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U.S. infrastructure is barely getting a passing grade, and one of the fastest growing problems is climate change. Airports are flooding, bridges are melting from extreme heat, and telecommunications are getting slammed by increasingly extreme weather.
In 2023, at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport, historic rainfall turned runways into rivers, shutting down operations and stranding passengers. In New York City last summer, extreme heat caused metal on a bridge over the Harlem River to expand so much that the bridge got stuck open.
Every single category of U.S. infrastructure is at growing risk from climate change — a finding by the American Society of Civil Engineers, which trains engineers and informs federal, state and local building codes.
ASCE’s latest infrastructure report card gave the nation overall a “C” grade, saying climate-related challenges are widespread, affecting even regions previously resistant to these events.
“We continue to see more extreme weather events, so our infrastructure, many times, was not designed for these types of activities,” said Tom Smith, ASCE’s executive director, adding that it will only get worse.
“Whether it’s ice, snow, drought, heat, obviously, hurricanes, tornadoes, we have to design for all of that, and we have to anticipate not just where the puck is now, but where we think it’s going,” Smith said.
Sectors with the worst grades include airports, power and telecommunications infrastructure. CNBC asked First Street, a climate risk analytics firm, to overlay its risk modeling on these specific locations nationally. It found that 19% of all power infrastructure, 17% of telecommunications infrastructure and 12% of airports have a major risk from flood, wind or wildfire.
Most U.S. infrastructure was built decades ago, and therefore designed for a climate that no longer exists. This has a direct impact on investors in the infrastructure space.
Sarah Kapnick, formerly chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and now global head of climate advisory at JPMorgan Chase, said her clients are asking more and more about the climate impact to their investments.
“How should I change and invest in my infrastructure? How should I think about differences in my infrastructure, my infrastructure construction? Should I be thinking about insurance, different types of insurance? How should I be accessing the capital markets to do this type of work?” Kapnick said.
Both Kapnick and Smith said making infrastructure climate-resilient comes back to the science.
“Climate and science is something that we take very, very seriously, working with the science, connecting it with the engineering to protect the public health, safety and welfare,” said Smith.
But that science is under attack, seeing deep cuts from the Trump administration, which fired hundreds of employees at NOAA, FEMA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology — key government agencies that advance climate science.
“There’s going to be this adjustment period as people figure out where they’re going to get the information that they need, because many market decisions or financial decisions are based on certain data sets that people thought would always be there,” Kapnick said.
The nation’s infrastructure also needs funding. ASCE estimates there is a $3.7 trillion spending gap over the next 10 years to get U.S. infrastructure to a state of good condition.
The Trump administration cuts to spending so far include ordering FEMA to cancel the nearly $1 billion Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which was specifically aimed at reducing damage from future natural disasters.
