--- title: Infrastructure Can Reduce Climate Risk. But It's Not Enough description: Adaptation will not be enough to protect us from the real costs of climate change. canonical: https://time.com/6050216/biden-executive-order-climate-risk/ author: Justin Worland article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-05-21T15:24:09.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T09:58:14.102Z article:section: Politics og:title: Infrastructure Can Reduce Climate Risk. But It's Not Enough og:description: Adaptation will not be enough to protect us from the real costs of climate change. og:url: https://time.com/6050216/biden-executive-order-climate-risk/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt98443e0ed8a64267/698a19cb4ee2624b63318ff1/GettyImages-1166089171.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Hurricane Dorian Targets Carolinas With Expected Move Northeast og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Infrastructure Can Reduce Climate Risk. But It's Not Enough twitter:description: Adaptation will not be enough to protect us from the real costs of climate change. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt98443e0ed8a64267/698a19cb4ee2624b63318ff1/GettyImages-1166089171.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Infrastructure Is Important to Reduce Climate Risk. But It's Not Enough > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. 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It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: The Empire State Building's Green Retrofit Was a Success. Will Other Buildings Follow Suit? [Watch (HLS stream): The Empire State Building's Green Retrofit Was a Success. Will Other Buildings Follow Suit?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ydQhS316.m3u8) (5:51)  _Published 2021-05-10. Energy usage by large, old buildings like the Empire State Building represents a huge obstacle to cities’ dreams of carbon neutrality. New York City’s buildings account for 70% of its carbon emissions, for example, and half of those emissions are produced by the largest 5% of its structures. But retrofitting old buildings to make them more energy efficient represents a formidable challenge, both from an engineering perspective and in terms of convincing owners that doing so is in their financial interest._  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent May 21, 2021 3:24 PM UTC  Sandbags sit in front of a business to block floodwaters during Hurricane Dorian in Charleston, South Carolina, on Sept. 5, 2019. Sandbags sit in front of a business to block floodwaters during Hurricane Dorian in Charleston, South Carolina, on Sept. 5, 2019. Luke Sharrett—Bloomberg/Getty Images  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent May 21, 2021 3:24 PM UTC In communities across the country, the increasingly visible effects of climate change have launched a race to adapt with new infrastructure. Miami Beach has built water pumps and elevated roads. California has created new rules requiring fire proof materials for new homes at risk of wildfires. Charleston, S.C. is planning to raise its sea wall—as are many other places. But often lost in this infrastructure discussion is the reality that adaptation—even paired with aggressive emissions reduction at a global scale—will not be enough to protect us from the financial costs of climate change. Some communities will inevitably need to relocate; others that stay will pay the price of living with new and more frequent weather extremes. All of this results in a toll on financial wellbeing on both the individual and a societal level that cannot be fixed with new infrastructure alone. On Thursday, after spending the past several months touting his [infrastructure plan](https://time.com/5951505/biden-climate-change-infrastructure/) as a landmark investment in tackling climate change, President Joe Biden recognized the mounting costs associated with a warming planet with a new executive order. The directive mandates that agencies across the federal government address the risks climate change poses to the financial health of Americans as well as the U.S. financial system. “Our modern financial system was built on the assumption that the climate was stable,” Brian Deese, Biden’s chief economic adviser, told reporters on Thursday. “Today, it’s clear that we no longer live in such a world.” Biden’s order is wide ranging. The directive calls on federal regulators to craft new lending rules to address the risk posed to homeowners by climate change. It requires the federal government to evaluate how climate change may hit its own budget, and pushes for new rules requiring companies to publicly disclose how climate change is making them vulnerable. The order restores an Obama-era directive requiring the federal government to determine where costly flooding is expected to occur. The list goes on. The unprecedented move is the first step in a long process that leaves the details up to policymakers. But when implemented, these measures should provide new clarity and transparency about where climate risk lies within the U.S. economy—and help shape where and how communities choose to adapt. It comes at a critical moment as the costs of climate change begin to stack up. Last year, the U.S. experienced 22 climate-related disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in damage. The U.S. has experienced more than $1 trillion in damages from climate disasters over the last 15 years, according to [data](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2020-us-billion-dollar-weather-and-climate-disasters-historical#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20United%20States,NOAA%20map%20by%20NCEI.) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Still, identifying the future costs of climate change remains a challenge—we know there’s a growing problem, but its scale and exact contours are difficult to measure, particularly at the local level. On a global scale, climate change could reduce the value of financial assets by as much as $24 trillion by the end of the century, according to a [report](https://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/us2-5-trillion-of-the-worlds-financial-assets-would-be-at-risk-from-the-impacts-of-climate-change-if-global-mean-surface-temperature-rises-by-2-5c/) from the London School of Economics. That makes investments in climate-related infrastructure difficult to plan. When done right, infrastructure investments play an important role in mitigating this financial risk. Over the years, [various](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/why-it-s-time-to-invest-in-climate-resilient-infrastructure/) [analyses](https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/01/11/every-$1-invested-in-disaster-mitigation-saves-$6) have found that infrastructure investment pays big dividends: $1 invested in climate-resilient infrastructure saves many more dollars in reduced disaster costs. It just has to be the right infrastructure. Local governments have been trying to figure out what that looks like for years. In the coastal city of Charleston, where the number of flooding days increased 750% between 1980 and 2020 and flooding is expected to cost nearly $750 million this year, city leaders are caught between their own infrastructure push and the reality that it may [make sense, in some cases, to simply retreat](https://time.com/5953380/climate-housing-crisis/). The city has launched a number of ambitious infrastructure programs, including a system of tunnels and pumps to remove water from areas prone to flooding, an elevation of the downtown sea wall to protect from rising seas and a rethinking of many drainage systems. And yet the city has also embarked on a program to buy out homes in areas that are so vulnerable to flooding they will soon be uninhabitable, paying homeowners and then razing their houses. The federal government can help fund and guide these local initiatives, and the Administration has made the case that Biden’s infrastructure plan is necessary as a climate adaptation measure. If passed by Congress, the plan would build public housing with resilience to weather disasters in mind, construct new water infrastructure and renovate roads and bridges to withstand climate-fueled extreme weather. But to make sure good money isn’t thrown after bad, measures to evaluate where and how the costs of climate change are stacking up are not only a logical compliment, they are critical. ## Transcript One of the tallest buildings in the world are iconic and symbolic for both the cities in the countries where they're being built. the energy of the Roaring Twenties is manifested in the Empire State Building the representation of not just the city of New York, but the whole country as a whole buildings are responsible for about a third of the greenhouse gas emissions in New York state. And we have millions of old building retrofitting existing buildings is probably one of our most formidable, climate challenges for icons of urban life are at the center of policies to slow climate change in 2019. New York City, enacted, local on 97. Which place is carbon caps on most large buildings within years. The city will find buildings for exceeding. Those caps in at the state level lawmakers are hoping to make New York, a leader in large-scale retrofitting. 90 year old Empire State Building provides a template for environmentally conscious Renovations. That's the one that people are looking at and what did they do, and how are they measuring themselves against that building? In 2010, the Empire State Building completed the first phase of an extensive retrofit within a decade. The retrofit /. The building's energy usage by more than 40% and its save the high-rise more than four million dollars each year. We moved to a Program to reposition the building in a dynamic way as a leader in Energy. Efficiency building health and indoor Environmental Quality is way to differentiate to attract better 10 better credits longer lease terms. There's no Silver Bullet. It's silver, Buckshot, it's lots of different pieces that work together. Return, a tremendous amount of work with our tenants to do things, like lower the energy used to just go see what the lady equipment, heating ventilation and air conditioning. One of the things that we did was to retrofit all of the windows in the building of 6514 windows, we were used over 96% of the existing materials, be added of heinous suspended coated film which manages he came in the summer and heat loss in the winter the added insulation behind Oliver. Radiators we have created the entire Central which is a chiller plant. Reused the shells of these giant machines and we got it done and rebuild them on site. We decided to replace our elevators with the destination, dispatch type of system, which actually uses regenerative braking instead of just friction breaking the generates heat. It generates electricity, There is no shortcut. You have to look at all the systems in a building, and you have to look at the behavior of the human beings that occupy that building these are lessons that we learned that not everyone was yet, you know? We, we intend to inform policy or successful practice and also help other building owners to get to the point where we are and hopefully to get some wipes, the Empire State Building did a decade ago was pioneering, and really lead a Green Building movement and this needs to continue. And we actually need to even go further and deeper. We think about all the buildings we need to retrofit the, the big ones, and the small ones we need to be retrofitting 200 buildings a day every day for the next twelve thousand days. The magnitude of the transformation that we need in our economy, really does require action at every level of government. Are goals in the state or to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 40% by 2030 and 85% by mid-century. the Empire Building Challenge is a first-of-a-kind, public-private partnership to make New York, a global hub for low-carbon and environmentally Sustainable Building Solutions, we selected 10 Partners who we will work through in this public-private partnership to demonstrate low-carbon Technologies, low carbon Solutions in high-rise buildings through these early demonstrations, we will start to learn more about how a building owner Ken decarbonise a high rise building, We will only be successful if we actually show that those low carbon Solutions, whether it's low-carbon buildings or carbon-free power grid that that is a better system for people that's better that create Economic Opportunity and it's a better system that other entities want to replicate whether it's throughout the country whether it's throughout the globe but that's the transformation that that we need. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6050216/biden-executive-order-climate-risk/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6050216/biden-executive-order-climate-risk/"},"headline":"Infrastructure Is Important to Reduce Climate Risk. 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