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Major U.S. manufacturing investments are reshaping industries—but are they ready for future climate risks? Using Jupiter’s ClimateScore Global, we assess 30 high-profile megaprojects to uncover site-specific vulnerabilities and opportunities for climate adaptation and resilience.
Author: Sébastien Burgess, Senior Principal Solutions Architect at Jupiter
Major investments in manufacturing “mega-projects” have been announced in the United States over the past few months.
These planned investments are consistent with policies – shared by both sides of the American political aisle – to support U.S. manufacturing, secure energy independence, and ensure domestic provisioning of critical goods like micro-chips and minerals.
These multi-billion-dollar projects have garnered significant media attention with promises ranging from Micron’s $100B announcement for a megafab in Central New York, to TSMC’s development of the most advanced chip fab in the United States, to Tesla building the largest electric motors plant in the world in Nevada.
These massive investments also present a timely opportunity to consider “climate-proofing” newly built assets by considering future climate hazards that these locations may be exposed to.
A number of Jupiter customers including AstraZeneca and TotalEnergies seize on new planned investments to leverage state-of-the-art climate modeling and consider adaptive measures during the planning and building phase rather than deploying costlier retro-fitting investments later down the line.
In this blog post, we selected 30 of the most high-profile planned investments and assessed each individual site’s unique climate exposure using Jupiter’s ClimateScore™ Global.
Our objective was to identify sources of present and future exposures on assets that presumably will have huge tactical importance to the U.S. economy over the coming decades.
We added two additional dimensions to our analysis, focusing on the planned financial investment total and job creation figures that have been communicated for each project.
Exposure Scoring
Our first approach was to leverage Jupiter’s All-Perils Score. This synthetic scoring approach allows us to analyze all hazards that may potentially impact these individual sites. To dive deeper into our analysis, we leverage Jupiter’s Country-level exposure scoring.
In summary, the Overall Score that we assign to each location is consistent with the US-level percentile exposure for that site. Put differently, a location with an Overall Peril Score of 75 stands in the 75th percentile for exposure domestically in the United States.
A few immediate conclusions stand out: Hyundai Motor Plant (GA), ENEL (OK), and the Novelis Aluminum mill (AL) are in the highest quintile (>80th above) of exposure domestically in the United States. These locations face a “double-whammy” of risk and are both very exposed in the present-day and in the future.
The table below captures these 30 projects and their related Country-level scores. In other words, we benchmark these sites against a US-level distribution of climate exposure.
We can add another dimension to this analysis by integrating planned investment figures.
The earlier conclusions still stand on the Hyundai, ENEL and Novelis sites. But, an additional conclusion emerges on the top-left side of the quadrant which we sometimes colloquially characterize as the “bad surprises” side of the quadrant. In other words, locations that have (relatively) lower levels of present day exposures but high levels of future changes in exposure. Put simply, these locations may be “flying under the radar” in the present but will face significant levels of climate exposure change over the next 3 decades.
Three major sites emerge: Micron (NY), Global Foundries (NY), and GM (MI). These projected sites will be built in New York and Michigan, not states typically associated with substantial levels of climate exposure in the present day but which multiple studies highlight as being particularly vulnerable to future levels of change cite/cite.
Scores are meant to provide high-level, synthesized snapshots of potential exposure risk. Jupiter’s ClimateScore Global also provides quantified projection metrics for each of these sites.
For illustrative purposes, let’s look at two hazards: acute precipitation and heat/humidity-stress.
Acute Precipitation
Acute precipitation is captured here by modeling the expected single-day rainfall (in mm) in a 1-in-100 year event using SSP5-8.5, a high emission scenario.
Acute precipitation can lead to a number of severe business interruptions ranging from riverine and pluvial-related flood impact to the asset itself to disruption of transportation to and from the site.
The expected single day rainfall totals here are projected as line charts. For each modeled year, we provided a median value. This allows us to perform a benchmarking analysis across a select cohort of assets and understand which locations are significant outliers.
In terms of locations that experience maximal levels of rainfall intensity at the 100 year period, the Novellis Aluminium Mill, Texas Instrument Sherman Fabs, Samsung Taylor Fab and the Hyundai Motor Group Megaplant all stand out as being particularly exposed to high-intensity rainfalls.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Tesla Nevada Expansion and TSMC Arizona fab plants, both located in very dry regions of the United States stand to be least exposed to high-intensity precipitation.
Acute heat & humidity stress
For heat & humidity-related stress, Jupiter assessed the locations using ClimateScore Global’s wet-bulb globe temperature index (WBGT).
A WBGT above 32°C can be used to understand when humans may need to curtail outdoor activity due to the risk of heat stress and heat stroke. This threshold is set to 32°C, the “black flag” level identified by the U.S. Army and used by various Occupational Safety bodies around the world. At this threshold, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recommends limiting outdoor work and exercise to 15 minutes, and many sports organizations cancel practice. A WBGT of 32°C would lead to curtailed work hours for agricultural and construction workers, canceled sporting events, and dangerous commutes.
In the plot below, we therefore introduce a third dimension which is the number of promised jobs created at each site which is used as a proxy for the number of employees who presumably could be exposed to heat-related stress. Admittedly, work at these sites will often be performed indoors. With that being said, there is still a strong case to be made about heat-stress being a cause for concern not only in the workplace but also in the communities where these future workers will live.
In the treemap below, the size of each box reflects the number of jobs. It allows us to look at three dimensions: time, heat and humidity stress, and number of jobs.
For the WBGT metric, we also apply a banding approach based on the following categories
- 60-150 annual days where WBGT exceeds 32C (High Exposure-Red)
- 10-60 annual days where WBGT exceeds 32C (Medium Exposure - Medium)
- 2-10 annual days where WBGT exceeds 32C (Low Exposure - Blue)
- <2 annual days where WBGT exceeds 32C (Lowest Exposure - Teal)
With this framework, we produce the following chart:
A couple of key conclusions:
- Both in the present and by mid-century, the Hyundai Motor Megaplant (Georgia), the Rivian EV plant (Georgia) and the Ford BlueOval City Plant (Tennessee) emerge as locations that are projected to 1) create at least 6,000 jobs and 2) are particularly exposed to potentially dangerous outdoor conditions.
- Over the next 2 decades, a number of sites which are characterized as medium risk in the present day, move into the high risk band by 2050. If we specifically focus on sites where at least 4,000 jobs are projected to be created, this trend is an issue for the Ford BlueOval Battery Park in Kentucky, the Panasonic Energy Battery Plant in Kansas and the Scouts Motor EV Plant in South Carolina.
Conclusion
Jupiter Intelligence is increasingly working on new site planning and large infrastructure-scale retrofit projects. From developing sub-daily precipitation metrics, to fine-tuned heat threshold analysis, to delivering state-of-the-art high resolution flood maps, we are committed to helping our customers climate-proof their operations and secure resiliency across their future value chains.
Reach out to learn more and talk to a climate expert.
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About the author:
Sébastien Burgess is Jupiter's Senior Principal Solutions Architect. He leads Jupiter's client program implementation for large, capital-intensive asset operators, including those in power & energy, mining, oil & gas, and other heavy industries. He also oversees Jupiter's customer success program and works closely with Jupiter's strategic consulting partners.
