VIDA

Thank you, for this post Yann! It's fantastic to see our common work out in the open now. It will hopefully accelerate the construction of electrification infrastructure in Africa by making it very easy for companies to find attractive sites and for governments to plan their country-wide electrification efforts!

Under #M300 we’re #partnering with VIDA, ESMAP and The World Bank to make (freely) available #AI powered #geospatial #market #intelligence to #DRE companies accelerating #clean #energy #access. More and better #data not only increases the pace and quality of project development it also de-risk #private sector #investments. Stay tuned for the upcoming launch of the M300+ DRE Planning #Platform ! IFC - International Finance Corporation IFC Infrastructure VIDA The World Bank ESMAP - Energy Sector Management Assistance Program Ashish Shrestha Ben Stewart Nicolina Lindblad Nabin Raj Gaihre Malin Sophie Fischer Adiaratou B. Marcel Brühwiler Sarvesh Suri Valerie Levkov Bertrand de la Borde Don Purka Abiodun Aina, CFA Dan Croft Bassem Abou Nehme, CFA Dana Rysankova Jan Kappen Andrew Herscowitz Damilola Ogunbiyi Erik Fernstrom Yadviga Semikolenova Bill Gallery Patrick Doyle Johanna Galan, MBA Demetrios Papathanasiou Ashish Khanna

‼️ Why climate adaptation matters 👉 🌍 In many parts of the world, such as in Africa, it is not a question of economic loss, but of survival. Here, climate adaptation needs to be woven into all programmes and policies: people need more resilience (higher incomes, access to energy and health, water management, etc) and infrastructure/cities need to be built in a resilient way. An example: At VIDA, we recently developed a joint electrification and climate risk assessment for Madagascar, that helps understand where particularly vulnerable people live and where future infrastructure would be at risk. 💶 Even in economies that (still) view it in economic terms, it makes huge sense. According to Nadia Calviño, president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), every €1 invested in prevention and resilience saves between €5 and €7 in repairing damage (see link below). 🙈 Markets (e.g. insurance premiums, interest rates or asset values) do not sufficiently price climate change. This is in part because climate change is still (surprisingly) not well understood by many decision-makers, such as banks, despite repeated warnings from regulators (e.g. European Banking Authority (EBA) or BaFin in Germany). A second reason is that actors often still use climate models that extrapolate linearly from the past, failing to catch the accelerating nature of the risk. At VIDA we have developed advanced models on natural hazards, climate risk and biodiversity that neatly fit into existing risk management and evaluation processes of banks. https://lnkd.in/diW7nA_9 Images from Earth.Org https://lnkd.in/diW7nA_9

How can you use VIDA to build sustainable and resilient infrastructure? Our colleagues Nabin and Angus where in Zambia this week to show how this is done for electrification planning in Africa. On VIDA's country-specific workspaces, you can see where people are and what their electrification status is, and then enrich that with a wealth of other data on social conditions, infrastructure, environment, climate and more - to effectively allocate investments. Our work feeds into the M300 electrification compact and is supported, guided and used by the The World Bank and several African governments. Malin, Jess, Patience, Dolphine, Gabriel, Lucia, Ashish Shrestha, James Knuckles, Ph.D., and shoutout to our friend André Troost from The Future of Energy.

If you evaluate or finance real estate, it's crucial to check for 🌪️ natural hazards, 🌊 climate risks and ☘️ biodiversity. Tobias and Sascha were in Hamburg last week to show how this can easily be done using VIDA. Thank you for the partnership vdpResearch GmbH and HypZert GmbH, Reiner Lux, Ariane Remmel, Andreas Kunert!

Excited to be in Lusaka, Zambia with several colleagues and partners working on Distributed Renewable Energy(DRE) sector. Ashish Shrestha and I will be presenting the VIDA powered M300 DRE platform. This platform has data of every settlement in 58 countries across the world to support governments, investors, private sectors and others to plan and monitor energy access across the world. Join us on Wednesday this week in Lusaka, Zambia at the 8th Mini Grid Action Learning Event by ESMAP - Energy Sector Management Assistance Program.

There are two persistent myths about climate change - reflecting two ends of a spectrum. The first is, that it's not that bad, let's not worry ("what is 1.5 degrees, anyway?"). The second is, that it is catastrophic and we are doomed. Neither is true. As the recently published 2024 climate assessment of the German meteorological institute (Deutscher Wetterdienst) shows, climate change leads to more extreme weather (think floods, draughts, heat waves) especially in Germany, where it happens faster than the global average. Interestingly, the institute changed its methodology to give higher weightage to more recent years. This is a shift from a linear to a non-linear projection, i.e.: climate change accelerates. The second myth is that we can't deal with climate change. We can. And we have to - right now. We are a resilient, inventive species. Once we have accepted the scale of the challenge, we can tackle it. That requires two things: reducing emissions to slow climate change down, and building adaption measures. The latter starts with understanding the risks of extreme weather and climate change to people, ecosystems, buildings, infrastructure, agriculture or supply chains. At VIDA we provide the data for that. Then, we need to build infrastructure (dams, irrigation systems, cooling systems, etc) and strategies (insurances, supply chain resilience, etc) to address these risks. https://lnkd.in/de3y-2Mv

Very excited to be here alongside industry leaders in Lusaka for the 8th Mini Grid Action Learning Event! I'm particularly looking forward to sitting with Georgios Xenakis from TTA - Trama TecnoAmbiental and colleagues from ANPER on a discussion moderated by James Knuckles, Ph.D. On Thursday at 13:00, we'll be discussing the mini grid market in Niger and VIDA's work where we identified over 27,000 potential mini grids across the country. Reach out if you're here and see you soon!

How do climate risks affect business and what can we do about it - as a business (like VIDA and our customers), as an ecosystem player (like KfW) and as a society. That was the topic for our CEO Tobias Engelmeier and Melanie Kehr, Member of the Executive Board at KfW at this year's Münchner Management Kolloquium. Here is the video of the event: https://lnkd.in/dP8U7VYM

Thank you for the opportunity, ESMAP - Energy Sector Management Assistance Program team.