Building Climate Resilient Utilities 2025

1 The foundational assumption of a stable, predictable climate, upon which much of the world’s infrastructure was designed, has been undermined by a series of ever more frequent and intense extreme weather events, such as heatwave, floods and windstorms. According to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 20232 and the recently published Blue Book on Climate Change in China 2025,3 the warming trend of the planet’s climate system has continued to climb since the 1990s, with global ocean warming, sea-level rise and glacier melting all accelerating significantly. Consolidated analysis from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirms two milestones: 2015-2024 stands as the warmest decade on record, while 2024 is likely to be the first calendar year with a global mean temperature exceeding 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average.4 These findings provide further evidence that the era of stable climate predictability is over. In its place, a new reality of ever-greater volatility is emerging, where extreme weather events are no longer outliers but commonplace. For China, this is not a distant risk but a present- day reality. The country’s geography is both extremely sensitive to and significantly affected by global climate change, with a warming rate higher than the global average. Extreme weather and climate events are becoming more frequent and intense. In 2024, key indicators – including China’s annual average temperature, ice loss from Glacier No. 1 at the source of the Urumqi River in the Tianshan Mountains and rising sea-levels along China’s coastline (see Figure 1) – all hit new highs. From 1961 to 2024, extreme high-temperature and heavy precipitation events in China increased. Since the late 1990s, the average intensity of typhoons making landfall in China has fluctuated and increased. In 2024, China’s climate risk index reached the highest level since 1961 (see Figure 2), with flood risk and high temperatures being particularly prominent.1.1 New risk landscape: growing frequency and intensity of extreme weather eventsUtilities on the frontline of climate change The rise of compound disasters, with record-breaking heat and floods, has undermined the foundational assumptions on which China’s infrastructure was built. The nation is confronting a new risk landscape of climate variability, where historical data is no longer a reliable guide to future risk. Building Climate-Resilient Utilities: Lessons from China and Future Pathways 5