Ruben Kerkhofs
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rubenkerkhofs.bsky.social
Ruben Kerkhofs
@rubenkerkhofs.bsky.social
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Doctoral Candidate at KU Leuven studying the impact of extreme climate events on the real economy and financial markets
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New preprint available on SSRN about the differentiated impact of physical climate risks on the Indian energy sector. Research led by Abhinav Jindal in collaboration with myself and Gireesh Shrimali.

Link to research: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Abstract: As India confronts the dual challenge of decarbonization and escalating climate hazards, understanding the financial implications of climate-related risks on the power sector is imperative. This study presents a forward-looking, location focused, technology-wise analysis of physical climate risks for Indian power companies using novel asset-level methodologies. To assess physical risks, particularly flood exposure, we use spatially explicit modeling across 424 power-generating assets representing over 90% of India's fossil and non-fossil capacity. Monte Carlo simulations reveal that in the absence of protective infrastructure, average asset losses exceed 19%, with 99th percentile tail risks surpassing 24%. However, investment in 100-year flood protection reduces average losses to under 1% and tail risks to below 2%. Results further show that the effectiveness of risk mitigation varies significantly by technology and geography, with coal and gas assets benefiting most from protective investments, and coastal regions like Kerala and Gujarat showing the highest vulnerabilities. This study provides the first comprehensive empirical quantification of physical climate risks for Indian power firms at asset levels.
August 6, 2025 at 6:25 AM
rubenkerkhofs.bsky.social
Sharing our latest published work on modeling the impact of extreme weather events on financial markets published in Environmental Research: Climate.

Full text available here: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
July 30, 2025 at 11:27 AM