This course is about building sustainable and resilient cities, future proofing real estate and infrastructure assets, and examining how businesses and investors find opportunities in climate adaptation.

The world faces substantial challenges in the face of pressures including rapid urbanization as well as existing and worsening scarcity of resources like energy, water, land and power. Many of these situations are exacerbated by the onset of more frequent and more intense natural perils related to climate change such as wildfire, river flooding, sea level rise, extreme heat, and drought. These events will have wildly variable impacts by geography, peril, wealth, vulnerability, and time frame.

How will individuals, businesses, investors, governments, and global society make choices around what assets – and people – to support, to protect, or to relocate in the response to these phenomena? There are substantial opportunities to create and share value using a variety of analytical tools, materials and methods, risk transfer mechanisms, and finance and contractual structures.

This course is primarily designed for students pursuing careers in decarbonizing energy and mobility, in real estate or infrastructure development and finance, in product and service companies providing solutions to these entities, in broader portfolio investing, or in local and regional governments delivering or overseeing these activities to address environmental justice or economic development goals. It will also be useful for students who are planning to work in companies that advise or support these entities. It should be of general interest to students looking to understand policy and business issues that will arise as climate adaption becomes increasingly important, in conjunction with other climate-themed electives.

Students will learn:

• How to assess net zero and carbon neutral projects, “green” design, and grid-interactive efficient buildings
• How urban systems contribute to the economic development, character, and resilience of cities
• How special economic zones, megaprojects, and new cities will shape the global urban landscape in the future
• How land value capture techniques increase shared value including providing housing, realizing climate justice objectives, and managing potential climate migration
• How to use tools including flood and heat maps, predictive analytics, expected value analysis, and the co-benefits of improved public health to evaluate investments in resilience and adaptation
• How to select and deploy devices, algorithms, risk transfer, open data, collective decision making, and other tools that comprise smart cities
• Where there are investing and entrepreneurial opportunities in climate adaptation

Grading is based 50% on class participation, 30% on the final exam, and 20% on smaller polls and papers.

Cross-registrants are welcome with the advance permission of the instructor. HBS Finance 2 or HBS Real Property, or equivalent, are required prerequisites for cross registrants.

Copyright © 2022 President & Fellows of Harvard College. All Rights Reserved.