Infrastructure insurability under escalating climate risks for major works

Infrastructure projects are becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to insure as climate risks intensify. For major civil works, adequate insurance coverage is a prerequisite for contractors to mobilize, yet insurers are tightening terms, raising premiums, or excluding key perils, particularly around floods, wind, wildfire, and other climate-driven hazards. This creates a growing risk that critical projects—especially in high‑risk geographies—cannot reach financial close or proceed to site because contractors cannot secure coverage at acceptable terms.

At the same time, insurance federations and industry bodies are beginning to explore new approaches to climate risk modelling, coverage design, and risk-sharing, but there is no simple, practitioner-friendly playbook that project owners, contractors, and financiers can use to ensure insurability is embedded up front in project preparation and procurement. The challenge is to understand how infrastructure sponsors and contractors can systematically address insurability as an integral part of project development and risk allocation, rather than treating it as a late-stage hurdle that may derail delivery.