your plans, your travel plans, whatever. That's that's that's really missing yet, but I'm also looking forward that we will see that in 2026, that we're becoming more resilient when it comes to this. Just being conscious of time, I'll jump to 2026 with you, Ask. And the energy sector is complex. Energy utilities by themselves are complex. Where does one start? What would you say to those that are wondering where to start and what not where to start, what to prioritize considering that you can't do everything quickly? And where do you think the energy sector should be prioritizing? And even that is a broad question considering the scale of the energy sector. Absolutely. No. Thanks, Patrick. And I would probably start with saying, first of all, we need to understand that this is a game changer and it does affect everything that we do and how we work. When we look across the energy space, I would start with saying we do see quite a significant gap from where different energy companies are today, from the smaller companies with a single champion that are driving the agenda to the big global companies with a full preparedness staff. So I think, again, also what to prioritize is different. I would say and it comes partly back to sort of your six key elements, what you mentioned earlier today, but really looking at yourself, looking at the company, having a self assessment, a gap assessment, where are you as a company today, actually understanding where you are, where you're strong and where you have gaps. Then I would say it's about factoring in resilience in your planning. And Friedemann, you mentioned this, I would say, partly before. We see, I would think, to a large extent, still planning being based on historical threats. So actually, factoring resilience, the new threat landscape that we see and factor that into your planning and this comes back to a mindset that is forward looking rather than looking at what we have seen previously, being able to anticipate and look forward. And then I would mention that's the last element. No, sorry, if I can two. One is Then will skip one. Then skip one. I will jump straight to that we do see staff awareness improving, but we don't see security really embedded in all companies at day to day levels. Really work with the organization and the mindset changing of mindsets. This is a lot about people and mental adaption it takes time and technology alone doesn't change this. We need to train our staff and have the right mindset in order to be able to both respond under stress and also make the right decisions. Friedeman, assuming that there's a lot of commonalities, what would you see as unique challenges in twenty twenty six for the transport sector? You know? So let's say a lot of this stuff like people and so on, that's a common issue across all any type of sectors. What would you see as the in the transport sectors as unique challenges and those priorities in the transport sector? I mean, I I see I see two. Let's say one and a half. I think one is still staff because staff is something which is very special for transport, opposite to all other network industries. We still need people who can drive trains, lorries, or fly airplanes or sail ships. So this is completely different to energy, water, or other utilities. And we have to to train these people. We have to take care about them, that they are available. Also, it's not only about protecting physical infrastructure, it's also about protecting people. That's super important. I think this is a a main difference to all of us. And I think another one I think this is also very special because we have so many actors in the transport industry. We have to know that the whole regulatory setup for our industry, that's the same for energy, has been built up by the European Union from the beginning of the early nineties. And so it has been set up after cold war. Now we have CER and NIS as two directives. These are the first one, the first two, who are not assuming a perfect world. So all our existing technical and economic regulation is based on peace forever or the end of history. And this is something which will not fit and is not part of the transport contracts we have or the public service obligations. So if we want to implement CER and NIS2 into the operators, into the infrastructure managers, we have to rework a lot of these contracts which are based on this existing regulatory framework from the early 90s. This will be also a very big challenge, especially because we're talking about a lot of subsidies, which is differentiating the transport industry from others. This will be a big, big, big headache for the transport industries and the authorities who are responsible. I'm conscious of we're already as the fastest thirty minutes I think I've ever expensed expressed in a webinar. Any final question to you both. It's not what you asked in any. With respect to resilience and resilience, critical infrastructure in particular, as we move into twenty twenty six, are entities feeling apprehensive, excitement, fear? How would you gauge the sentiment, of entities within your sector as you move into next year? Well, that's strong words. I would say maybe not fear, but definitely, an alert, an awareness of, I mentioned before the threat picture that is has evolved, to some extent, faster than we can follow and that regulation can. So definitely alert on that point. And you can also argue that we should be alert. But personally, I tend also to be positive. I think we do see a lot of good movements and a lot of good initiatives. And I would say, the right priorities and collaboration, which was one of my points before, Patrick, collaboration is key. I tend to be quite positive that even though we have to move faster we have maybe not before, but at least fast, I tend to be positive, Patrick. Last two minutes to you, Friedemann. Think that really depends on country. So I think in the Nordics, of course, there is a high load, and also in Central Europe and Eastern Europe, there is a very high load. And also sometimes I have a strong feeling that there is some excitement about it because I like to discuss these topics. But in general, if you're coming more to the south and to the west of Europe, it it is it's changing. Yeah. We have heard about it. We've read about it in the newspaper. Oh, yeah. We had a discussion about it on the last conference. But this is really effective for us. Sometimes we also see ignorance. I think this will change because the threats are coming closer. I don't expect it for France, but we are becoming closer and closer to Central Europe. So in countries like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, where the awareness will rise in the next couple of months, especially if the list is available to everyone and the notifications have reached the companies when it comes to the implementation of directive. And therefore, I would say there will be awareness and what I really hope for 2026 is that the operators, the players in these industries are using this as a challenge or as something that they really have to change the system, not something that they have to be compliant with. Because what we have learned also from other directors from the European Commission or from the European Union is that they want to be compliant and that's all. But this is, as you have also mentioned, Patrick, this is a strategic challenge, and they have to be resilient in the future because these are real world threats, yeah, which affect daily operations, and that's something I hope for 2026. Okay. We're three minutes over time. Lesson learned. We need more time. So we'll be that'll that'll be a first lesson learned from this webinar. Thank you all for taking the time out of your day to join for this quick thirty minutes. Thank you to Friedemann and Ask for your insights. And I think you can rest assured all of you that you'll be hearing more from us in the new year around this topic. Thank you very much. Thanks, everyone. Good afternoon. Thanks, Benoit.

Hi. I'm Casey Dembowski. I'm the communications manager for Ramboll in the Americas, and I'm excited to welcome you today to the second session of Ramboll's Let's Close the Gap on Resilient Societies webinar series, climate resilience in action, how industries are future proofing their strategies. Running throughout twenty twenty six, our webinar series features industry experts discussing how they are bringing resilience to the forefront. You missed our first session on advancing resilient marine infrastructure or you just wanna go back and rewatch this one after the session, you can do so on our webinar homepage where you signed up or at the QR code right here. And don't worry if you miss this QR code. It'll be back up at the end of the session. Today's session focuses on the practicalities of moving from risk findings to resilience decisions. During this so I am pleased to welcome to our webinar our moderator, Jen Olivo, director of water infrastructure and climate adaptation for the Americas. Jen has over thirty five years of experience in the water industry, designing solutions for water infrastructure both in the private and public sectors with with assisting clients in strategic planning stages, studies, design, construction, and implementation with resiliency and sustainability considerations at the core of each project. Jen, I'll pass it over to you. Thank you, Casey, and welcome, everyone. Let's meet our panelists for today's discussion. First, we have Rebbe Gulkin. Rebbe is the Managing Director of Global Infrastructure Partners. She is a principal investor with a sustainability ESG climate energy transition and infrastructure focus and operates across the global energy value chain, including new technologies, renewable energy, data centers, generation, gathering and processing, storage and terminals, long haul transportation, and liquefied natural gas import and export materials terminals. Sorry. Next, we have Aaron Garniss Holmes. Aaron is the lead resilience planner for the Urban Sustainability Administration at the DC Department of Energy and Environment. He leads implementation of Climate Ready DC, the District of Columbia's Climate Resilience Plan, and Keep Cool DC, the district's extreme heat adaptation strategy with the DC Department of Energy and Environment. Thirdly, we have Nelson Yip. Nelson is the Director of Strategic Planning at Con Edison. He advises senior leaders across Con Edison on climate resilience, clean energy strategy, and infrastructure delivery. So let's get started with Rebbe. Rebbe, tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up working in ESG and sustainability for infrastructure investing. What's your background and what drew you to this work? Thanks, Jennifer. First of all, thank you so much for having me on this panel. I joined GIP almost ten years ago as part of the investment team. Prior to GIP, I was an M and A banker for more than sixteen years in the energy space, focusing mostly on oil and gas and infrastructure. And I joined GIP in the energy investment team focusing on oil and gas infrastructure, midstream, and LNG as you mentioned. Couple of years after, about five years ago, I moved to the ESG team. We do integrate ESG through the life cycle of an investment at GIP from screening to diligence and asset management. I still do what I was doing before, just with a different lens. Two reason two reasons why I was interested in ESG. As you all know, ESG became a focus for big energy companies, majors, and oil and gas companies couple of years ago. While many of our investors find this unusual and ironic even, meaning an oil and gas professional joint focusing on ESG and climate, I think it's become very, very relevant. And at GIP, decarbonization and energy transition is an important element of how we invest. Twenty five years of energy experience comes in handy, I believe. Therefore, it's only natural that I focus primarily on energy at GIP as well as our sustainability program, especially when it's related to climate risk, both physical and transition. Great. GIP's portfolio spans sectors and geographies with very different physical risk profiles. How did climate risk management become part of the investment process, And how is the team structured today to make resilient decisions across that kind of diversity? Let me give the audience a quick overview of GIP first and what we do. GIP is a leading infrastructure investor with close to hundred and ninety billion dollar assets under management, and we own some of the critical infrastructure globally. We invest in four sectors and operate complex assets in energy, transport, digital infrastructure, and water and waste management sectors. We're talking about hard assets here. Let's be clear about one thing. In terms of climate, physical risk, and resilience, as an infrastructure investor, we've always looked at potential severe weather events and how they have impacted or may impact the assets when we look at potential investments. Historical events, mitigations, insurances in place, not only specific to weather events, but property insurance, have always been part of our diligence since any big impact can have substantial financial consequences. I'm not only talking about the capital needs that needs to be spent to fix any damage, but also any potential revenue loss. Today, we are much more systematic at GIP. Climate risk, potential impacts from physical climate risk is one of our key ESG factors that we believe is material to our sectors and our assets has always been the case. And as any other factor, it's integrated into our investment thinking both at the time of diligence when we assess an investment and also after we invest when we manage an asset. Naturally, we need to understand the risks and potential loss and potential costs, which could be, as I said, potential cost from interruptions, such as revenue loss or CapEx to fix the damage or capital investments that need to be made to increase the resilience of the assets and mitigate against the risk. Walk us through how resilience considerations enter a new investment. When in the process do you screen for physical climate risk, and how do those findings shape the capital plan for an asset? As I mentioned earlier, we have a very systematic approach and framework when we diligence potential investments from the beginning. Over the last couple of years, we developed a framework actually with Rambo, to understand and evaluate potential risks for our sectors. Not every hazard will have a material impact to every asset. So as part of our framework and part of our diligence, we do the following. First, we focus on material hazards. Then we consider the risks specific to the region. And then for companies with a high number of assets and we invest in big companies, we prescreen assets with the investment team and sometimes with the management team and identify material assets based on contribution, value, critical for growth, and sometimes critical to the region or the country that they're in. And then we also review company's historical record with severe weather events because that can give us a lot of information. And then we assess whether the company has the proper mitigation integrated into the systems. That's very important. And if they have any insurance in in place to address potential concerns, which means we also look at the company's organizational capacity and maturity, which is very important to understand whether they understand the risk, emphasize the risk, they think about mitigations, or incorporate mitigations into the design as part of our diligence. And most importantly, we examine with the investment team and the business improvement teams at GIP, the technical integrity of the assets against high impact hazards because we have to marry our findings with the mitigations and technical integrity of the assets to understand what are the mitigations, what's the CapEx related to mitigations are incorporated already in the plan, and if they're not incorporated, what do we need to incorporate into the CapEx and the business plan? So this whole process helps us to formulate recommendations for further investigations, actions, and potential adaptation measures for our portfolio companies. And then, of course, when we invest, we work with our portfolio companies to ensure they focus on the risk. I mean, the objective is for our portfolio companies to be ahead of any negative physical impacts and as required incorporate adaptation measures into their business plans. Okay. For assets already in the portfolio, how do you decide where to invest in resilience versus just accepting the risk? What does that prioritization process look like when you're managing dozens of assets with competing needs? Prioritization is very similar to when we do the diligence, especially if you have big portfolio of assets. First, we identify the material assets based on contribution critical for growth, important in the geography for the value chain. If we identify a high risk asset with high contribution and value, the efforts will focus there first. We work with our companies and want them to think about these risks and incorporate them into their planning. We can't do it ourselves. We have too many companies. We have a lot of assets. We manage a lot of assets with various needs and priorities. So we want our portfolio companies to think about these themselves from top down at the board level and at the executive management level and incorporate adaptation measures into their strategy because that shows the maturity of the company. At the end of the day, they're the ones managing the assets day in and day out, and they need to think about these and take responsibility and accountability for this risk and actions. Okay. And the last question we have for you, can you share an example keeping it as general or specific as you'd like, where understanding an asset's physical risk exposure led to a specific resilience action, whether that was adaptation CapEx, operational changes, or a different approach to insurance. We're curious about what the plan from risk finding to resilient investment actually looks like. Let me give you some examples. It's gonna be mostly generic, but and it's gonna be more on the energy side just because that's what I focus on. How physical risk exposure formed and also evolved different companies' way of thinking of physical risk and adaptation measures. For example, solar developers. Couple of years ago, most companies didn't look at hail as a hazard. Today, when we invest at solar companies, depending on the location, this is one of the risks we'll look at. Solar companies today use panels that tilt mainly because of this potential hazard. Designs changed. Again, companies and wildfires. Higher occurrences of wildfires in the past, in the last couple of years especially, push companies to think about this hazard more seriously, and it changed how they think about vegetation, for example, which is, by the way, big part of permitting for, again, a lot of the renewable companies and solar companies. LNG facilities, Of course, they're by the water. Let's say, along Gulf of Mexico. They're all located in areas prone to hurricanes and flooding. It's given that these risks are going to happen, but they need to consider them in the design. Elevate the facility to protect from flooding risk is expected. Now the LNG companies and facilities we own, they're also taking it one step further because they don't only think about the asset itself, but they also start thinking about communities that they're in and the workforce is in and live, focusing on emergency response efforts if a hurricane hits and impacts not only the facilities, but also the workforce and communities. Last example I wanna give is in hydro assets. When we invest in hydro assets in with dams especially, tourists are always considered, as you can imagine. Flooding is always a material risk. You're by the river, and we always need to think about the resiliency to flooding because it can only damage the assets not only damage the assets, but also put the communities at risk around the hydro asset. Dam safety is a major focus. So companies need to focus on civil structures and civil work. They are required to keep the dams updated, make sure spillway capacity is enough, tunnels are refurbished, dredging works, etcetera, is done. So what we do is we combine our findings from physical risk assessment with technical diligence with our investment and business improvement teams to ensure the assets are doing what they're supposed to do. Otherwise, we have to create a mitigation plan in the evaluation and incorporate any additional CapEx into the business plan. And, of course, let's not forget the most important part, as I mentioned before, when we we then work with our portfolio companies to implement actions. And then the second hazard we think about always, it's the opposite side, water stress. You have to assess water stress, not only hydrology risk for the economics of the asset, but also water use may be competing with other uses critical for the communities. So we focus on economics, of course, but also community engagement and social plans for me to to mitigate any risks. I mean, I can go on and on, but I hope this gives an idea of, like, how we think physical risks and how we think about adaptation and resilience when we work with our portfolio companies. Thanks, Ravi. I think those were great examples. It really shows the complexity and the number of climate risks that infrastructure faces and our industry faces. So thank you very much. Let's turn to Erin. Erin, I'm gonna ask the same question I asked of Rebbe. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up working in sustainability for the public sector. What's your background and what drew you to this work? Sure. Well, thanks for having me here today to talk about this and to start by talking about myself. Happy to do it. I started off in landscape architecture, actually, in the private sector. I worked for a large multidisciplinary firm, not unlike Ramble. And over time, I shifted from landscape architecture where I was doing, like, detailed drawings for green infrastructure, storm water management, you know, figuring out how things actually get installed in the ground and started zooming out. I I also have a degree in urban planning, so I sort of shifted to urban design, thinking about where these best management practices could go in a neighborhood, then shifting out to urban planning citywide, looking at how to make long term plans to support that kind of infrastructure over time. And I worked between that private sector moment and my public sector job. Now, I also worked in the NGO universe for a little bit with, kind of grassroots community organizing, advocating for better public spaces along, rivers and waterfronts that flooded. So I've kind of touched this resilience universe from a lot of different angles, but I am very happy to be here in the public sector working at city scale. I think that it's it's an arena where there's a ton of action and opportunity to actually get get some stuff done, build infrastructure, and and zoom in on those details again and work with communities to figure out what needs to be done to get projects finished that address some of these really overwhelming global scale issues that I think everybody is grappling with, but things like climate change. But a city is like an arena that's tangible and kind of has opportunity to get things done that sometimes gets slower as you zoom out to a more state and federal level. Great. The next question, the district originally adopted the climate red DC plan in two thousand and sixteen and Resilient DC in two thousand and nineteen. As you work on Climate Ready DC two point o, how has the district's climate adaptation priorities evolved? Yeah. Well, when twenties in twenty sixteen, when Climate Ready DC came out, it was it was one of the first citywide, you know, climate adaptation plans out there. We were kinda on the cutting edge by doing something like this. Almost every major city has something like that now, and so we're revisiting it to a, you know, ten year update two point o version. And looking back at the original plan, it it was it was innovative and it was bold, but it was also trying to do so much in one document. And although many of the seventy seven actions in that original plan are are are we're we're making progress on them. Some of them were were so big. They were recognizing the challenge. They would say things like we need to make our our energy grid resilient, or we need to, you know, make sure that we don't have any critical facilities that face climate risk. And that's so big that that's really hard for an agency to pick up that target and actually do something tangible about it. Where do we start with grid resilience? Which critical facilities are we talking about? Which hazard? What does it mean to do that assessment? So as we do the second version, we're really being specific and actionable this time. And instead of just talking we are talking about hazards off into the, you know, the rest of the century in the future. We're also looking at what happens in the next five years. What can we get done in five years that makes a step towards becoming more resilient. So we're we're really taking like a a it it almost makes the plan feel a little bit less ambitious because it's five year actions, but I think it's gonna be so much more operational and build into how DC government actually works and and get thing gets things done. So, hopefully, sometime later this year, it'll be published and you can find it yourself. Great. Great. In Ramble's resilience work with DOEE and DC parks, Cross sectional collaboration has always been an important factor. In your work on climate resilience projects, how have you incorporated interagency coordination, community partnerships, and private sector outreach? Sure. I mean, I guess in our work, we don't really incorporate, you know, those things like coordination partnerships and outreach. It's really the the core of our work. In at the Department of Energy and Environment where I work, we're in a sort of a small team of the urban sustainability administration where we do this long term planning for all of DC. But we don't hold the capital budget powers ourselves. We don't, implement the projects. We don't have authority to explicitly tell the Department of Transportation what to do and when. So in instead, we really lean on everybody, and we form a lot of, both internal government parties, partnerships, and and groups, but also with the communities and and private sector. So we have, like, an internal climate resilience advisory group where we get together with all these agencies and prioritize what should happen happen next. But we also hire private contractors to help us, you know, give us the best practices from elsewhere and kind of open us up to, what we should be learning from other cities. But I think the community partnerships part is really, really core to a lot of our work and where I think where a lot of the magic of being a city government is because people's neighborhoods is where these infrastructure projects are being done and people's lives are what we're trying to protect with resilience and infrastructure. And so I think we've been really leaning on both doing the community engagement to figure out, what some of the challenges and solutions are, but also just be building a little bit more public will behind getting some of these projects done. So for example, we just finished a draft project that is up on our site. It hasn't fully published yet, but you can see it. We worked with Rambo to do a neighborhood scale resilience, plan, a strategy for doing, both flood resilience projects, but also urban heat island reduction. And Ramble actually hired a community organization from that neighborhood as a sub to lead us on all the all of the sort of engagement efforts. And it was a great idea and super helpful for getting us, both great designs coming out of the engineering end of of Ramble, but also, like, a lot of community support and understanding behind these projects, which will help us really hopefully streamline getting it done in the future. Great. Yeah. And that leads into the next question, which touches on those flood resilient strategies. So your team has led the development of a series of flood resilience and climate resilience strategies, including flood resistant resilience strategies for the Southwest and Buzzard Point, as well as Watts Branch area, and then also the Ivy City climate resilience strategy. Although similar to approach each of these neighborhood resilient plans is unique, How do you adapt each study to the particular needs of a community? Yeah, thanks for highlighting that model of these sort of neighborhood scale resilience plans. It's kind of an emerging practice for us. So each one of those three that you mentioned, these are plans, for reducing flooding in areas where we know they're sort of exposed and have consistent flooding and and sort of, alarming risks in the future. But as we've finished each one, we kind of developed the model a little bit more. So for example, in Ivy City, I mentioned we're doing not just looking at flood risk, but also looking at extreme heat at the same time. Considering that, especially with the, you know, green infrastructure solutions, the the strategies to address flood risk often also have a benefit for urban heat island reduction. So when we're planning for one, when we're gonna be going in with shovels infrastructure, we really should be a little more comprehensive about which risks we're reducing and how we can, you know, feed feed two birds with one scone. But I think that, it's also that we kind of have to drill into the details of each and tailor the response to each one because the the nature of flooding is different in each one. The land cover is different. And while we have lots of great typologies for the infrastructure that we need to build, you know, there's there's there's so much more both detailed community engagement work, like I mentioned before, but also, the engineering solutions are wildly different in each one. In Watts Branch, we're doing a lot of green infrastructure, which I think is gonna, you know, reduce storm water flow into the stream and and and protect people's homes. But in Ivy City, we learned through our planning process that it's a lot more, you know, underground gray infrastructure that needs to be done for different reasons. So we are hoping to continue evolving this neighborhood scale model and into the future, but it's it's it's definitely the kind of zoom in that I think a city government needs to start getting these projects done. Okay. And lastly, we'll just do a quick last question. As the district's resilient focus continues to evolve, what do you anticipate will be the next focus areas for DOEE? Are there particular neighborhoods, types of climate hazards, or new funding strategy that you are looking towards in the coming years? I think funding strategies is the most dire and also the hardest to answer. I I think not a lot of cities have the the perfect solution yet to fill the gaps that are emerging in in resilience or honestly that have always been there for getting this kind of stuff done. We are looking at I mean, I'm interested in in the region around DC, there are, you know, resilience authorities getting formed that do have dedicated state funding to get infrastructure projects done. Virginia has been doing this for a long time with its coastal flooding challenges. Our neighboring Montgomery County in Maryland, they have a green bank that they just recently passed legislation to unlock that green bank lending and funding for adaptation projects in addition to normally, would do more energy efficiency projects for buildings. And so we're kinda watching to see how that turns out. You also asked about different types of hazards. I think we're really gonna stick focusing on flooding and extreme heat because those are sort of more tangible risks. But I think we are starting to be a little bit more ex explicit and tailored in how we address those different issues. Mentioned kind of the difference between gray infrastructure and green infrastructure solutions. I think we're also looking at what what do we do as like large infrastructure projects versus small and how many many projects are we doing in the public infrastructure realm, but also how are we supporting private residents? So we we started a project to, you know, do free flood audits for homeowners. And historically, we actually paid for improvements to reduce flood risk. And we're looking at how we can protect residents from high indoor air temperatures in addition to, like, reducing the outdoor urban heat island. So I think we're kind of expanding our our scope, of how we can address these issues going forward in addition to doing these, like, big public infrastructure projects. Great. Great. Well, the community sounds like it'll benefit from a lot of the actions that you're putting forth in the plans, and also I think the community engagement is extremely important as the end user. So thank you, Erin. So let's move on to Nelson and get Nelson's perspective. So Nelson, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up working in resilience and sustainability. What's your background and what drew you to this work? Yes, thank you so much, Dents. Thanks for having me here today. Really, I'm an engineer by training, but I've spent over twenty years at Con Edison, the utility that serves New York City. I've worked across operations, planning, emergency management, longer term planning, and now climate resilience. I also earned my MBA, which really broadened my perspective on really thinking through how to change leadership mindsets, strategy, and really thinking through the business side of the energy transition. So while my early career was focused on engineering, reliability and infrastructure, experiences like being part of the Superstorm Sandy restoration team made it clear how deeply climate risks really affects people, communities and energy systems and invariably long term business strategy. So that realization really led me to focus more intentionally on resilience and how sustainability crosscut all the commodities that we serve. And how can I help my organization and other organizations really prepare for a changing climate while advancing clean energy goals? So today I lead a team of five looking at resilience and sustainability strategy, really working benchmarking across the various utilities, both here and abroad, working with national labs and researchers, policymakers, regulators, but also communities to really think through this really complex challenge. But how can we make it flexible? How can we make it practical? And how do we think about long term solutions starting from now for much time to come? I always say, and then we've talked about this, resilience is a shared responsibility as we've talked about with the other panelists, but it's also things that you need to start now in your resilience journey. Okay. And you talked somewhat about the climate risk and resilience group that you're overseeing. What did you see along the way that convinced you climate risk needed its own dedicated focus? And how did your operational experience shape what the group looks like today? Ramble is really international. So Con Edison is the utility that serves New York. We deliver electric gas and steam to over ten million people. That's about forty four percent of New York State's electricity needs. When we think about climate change, it's also thinking about decarbonization, but also the adaptation to the physical impacts of climate change. We've been around for over two hundred years, reliability, resilience, climate adaptation, storm hardening, that's not new to us, but it's really thinking through it from my standpoint of going from energy markets, operations planning, and also emergency response. There's a consistent theme that moved throughout my career. It really informed how I think about and respond to climate risk and resilience. It's not a future issue. It's showing up now. We have to continue to think about it in how we plan, operate, response. And for every utility or every organization, there's also one defining point or one utility storm. For us, it was Superstorm Sandy. Post Sandy was really an inflection point. We saw firsthand how increasing storm intensity, coastal flooding could really overwhelm our infrastructure as well as our customers and really disrupt communities at scale. But beyond these major events, we've been seeing more inland flooding and we've been seeing different stresses based on an increasing heat and heat waves. It became apparent to us that climate risk could no longer be managed as part of just reliability emergency management. It needed its own dedicated forward looking focus. So in addition to working with a robust stakeholder group, tie in with regional entities like New York City, Westchester, ports, working with universities, it's really thinking through a framework of how do we integrate climate risk into our system planning? How do we identify using climate data where our vulnerabilities are? How do we assess it? How do we address it? But really thinking through, sometimes operations is driven by compliance driven. I think we designed this group to be really connected to the business, to integrate it into the business, to translate climate science into actionable insights, really integrate it into not just at a high level, but also from the engineer that's designing to the chief engineer to senior leaders, and how do we support decision making across all commodities, electric, gas, steam, and also our cross commodities. So we've really embedded into our workflows. We've thought about how do we make a resilience investments as part of our longer term planning as we grow into more clean energy, but also how to create the insights, the tools to look at more of a holistic view of climate risk. How do we model risk? How do we assess it? How do we scenario plan it? And so ultimately it really has to do with, thinking about practical implementable decisions, based on future proofing, the things that we're doing moving forward. Okay, in your role at Con Edison, you're simultaneously building resilience into existing infrastructure and planning for a much larger, more electrified load from transportation, buildings and heating. How do you think about sequencing those investments and where do you see the biggest interdependencies between decarbonization and adaptation? Yeah, no, that is a really good question. And I think it has to maybe, in addition to what Ravi said to look, think about it in frameworks, there's a lot of different things driving it, but having the integrated strategy to achieve four of our strategic objectives has been really helpful. Making sure that we focus on clean core customers and also our climate resilience. So really providing not just focusing on maximizing climate resilience, it's really thinking through all the values that we're looking at. Are we being safe, reliable and physically in cyber secure? Is this helping with clean? Is this engaging with a customer experience? And then also, it increasing our resilience to adapt to climate change? So when we look at opportunities, we look at both, like you said, decarbonization and adaptation at the same time. When we're upgrading something or expanding our system to support electrification, we ask if we're going to be there, if we're going to dig a shovel in the ground, if we're going to create new infrastructure, can we make it more resilient rather than treating them as separate efforts? So we've been talking about it as adding multi value benefits to projects that we're doing. So the biggest interdependency is that as electrification increases and there's more people that rely on our electric system, we frame it as the system has to be more resilient. It really has become a foundation to tie in with the carbonization, something that we can't layer in later. So really lastly, really thinking through multi value projects that deliver multiple benefits for customers and the more that projects check the core customer resilient and clean, the more that we prioritize those jobs. Okay. For a regulated utility, every major resilience investment has to be justified through a rate case or an investment plan. How do you build the case for adaptation spending? What kinds of analysis or frameworks have been the most persuasive with or supported by the regulators? And where do you feel like the methodology is still catching up? Yeah, it really has to deal with what the other panelists have said. It's something that has to be rooted in a strong foundation and data. So in our resilience plan, we use detailed climate projections where we work with Columbia University, NYSERDA and New York State Public Service Commission, really thinking through what does that mean for the risk assessments that we have? How do we think about the different scenarios for the future? And then look at where our system is vulnerable and why action is needed. It's really creating a process that helps make the case in a really structured and transparent way. It's also important to benchmark rate. What are other utilities doing? What are other public infrastructure owners doing? What are thought leaders and consultants like Rambo? How are they thinking about these approaches as well? And is it consistent with broader industry practice? And also other countries, European, Asia, like are we doing things that we need to learn from each other? But we wanna make sure that we focus on investments that deliver reliability of benefits today and add resilience benefits, which makes it more tangible in an investment plan. I think resilience is one of those where we really feel that it's a shared responsibility, we have to be coordinated, we have to collaborate, and it's really thinking through while the method is still evolving about how we think about the long term benefits and justifying it, We're making decisions today that will play out over many decades. We're making investments today that will help avoid outages and disruptions for customers in the decades to come. Okay, and you talked about reliability and other stakeholders. So with Con Edison's grid, as a foundational infrastructure, when it goes down the resilience plans of hospital, transit systems, buildings, and entire communities go with it. How do you think about that system of systems reality? And how do you engage with municipal and city agencies, large customers, and other stakeholders who are doing their own resilience planning and need to understand what the grid can and cannot absorb? Jen, that is a really good question because I think we also had a resilience meeting this morning. For climate resilience planning to be effective, it has to really include a broad range of stakeholders. It really has to leverage external expertise. So we collaborate and we coordinate with other utilities in New York state and around the country to think through and advance different resilience initiatives and efforts. But we also benefit from being in an area where there is leadership in climate resilience. So we can share resources and think through climate science data. We have the New York City panel on climate change. We look at the best practices in terms of maybe having a variety of stakeholders that really challenge us to work with us and support us to advance the goals together, which is the New York State Department of Public Service, the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, other municipality representatives, advocacy groups for customers, environmental groups, and various others. So we, since even twenty twelve, this is a couple of different iterations post Sandy, but we've convened a group of external stakeholders, fifty stakeholders at many organizations really to serve on an external resilience working group. The purpose of which is really to provide input and feedback to some of the things that we've talked about in our vulnerability studies, think through how it impacts their communities and organizations, and really what are the things that we're looking at in our resilience plan. This effort really adds to previous efforts. It's really to look at and engage on how do we take the infrastructure strengthening that we're doing with our own infrastructure. Other teams are sharing what they're doing upstream and downstream and really thinking through how does this all serve community and customer needs. So maybe the last thing is a more tangible item is we've also integrated climate scenarios into our emergency preparedness drills and exercises so that we can actually drill like increasing heat waves or increasing rain and seeing how we react, but as well as other people upstream and downstream of us. So that's been a really fruitful practice. Great. Thank you, Nelson. Very interesting. Let's move on to an all panelist question. So we'll start with Rebi and we'll have the same question for each of you. Can you share an example of where a climate risk assessment or a lesson learned from an extreme weather event led to a specific change in how your organization designs, operates, or invests in its system? We're curious about the full arc from the initial risk finding through the implementation. I you know, I think it's not necessarily we change how we look at risks and how we think about mediations. It's just like how we became much more systematic. Because it's not always, you know, great. I have all these predictive models saying, flooding risk is gonna increase for thirty percent of the assets of that particular investments in thirty years. The the we're trying to focus on not that, but we're trying to focus on what are we gonna do with that information. So we've been shifting more and more. How do we think about what that means for us? Like, how do we mitigate against that risk? And, you know, we can be prepared for some of the risks that are, like, sort of all these predictive models, like, tell us. But what if we have something like Texas freeze that happened in two thousand twenty one? Nobody predicted that. Nobody knew about that. So they were not only focusing on, like, the plans and mitigations, but as Nelson talked about that as well, like, emergency response. But we then Nelson said it very well. Resilience is a resilience is a shared responsibility. So we have to work together with all the other industries in the supply chain, with the communities, with the workforce, with the agencies to make sure if something like this were to occur, that we work together. So we're focusing more and more on that side of the picture in addition to getting prepared. Great. Aaron, how about how about you? Is there a specific weather event that changed the way you designed or operated or invested in your infrastructure? Sure. Yeah. We've had a lot of, they're not, you know, we haven't had super storms. We've been lucky hurricanes never turned left up the Potomac and hit DC since the 1970s. So, we're doing okay on major, major catastrophic events. But we do have a lot of, you know, sudden flash flooding that is similarly unpredictable, like Rebbe has mentioned. And in twenty twenty three, there's a certain low point on a major road, Rhode Island Avenue in DC and it rained a lot and the storm drains couldn't drain fast enough and unfortunately, there's a little retail strip right at the low point of that road that included a a doggy daycare where unfortunately, ten of the the dogs drowned during that flood event. Luckily, none of the workers did, but, that led to an emergency legislation to create like a new special zone in that just a tiny one block stretch of that road to restrict what retail uses could go into that space. And it's prompted a bigger conversation for us of how can we plan ahead and not be reactionary to that and kind of hit it with a sort of special zone hammer, but instead use the modeling we're doing of flood risk throughout the city to identify where those spaces are and figure out what kind of a little bit more nuanced strategies can we can we apply to control things like land use or retail use and things, and which might not be applicable in every high flood risk area. So that was that's one of the many major events that has prompted, you know, action in the district but I would say that there's just been a trend very similar to what Revy was just saying of trying to be more systematic across the board and less kind of responding to the single event. Yes, Nelson? Yeah, so take it a little bit to the engineering piece. Think a good example is our storm hardening program that came out of the lessons learned after Hurricane Sandy. That made it clear we're a coastal city, so it's coastal flooding and storm surge also pose significant risks to our critical infrastructure. So post that, we elevated equipment, installed flood barriers, redesigned stations to withstand higher water levels. I think over time, changes have been fully integrated into how we design and upgrade the system. And the full arc is really observing the behavior, analyzing it more systematically, adding the climate change component to it and the projections, and then really embedding those resilience measures into our standard planning and design practices. So an example is post Sandy, we've designed our substation walls or barriers to FEMA one hundred year flood protection measures with one foot of the lower rise plus two free to freeboard, which is for a wave action. So that's a FEMA plus three feet when you talk to our designers. Based on the reviews, the continued resilience climate change studies into twenty twenty three, based on increasing sea level rise, we've now changed our designs to incorporate a FEMA one hundred year storm, three feet of sea level rise, plus two free to freeboard. So a FEMA plus five foot barrier. So making that, strengthening those flood design standards really helps because we have really long lived assets. So taking that into consideration when we're building new substations, new areas, in addition to adding technologies and innovation, addition to the store readiness and restoration, it's really taking a look at what are the things that you need to do to design for climate change. You just can't say, hey, engineers design for climate change. It's really, Here's some data by decade. Where is this infrastructure gonna be and equipment gonna be? And then design to that new normal. And maybe based on what Ravi and as well as Aaron has been saying, to the extent that there are more increasing frequent events or more tail events, those are things that we're going to scenario plan or review as increasing risks that we see happening and then continually study every five years these types of risks to see if those risks are increasing and do we need to change design practices. Thanks, Jen. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think we can learn a lot from these severe weather events, but obviously, where we wanna push as an industry is the proactive planning so that we can really protect people and our infrastructure and you know, make everything more resilient for the future. So, with that, I will see if there's any questions and let's see. The first one is, what's been the hardest part of translating client assignments? Client science into engineering and investment decisions? Is it the data itself getting alignment internally on what the projections mean or something else? I can take the first crack. This is Nelson. When you do something else, when we started in twenty sixteen through twenty nineteen, right? It was the first time that our utility really started to think through and working with the city and others. How do we take global climate data, downscale it for a region like New York City and really come up with our engineering practices and tools? And like I mentioned before, you can't just tell your engineers, hey, design for climate change now. It's really thinking through what do you need to design for a future system where the heat is going from four days a week over ninety five degrees to maybe even seventeen or thirty two days over ninety five degrees? How are you thinking about the sea level rise and how does that affect our equipment? So I think it was more, we polled and engaged with and workshops with over a hundred engineers and SMEs in our first iteration and continue to do that throughout. So I would say it's the process of thinking through what the actionable insights are from the data coming up with a systematic, I like the word that Reba used, systematic process to really think through how do we identify items with the climate data? How do we assess based on the infrastructure we have in looking towards the future? And then if we had more of a white clean sheet of paper, what is our resilience roadmap? And really I wanna thank our New York state regulators and stakeholders because they gave us the ability to do that for five, ten and twenty years and really thinking through challenging our own internal engineers. So it's really rising to the challenge, taking the data and really thinking through the projections, but then also seeing now these new potentially concurrent events and other items. Anyone else? I wanna add like something very similar to Nelson. I think the biggest challenge is translating the data because it can get very scientific. So we need to translate it into how the engineers are thinking about the design and the resiliency of the asset, and then how my investment theme team is thinking about the cost and financial impact. When I say, like, for example, engineering design, etcetera, Nelson said it. Right? Yes. Increasing average temperatures. Tell me what it means. What temperatures we're talking about? Because most of the assets today, if I'm talking about a gas generation plant, for example, they do have flexibility because they think about it. There are days. So when it's between, I'm making it up, like thirty to forty Celsius degree, they adjust the operating efficiencies so that the plant doesn't loo lose any efficiencies, but then above certain degree, that's a problem. Or if I'm talking about flooding, what does that mean in meters or feet so that I can think about spillway capacity or I can think about how much am I supposed to elevate? So that translation is the hardest part working with the climate data in my perspective. I think in in the public sector, we we have a lot of the data and we've done a lot of the math on, you know, how high should we build the the finished floor elevations in this area. But it's also a procedural and leadership challenge for us too. You have to get so many different agencies on board to be thinking like that. And so many standards that need to be changed, standard, you know, operating procedures amongst different teams. So it's kind of an, sort of a, operations questions as much as it is a scientific one. Thank you. And Erin, you touched on somewhat of a holistic look, across different groups. And the next question tailors into that. How can the various industries you work in come together to help promote resilience on a larger scale? Well, I I might start there. One thing that, even in the planning for for this panel, were talking, you know, Revy was talking about how in the, you know, energy industry, they've been doing this risk analysis for decades and looking at weather patterns and, you know, doing the math on what that risk costs and how, you know, how much it's worth investing here or there and how you need to engineer out of those risks. And the public sector, when we do capital planning, we don't always do that math and haven't before. And I think there's a lot to learn both from, you know, investment, outfits like Rebbe's, but also like the insurance industry that does a lot of pricing of climate risk to inform like the public sector and help those models that that private sector is using to price risk and evaluate risk and make decisions on, you know, what what to build where or how much to invest in resilience, think would be really helpful in the public sector capital planning process. I think we we need to work together. This is a shared responsibility, and we can share knowledge. That's one. We have to build stronger supply chains because there is a lot of interdependency now. Like we're talking about manufacturing, transportation, energy, and you you have to build diversification so that you don't rely on dependency on one single point of failure. But the services continue. We all serve customers. I mean, Nelson served New York City and we serve a lot of customers everywhere else and and it's in DC. So we have to make sure the dependencies are less and we have more redundancies. And then we have to support communities together. Like the emergency response, I talked about like, you have to work with the communities and different agencies and different parts of the stakeholders. We have to do it together. And lastly, we talk about physical risk from climate change. And because it all comes down to environmental risks increasing because of actions we're all taking. Right? So if we do invest in sustainable practices, and I know a lot of people don't like that word anymore, but it is true, like more renewable energy, more sustainable metals, more efficient resources. I think we only like strengthen then long term economic and environmental resilience and that will help. Yeah, maybe picking off one point that Rebbe was talking about where, you know, to the extent of whether we're upstream or downstream, really taking a look at how energy and water intersect things that we've been talking about with Ramble and others. And also thinking about how rail transit, other infrastructure owners, really making sure that we convene, we share the information like Rebi talked about, but also what risk tolerance are you planning for? Why are you doing that and how are you embedding it? And to the extent of we are upstream from you, this is how we're designing it, We wanna make sure that we share the reasons why so that others including communities can work on their own resilience and personal resilience plans. Great. We probably have time for one more quick question. What do you see as the biggest resilience challenge currently facing industries today? Supply chain instability. Because you're not only dependent on your assets, but you're also, like, depend on the assets that are serving the upstream and downstream. So I think that's the hardest one. You can only con you can control what you own, but for what's in the supply chain and value chain, that's harder. I think it's all comes down to, like, communicating, educating, and convincing sometimes. Yeah, I think for us, I think climate science can only go so far. I think it's, when we're looking at these projections, it's thinking about heat waves and sea level rise, But there are increasing hazards and one thing climate science is telling us is there will be more frequent and intense events. So how intense, how do we think about it? There could be swings up and swings down. So to the extent of really thinking through maybe what Rebbe talked about, the role of insurance for organization, how you're doing your resilience framework and programs, and then also thinking about how are you thinking through the more emergency preparedness types, risk reviews, or even long tail black swan events. I think those things all kind of make up what our framework would look like. Great. Well, thank you very much. You to all the panelists. And I just want to turn it over to Casey, just to close out our session today. Thanks, Jen. And thanks again for all of our panelists for being here. It was a really interesting conversation. So I'm just going to close out right now, with thank you for everyone who's attended. Our next session in the let's close the gap on resilient society series will take place in, late summer or early fall. You can save your spot now, by going, like I said, to that homepage we have, or you can scan the QR code that is up on your screen now. Great. Thank you, Casey. Thank you again to the panelists, and everyone have a wonderful day.

Good morning. My name is Adam Tindalschlicht, and I'm sector lead for ports transportation and infrastructure at Ramboll based in our Milwaukee, Wisconsin office. We're really excited to have you all here with us this morning. For those that I've not met and worked with in the past, I'm the former director of the Port of Milwaukee, and I also served as an executive at the US Department of Transportation in Washington DC during the Biden administration. Our conversation today will focus on how ports are moving and recognizing risk and building readiness into their infrastructure and operations. As all of you on this call know, maritime gateways are increasingly fee facing climate pressures, extreme weather, and evolving operational challenges while still facing a need to move more goods more efficiently. At Ramboll, we believe that resilience is an important part of how we think about infrastructure planning and design, which is why we're excited to host this conversation today with leaders from across the US maritime sector. What you're going to hear is a fantastic panel representing all parts of the maritime and infrastructure ecosystem. Our panelists bring expertise from three different US ports representing the Great Lakes region, the Gulf Coast, and the Pacific Coast, as well as a national organization which focuses on sustainable infrastructure standards. Each panelist will briefly introduce themselves and share how their organization is approaching resilience today. We'll then move into a discussion with all of you to further explore planning, operational strategies, funding frameworks, and lessons learned. Please feel free to use the audience chat and the question feature so we can bring you into this discussion at the end of the webinar. For those who are less familiar with Ramboll, we're a global engineering architecture and sustainability consultancy, and our work spans a wide range of infrastructure sectors, including transportation, ports, energy systems, water, and environmental services. Across the US and Canada, we have about two thousand professionals supporting public sector and private sector clients. Many of those projects are helping infrastructure owners and operators plan, design, and deliver systems that are both economically competitive and environmentally sustainable. Ports are a particularly interesting space for us as the maritime industry sits at the intersection of transportation, the energy transition, environmental stewardship, and economic development. Ramboll's corporate mission is captured in the phrase, the partner for sustainable change. For us, that means in practice helping clients navigate the transition towards sustainability and resilient infrastructure systems. Climate resilience is an important part of our mission because the infrastructure that's built today will operate for decades into an uncertain climate future. Our teams at Ramboll help clients understand climate risk, develop adaptation strategies, and integrate those strategies into real projects. The port sector specifically, Ramboll supports clients across the entire project life cycle from early planning through implementation. Now much of our work happens early in that process when ports are evaluating opportunities, risks, and long term investment strategy. This can include feasibility study work, impact assessment, and environmental review processes such as NEPA and CEQUA in California. We also help ports identify and quantify greenhouse gas emissions, develop decarbonization strategies, and conduct climate vulnerability and adaptation plans. By integrating these analyses early, ports are made smarter in their decision making about infrastructure investment while ensuring that their projects remain resilient over the long term. It is now my pleasure to welcome our first expert panelist, Taylor Mitchell. Taylor is the sustainability manager for the Detroit Wayne County Port Authority and I'll leave it to Taylor to introduce more about herself and her work. Good morning, Taylor. Good morning. Thank you so much, Adam. And it's very cool to be considered a expert in maritime, but I appreciate the compliment so much. And thank you to the Ramboll team for allowing me to speak today. As Adam said, I am the sustainability manager, Taylor Mitchell's sustainability manager for the Detroit Wayne County Port Authority. And thank you to my executive director, Mark Schrupp, who's really been leading us as a team within the sustainability world. Next slide, please. So as mentioned, the Detroit Wayne County Port Authority, we are a government entity, funded by the city of Detroit, Wayne County, and the state of Michigan founded in nineteen seventy eight. Of course, as the other ports, we promote the movement of cargo on water even though we are not as large as some of our coastal ports with container ships and things of such. We are a much smaller operation specifically. We have our cruise dock. We are a cruise ship champion as the Great Lakes has a new booming industry of cruises coming through. We host those cruise ships, and then we also, of course, promote maritime jobs, economic development, as well as environmental stewardship on the waterways. Next slide. So the Port of Detroit actually is a collection of twenty three private terminals and two public patrolling entities. We deal with a declining eight million tons annually of bulk materials such as coal and cement. As I said, we're not like the coastal ports. We don't have containers and, like, things like that within the Great Lakes necessarily even though a few of our my other port peers are, you know, increasing their containership operations. We mostly deal with the the gritty dirty things. Right? The the the bulk material that gets windy and causes those issues related to those things as well as, you know, steelmaking and heavy equipment. And these are very old sites. These are very heavily industrialized terminal sites that have been around since Henry Ford began his work, dominating the the car industry. Right? And we are also a logistics hub. We have two international bridges, between Canada and Detroit that sees about ten thousand trucks a day going back and forth across the Southwest Detroit region and downriver. And that can cause, as you can imagine, lots of pollution. And we'll talk about that next next slide, please. So over the last three years, the Port Authority has embarked on this ambitious decarbonization and air quality improvement plan to significantly reduce emissions from those poor operations, as I mentioned, specifically the movement of goods. Through the state of Michigan, a planning grant from the state of Michigan, we were able to assess our current greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation of goods or the movement of goods, as I mentioned, which is the ships, the drayage or the trucks and trucks and rail, and the equipment on-site, so the goods and handling equipment, to be able to establish a road map to reach net zero. As you see here from these images, we are dealing with where we we sit in front of the Port of Detroit sits in front of what is known as the most polluted ZIP code in Michigan. This is a generational impact of air quality, pollution, from the industrial operations. Right? And so we also are dealing with, in terms of resilience and and mitigation, dealing with the stormwater management issues as we see an increase in precipitation, which is causing a lot of flooding, and a lot of, backup sewage sewer management, right, from the precipitation that has now been impacted due to, climate change, right, and the the increased temperatures and the drops in temperatures. We were able to, be the the bridge between those private entities, those private terminals, and the community who has long kind of had this butting head. Right? Obviously, we're rep we we understand the reason why there's been a butt of head. Right? We're dealing with people who have increased rates of asthma and respiratory cancers because of these terminal industrial operations regarding, you know, the port. So as a port authority, while we don't have control or authority actually over the private entities, we've been able to, through this research, bridge that gap and hopefully hold all of us accountable on decreasing our decarbonization or decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions and air quality. Next slide, please. So with that said, we found that thirty thousand two hundred and ninety six tons of carbon dioxide equivalents is encompassing that movement of goods, as I mentioned, the shipping, the goods and handling equipment, the drayage, and actually also the administration of the port facility. So we did not include the actual processing of cement or the processing of steel. Right? We just focused on the movement of goods because as the port authority, we felt that that is our boundary. That is what we can impact. And then, of course, what we found is that the trucks are the trucks in the rail are is our biggest percentage of that of that tonnage. And so we have to think of ways of solutions for that. Right? And I'll talk about that next next slide. So with that said, we began to look at opportunities of not just electrification because I know that is kind of the the the popular word, but also just alternative fuels because we're dealing with heavy, huge trucks and huge equipment on-site dealing with bulk bulk materials, wheel loaders, and things of such. So hydrogen, biodiesel, green methanol, researching those alternative fuels options and solutions. Right? Next slide, please, Adam. So with that said, we were able to create this achieved strategic plan between now and two thousand and forty of a net zero goal by two thousand and forty encompassing the trucks, the ships, and the goods and handling equipment using things such as biodiesel, hydrogen, electrification, all of the opportunities of of mitigation, opportunities of decreasing decreasing carbon emissions. And so we're chugging along this two thousand and forty goal. The next slide. And with that, also, we were able to create these two committees that represent both of our major stakeholder, which is the community and the private terminal operators. They both meet quarterly. They both hold the port authority and each other accountable. The port side progress lunch and learn series for our low carbon port committee for our terminal operators have been really an opportunity to allow the space to learn for our terminal operators. We're dealing with guys that have been in the industry for fifty years. They may not understand hydrogen fuel as it is today. So giving that space to to discuss and learn from some of the maritime true experts and get an understanding of the solutions have been a really great space. And then our community advisory board has been really effective of just speaking their mind and telling their truths and and bridging those gaps as well with those that have long time just had a mistrust in government. Right? Next slide. And with that said, and for focusing on decarbonization, we also are focusing on air quality. So we have purposely placed air quality monitors across the Port of Detroit region, tracking their AQIs for this last year. And we also placed one on our cruise dock. Our cruise dock is really the only body that you know, entity that we have control over. And we did find that we are seeing higher AQIs when a cruise is stopped. So now we're discussing with our cruise lines how we can mitigate that and how we can address maybe, you know, some idling vessels and shutting them down and the buses that come. What can we do and what solutions can we make, at our Port Authority office to ensure that our AQI is not having a spike when we're having cruises. And that has really been a great operation. This this platform through Just Air here in the city of Detroit is publicly available. It's a website that our community members can track, so we've been enjoying that. And lastly, as I'm sure many of you have seen, the EPA Clean Ports grant went out. We won, twenty five million dollars, about twenty five million dollars to invest in electric equipment and research hydrogen fuel. This research has been going really well. You know, there's been hiccups, of course, but being able to really directly invest into electrification and into hydrogen fuel, really speeds us ahead on that twenty forty goal. And so we're trucking along with that as well. No pun intended. Next slide. With that said, please stay up to date with us. As I mentioned, we are all in the space of learning. I think, as a sustainability manager, I can be the the tree hugger and the person that has this, you know, beautiful outlook on the environment, but the reality is there are solutions that are causing investment. Right? So we have we work with our city of Detroit, with our state of Michigan, and our county to really find ways to carry and stick those, those those solutions that are needed from our private terminals and, you know, supporting them as much as we can and also expecting them to rise to the occasion. So with that said, thank you so much, Anna. I'll leave it to you. Thank you, Taylor. And for those of you listening to the webinar, again, you can use the question function and the chat function to submit questions or thoughts that you're having that the panel can address after we hear from all of our expert speakers. Next up is Emily Federer, Director of Sustainable Development for the Port of New Orleans. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having me, Adam, and thanks to Ramboll for the for putting in on this presentation today. I think it's a really great way to share our different stories about what we're doing at our different ports, and I'm happy to hear, all the work that Taylor's been doing since she's been at the Port of Detroit. I've been with Port of New Orleans for eleven years, and served in different environmental capacities currently over all of our sustainability programs, influence projects to help them develop sustainably at the port and over our environmental compliance and permitting for Port Nola. Next slide please. So the Port of New Orleans covers a three parish jurisdiction. As many of you may know, Louisiana has parishes rather than counties. So we cover Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes shown here with our goal to maximize maritime commerce for our region. Next slide. Our port owned areas cover the areas that you can see in blue here and we, encompass operations in partnership with the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad. We have cargo and container terminals, a cruise terminal, for ocean going vessels as well as river cruises going up river as far as the Twin Cities, Minnesota. Our Inner Harbor industrial properties, and future Louisiana International Terminal, which is slated to get a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers hopefully later this year. We're just waiting on that. Next slide. Port of New Orleans is considered a diverse landlord port. I believe Port of Detroit is an operating port so they're actually the organization that's handling the materials. Taylor has a lot more control over how the bulk materials are handled via the direct organization that's handling that material. As a landlord port, we lease our properties and maintain the infrastructure that they operate on. So we have a container terminal, where we move about eight hundred TEUs per year. We move bulk and break bulk materials and project cargo. This is a photo of me standing in in front of some massive windmill blades that came in on an ocean going vessel and transported over to barge to go up to the Midwest. We have our New Orleans public belt railroad that helps us with our intermodal exchanges. Industrial real estate, helps us move cargo, and there's some light manufacturing and and smaller niche cargo movements that happen on the on the Inner Harbor navigation canal. And then finally, our cruise industry where we host home port for Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian. We have a few Disney cruises per year. So it's it's an exciting cruise industry where we also have over a million, cruise passengers that come through the Port of New Orleans per year. So Port of New Orleans environmental and sustainability journey really started right before hurricane Katrina. Our board, wanted the port to pursue an ISO fourteen thousand one EMS. However, hurricane Katrina came and, stopped that progress from happening, and the priorities really changed here in New Orleans. Finally, two thousand twelve, they got back to thinking about how the port would handle environmental issues. Previously, our engineering department would cover anything that needed to be handled from an environmental perspective through consultants. Finally got the first environmental manager in twenty thirteen. I joined the port towards the end of twenty fourteen. We also joined Green Marine and became a certified Green Marine port in twenty fifteen and became involved with the environment committee with AAPA. We won our first year grant, for a clean truck replacement incentive program to help replace drayage trucks for our for our owners and operators in New Orleans for the drayage trucks. We had a branded keep it clean campaign and worked with EPA on a pilot trash free waters program. That was also in twenty fifteen. So we did a lot of outreach for the community to help reduce litter around the port, is a huge issue in New Orleans. We also won a Brownfields area wide planning grant from EPA, that helped us catalog our old industrial properties. Port of New Orleans was established by the state of Louisiana in eighteen ninety six and our industrial properties, and the industrial canal was dug and opened in nineteen twenty three. So all those properties around there were established as industrial sites before there were any environmental, regulations so that's been a huge challenge for us. And then we released as a result of the brownfields grant, the port inner harbor revitalization plan in, twenty twenty. And every five years, we also do a five year environmental audit, to help us stay on track with all of our environmental obligations. In twenty twenty one, we acquired the property for the future Louisiana International Terminal, which is the the site that you saw downriver. We're working on building that out right now. And, you know, the last couple years, we we replaced our one hundredth truck with CleanTrip. We've completed five grant programs through the EPA and our state clean diesel program, for CleanTrip, which is really exciting and very meaningful to our, our trucking partners in terms of their own personal air quality, their truck reliability, and then also improving our our near port air quality. These trucks are typically making multiple runs into the port of New Orleans on a daily basis, doing local runs between the canal and the container terminal as well as up to Baton Rouge and back to New Orleans. And then in twenty twenty five, we completed another five year environmental audit and, registered our LIT project with Envision. So it's been a long road. I think we've accomplished a lot and I'm really excited to keep moving moving the needle on many of these projects. Next slide. So this kind of just covers what my sustainable development department includes. Our guiding frameworks and principles from the sustainability perspective, with Green Marine, the AAPA Environment Committee, Envision. And then in twenty twenty four, there's a new program out there called Electric Vehicle Adoption Leadership and we are awarded a silver, award for that for our electric fleet that we have here at the Port of New Orleans administration building and then, the charging stations that are also included with that, and we have charging available to our employees. Some of the grant programs I already talked about, listed here that are handled within sustainable development. Our environmental programs really focus on compliance and moving the needle, further for all of our tenants, our, real estate projects, construction, rail, and just across the port in general. And then from a permitting perspective, we have a permitting manager for the properties that we own. Any projects that happen on the port, we do give permits for construction similar to the way a city would, and then assist our tenants and our construction department with, any regulatory permitting that needs to be completed. Next slide. So Green Marine has really been a huge part of our sustainability journey at the Port of New Orleans. We were the eighth port in the US to gain certification. On the slide here, you can see our results from twenty twenty four. We're actually working on submitting our twenty twenty five results right now. Those are due Friday. So getting those in line, but they really Green Marine really provides a framework, that gives us goals and, different aspects to reach, you know, guidance and, to reach different levels, within Green Marine and it's it's very rigorous. They update the program every year. And then on the right side of the slide here, you can kinda see, the process by which we, go through that certification every year. Annually, we self evaluate, and then every two years, we we get a third party external verifier to verify what we what we're actually saying we do. This year, we are we will be going through that process in April. So, working on that right now. And then we have a really fun annual conference at Green Tech, which, my colleagues on the call here, we were just talking about that is coming up in, in June. So looking forward to that. Next slide. A little bit more about our project, with the Louisiana International Terminal. We started scoping and identifying sites for this project all the way back probably before twenty eighteen. It's been it's been quite a journey, but we we identified five different sites. The reason that we need to build this project is actually right behind me. You can see, our crescent well, I guess when we go on camera after, we have the crescent city connection bridge in New Orleans which limits the the height of ships that can come into the port of New Orleans. Container ships are getting bigger as the economy of scale builds. So we needed to find a site down river where we can continue to have container business on the Mississippi River. We're the only container port in Louisiana and this would be a huge a huge downfall for the economy here if we cannot open a new terminal in Louisiana. We're working with partners with Ports America and TIL to form a joint venture. Both of these operators currently are Green Marine certified in New Orleans and we've been working with them on the Envision program to help us pursue, additional frameworks of moving the needle to build on sustainability as well as resilience. So much of resilience is tied to how we act sustainably. One of the measures we're using here at at LIT is, instead of moving thousands of dump truckloads of sand to build up this property for the project, for for the stability of the container yard. We will be using dredged river sand. We've we've tested that sand for contaminants as well as geotechnical sustainability, suitability. We have a dewatering process of of how to dredge and remove the water from that sand so that's been quite an interesting process to go through. Some other aspects, we're investigating all of the different electric equipment that we can purchase, that we can utilize on the property. All of our current electric or all of our current ship to shore cranes at our current terminal are electric, and we do plan to continue to use those as well as the the RTGs that the port owns, at our current terminal. And then the the other exciting part of this project and my hope is that we will be, able to help the local community with their flooding. We will be installing a new stormwater pump station specifically for drainage from our terminal, but this will also add to the capacity for for pumping stormwater that drains from the community as well, to improve our resilience overall. And then we're also exploring on-site alternative power generation and storage and how that might work within the terminal. And it's really exciting to build a terminal from the ground up and be able to, really put those sustainability and resilience features into the project and and think that through before it's actually on the ground. Most infrastructure that we have today, around New Orleans is very aged, and it's a lot more expensive to go back and retrofit these items rather than thinking thinking about those situations from the beginning and what might be coming in the future. And that is all I have today and thank you so much. There is my contact information. You can find more information about the Port of New Orleans across all the social medias and look forward to the question and answer. Thank you so much, Emily. Again, reminder for those that are joining us, please put any questions using the webinar tech and we will bring those up to our panelists towards the end of today's conversation. Next, we have Giles Petafort, Director of Environment and Sustainability at the Port of Waikumi in California. Good morning, Giles. Hey, good morning. Adam, thank you very much for making this opportunity available. Really excited to talk to you all. Got a great story to tell that's kind of a journey. So kind of buckle up because there's a lot of content to get through in about eight minutes. So we'll just get rolling. So let's jump right into the next slide, we may. We're gonna talk about this sort of from more of a regional big picture perspective because that's really how we see resiliency as, kind of a challenge and a, something that's going affect or is affecting every single person in the country and globally. So just a little bit of background, you can see the green dot right there proximate approximately close to LA and Long Beach down there, right, the two biggest container ports in the country. We're only about forty miles from them as the crow flies or the dolphin swims. So we had to sort of do our own thing. We have our own kind of cargo flavor, and that is really refrigerated containers. We move all of the Chiquita and Del Monte bananas that come into the western US, and we bring a lot of cars. People in California love their cars. About four hundred thousand of them a year come in through our port. So that makes us number one West Coast banana port, number sixteen US container port, and number five, US auto port. So we are a very small little port, but, man, we punch way above our weight because we're all about cargo velocity and moving it off port. And that's really relevant to the conversation because we're gonna talk about interconnectivity. So next slide. Alright. So as all of my colleagues have spoken to earlier, we're looking at inside the gate electrification. We're looking at decarbonization, right, elimination of tailpipe emissions, getting rid of diesel particulate matter, getting rid of diesel soot, GHG emissions. We're very close to our adjacent community. So we have to take on that that responsibility of cleaning up our operations and assessing our kind of long term vision of integrating sustainability emissions reduction into this goal of growing opportunity for a very disadvantaged community as well. So how have we been looking at that? Well, we've been taking each of these different sources independently. We've got shore power being planned for our our deep draft vessels. We have an emissions capture barge that literally, like a catalytic converter filters the exhaust from the vessels themselves. We're electrifying our light duty fleet. We've got forty three million from EPA to electrify cargo handling equipment. Right? We're looking at all this stuff and taking a lot of responsibility for this comprehensive focus inside the gate. So let's go to the next slide. But if we were to just kind of be satisfied with that and rest on our laurels, we would be missing what is reality today. That picture on the left hand side was actually taken at the port. We've had some of the biggest wildfires in state history in our local community. That picture on the right hand side is very emblematic of our local canyons and our local mountain roads. The the climate whipsaw of heat to cold, rain to drought is something that's affecting the entire world. This is our reality, and it is not an existential threat. It is an immediate threat that is facing everybody. So let's go to that next slide if we may. Back in twenty twenty three, it was right before Christmas, it was December twenty first, we had a rainstorm that hit the port. Now this is not that abnormal to have a rainstorm here, but one which drops about three and a half inches of rain on the port in about forty five minutes is really, really unusual. And why this is relevant is because, well, as you can see in the image there, we have critical electrical infrastructure on our port surfaces that when you get that much rain, trying to be managed by a system that is not engineered for that volume of water, you have flooding. And, unfortunately, the peak of that storm event about two AM that morning coincided with a king tide and a high tide. So there was really nowhere for that water to go because there was ocean water throughout our storm drain network as happens at every single high tide. That storm event exceeded the thousand year NOAA prediction for a one hour storm by almost a factor of two. So where does that put us? It basically is off the charts. So what that tells us is there's really no tool. There is no guidance. There is no metric available to ports to understand this risk, And we'll get into that in a second. Let's go to the next slide. So what happened that night is emblematic of a new risk, a new threat, something that all of us as port managers, coastal ecosystem, coastal infrastructure managers have to be cognizant of. And that is kind of this, like, combination pincher movement. Right? Ports are at this unique location right down at the coast. We have increased rain pushing unprecedented volumes of water down our watersheds, bringing surface water flooding, overwhelming our storm drain networks, and we also have sea level rise coming up from underneath. So right in that water sandwich is port infrastructure. And right now, what that means to us has been flooding, power outages, operational paralysis. So this is really critical because if we wanna talk about resiliency, we have to be cognizant that the process begins and ends outside the gate. Right? If we don't have workers at the port, we cannot have cargo moving. If they can't get here because our local roads are flooded, none of the equipment is gonna be operated and none of the critical cargoes are gonna get moved off port. If we're okay inside the gate, but all of our off port partners are flooded, then again, the bottleneck just moves one step out in the supply chain because we have to remember, we are a chain. We are not just our own little islanded thing. We are part of a continuum. That operational discontinuity and those cascading hazards, that is the new normal. So let's go to the next slide. So what did we do about it? Well, we started by basically modeling that risk, understanding flooding. So if you look at that kind of yellow polygon, that's basically the port boundary. And you will notice there's a lot of blue overlaid on that image right there. That is the combination of sea level rise and flood risk. We need to understand this because this is not unique to us. This is just the port. That risk extends throughout our coastal community and affects everything from adjacent housing, adjacent wetlands, and really importantly, like sewag treatment plants which happen to be built at sea level as well because they're gravity fed systems and need to get all that wastewater out into the ocean. This is really the most important piece of this because the community risk driven by this type of flooding is something that us as an early adopter have to facilitate change in the community. Because all of the local jurisdictions are sort of doing their little box piece. Right? They're writing their climate action plans and they're like did it. We're gonna electrify our municipal fleet. Yay. We're done. But that's not the case. We have to get real about that risk. So next slide and that means equitable climate readiness. Communities needing energy storage disconnected from the grid. Our world relies on electrical like we have to look at examples. We have to look at places that have already been doing this adaptation and there's a number of those in California. And they have infrastructure