New York Climate Week 2025: Trends Real Asset Teams Can Act On

Last week in New York, EVORA ran a client roundtable alongside New York Climate Week and joined sessions across the city.  

Climate risk is moving from a side note to a line item. Teams are building adaptation into models, pricing risk at deal stage, and folding decarbonization into everyday decisions. The message from investors and operators is the same: make the business case in plain financial terms, keep the process simple, and focus on actions with a material impact. 

We asked our team of experts for a quick retrospective of what clients and peers are doing now – and what’s showing up in investment decisions.

Joe Ellis – Senior Account Director: 

“This week, we had the opportunity to engage in some fascinating discussions around how climate risk is reshaping investment decision-making in real estate. 

At a session on physical climate risk, we heard how adaptation measures are increasingly being built into financial risk models – with their costs and the risk-mitigating benefits explicitly factored into due diligence, hold period assumptions and exit strategies. We’re also seeing climate risk analysis being applied not just at the asset level, but across fund portfolios. 

We also hosted an insightful roundtable covering a wide array of topics, including strategic decarbonization. While the financial benefits can be harder to isolate, integrating decarbonization into everyday investment decisions is rapidly becoming best practice. The clear takeaway: there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Strategies vary by asset class, geography, and investment style – but what’s consistent is the message that if climate risks and opportunities have a financial impact, we have a fiduciary duty to address them. 

It’s encouraging to continue to see sustainability moving from sidelines into the core of financial and investment strategy. To quote a client of ours:  

‘Don’t get distracted by the noise. We may need to overcome hurdles, we may see a rollback, but we should remain focused on FACTS and realize that we need to continue to fulfill our fiduciary responsibility, which includes monitoring value creation and value preservation through a sustainability and resilience lens.’”  

Kris Kolenc – Business Development Manager, Americas:  

“Given the current political and economic climate during this Climate Week, several of the events my team and I attended all came back to the importance of simply making a clear business case for sustainability initiatives. A ‘sustainable’ option needs to be cheaper or at least cost the same as a conventional option to be approved. Sustainability is simply a positive byproduct of a good economic decision. It also means sustainability teams needs to communicate with the C-suite and other decision makers in financial terms. That alignment will speed decisions and keeps asset teams focused on what has material impact. 

Some other take-aways from Climate Week:  

• While sustainability innovations and progress continue to advance within new development and renovations, it is still clear that the vast majority of our building stock is existing buildings (e.g., the US replaces its building stock at a rate of 1% each year) and we really need to be accelerating decarbonization within this space to move the needle. 

• Insurance is typically the highest cost for a building after taxes. This makes the need to assess climate risk and have adaptation measures in place clear in order to reduce potential insurance claims and climbing insurance premiums 

• We need to accelerate our transition to more renewable energy sources. There are incredible examples of this like Pakistan, where a rapid solar build-out now supplies about 25% of grid power, making solar the largest source and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.” 

Audrey Buckman – Account Director:  

“We see a big need for communication and simplification. Framing sustainability correctly to convince internal stakeholders of the need to prioritize is critical. Best approach is to simplify everything, integrate into existing financial models and processes, and eliminate the notion that sustainability is separate or extra effort. There is a need to collaborate with deal or fund teams and “speak their language”. 

There’s still plenty of uncertainty – from federal policy to what, and how much, to disclose to meet changing investor requests. 

Many teams struggle to quantify value – and there’s no standard way to do it across the industry. The next step is to price future carbon into today’s decisions. 

We also see a need to close gaps between counterparties. Buyers and sellers price risk differently, landlords and tenants split responsibilities unevenly, and teams use mismatched definitions.” 

Key Trends for Real Assets 

To wrap up our New York Climate Week retrospective, here’s a short list you can share with your team. It’s the common ground we heard across investors and asset managers: 

• Climate risk in the model: Adaptation costs and benefits are now in due diligence, hold periods, and exits. 

• Decarbonization is business as usual: Like any financial decision, they are judged on cash flow, capex and payback. 

• Speak finance: Less jargon, more numbers; align sustainability, deal, and fund teams. 

• Existing stock first: Retrofits and operational optimization outrank shiny new builds for impact. 

• Insurance pressure: Rising premiums push structured risk assessment and adaptation. 

• Transition to renewables: Real examples show how adoption can reshape power demand. 

• Keep it simple: Align definitions and expectations across parties. 

• Uncertainty remains: Policy and disclosure expectations are still shifting. 

• Value is hard to price: Start building future carbon costs into today’s decisions. 

Do you have questions or want to compare notes on your portfolio? Contact us and we’ll continue the conversation.