Building on the discussions launched within ClimateFIT, the Institut de la Finance Durable, a partner of the Consortium, has published its report, “France at +4°C: Financing the Economy’s Adaptation to Climate Change”
Based on more than 80 interviews and the work of over 150 French stakeholders (companies, manufacturers, financial institutions, experts, and public authorities) who have been working together within IFD for the past year, this report provides an overview of the financing mechanisms for climate change adaptation in France and offers operational recommendations to accelerate their implementation. This study builds on the discussions initiated within CLIMATEFIT on adaptation and is also a direct outcome of the exchanges that took place throughout the project. It represents a concrete contribution to the ongoing reflection on how to better align public and private finance to support climate adaptation within the territories.
Faced with a warming scenario that could reach +4°C in France by 2100, adaptation is an economic, financial, and social imperative. Every euro invested in adaptation prevents up to €10.5 in damages. Adaptation also represents a market opportunity (estimated at $80 billion in revenue in France by 2024), a matter of industrial sovereignty, and a key factor in the resilience of the entire national economy. Investment needs are estimated at €10.6 billion per year through 2050 (European Commission, 2026), with €1.7 billion in public aid mobilized in 2025: the conditions for mobilizing private financing are therefore a key challenge.
What the hearings tell us: promising progress, structural barriers to be overcome collectively
IFD’s research reveals a nuanced reality: concrete initiatives exist and are multiplying, but they face obstacles that call for a coordinated response.
Non-financial companies
The most advanced large companies have begun to develop adaptation strategies and allocate dedicated investments, with sector-specific approaches: adaptation of physical assets and networks for energy and transportation; value chain resilience for the agri-food sector; and business continuity for manufacturers with multiple sites.
However, the majority of companies have not yet embarked on a structured approach. The main obstacles identified are the lack of accessible diagnostic tools, the difficulty in justifying adaptation investments within budgets, and the absence of common frameworks for assessing asset resilience.
Unlike greenhouse gas emissions control—whose benefits may seem distant and global—adaptation addresses challenges that are already tangible in the short term and at the local level. Adaptation may be perceived as an immediate additional cost with distant benefits, whereas the consequences of inaction (insurability, asset degradation, supply chain vulnerabilities) are already evident.
Financial Institutions
Banks, insurers, and asset managers are developing promising initial tools (targeted financing instruments, innovative insurance products, thematic funds, and prevention platforms) that demonstrate the Paris financial center’s ability to position itself in this area.
However, these initiatives are struggling to reach the necessary scale due to the lack of precise risk maps, robust and comparable ESG data on adaptation, harmonized frameworks for analyzing physical risks, and projects structured sufficiently to deploy significant volumes.
The insurance sector, which is on the front lines of increasingly severe claims, would benefit from changes to the regulatory framework to enhance the prevention efforts already governed by the “Cat-Nat” regime (The French climate risk insurability framework).
The IFD’s recommendations: two pillars for collective and coordinated action
Sharing a common vision of risks and financing needs
The primary obstacle to financing adaptation is not financial: it is the lack of a shared understanding of risks and investment priorities. The IFD calls for structured dialogue and coordinated planning to enable every stakeholder—the national government, local authorities, businesses, and financiers—to align with a coherent strategy.
- Finalize and publish the national map of risk zones currently being developed by the government to serve as a common reference for regional planning and financing strategies;
- Assess and plan investments on a region-by-region basis, based on robust cost-benefit analyses to inform dialogues between, based on shared data;
- Develop common frameworks for analyzing physical climate risks and tools for assessing the resilience of assets to facilitate the integration of adaptation into investment decisions;
- Strengthen the Barnier Fund, dedicated to natural disasters, by allocating to it the entirety of the levy derived from the Cat-Nat surcharge, and enshrine the principle of “build back better” principle into post-disaster policies.
Coordinate public and private financing to expand capacity for action
Adaptation cannot be financed solely through public funds. To mobilize the private sector, we must create the economic and regulatory conditions that make investment in adaptation accessible and attractive:
- Expand the eco-PTZ to include adaptation investments for households and farmers and strengthen public guarantee mechanisms to facilitate access to financing;
- Encourage tax incentives for businesses’ adaptation investments;
- Develop Payments for Environmental Services (PES) as a lever to promote resilience;
- Plan, in the long term, to strengthen the commission structure within the French “Cat-Nat”, drawing on feedback from the first contracts;
- Support strategic adaptation solutions at the European level, the industrial development of which would contribute to ;
- Initiate a collective mobilization effort by the Paris financial community on climate resilience: building on the Climate and Biodiversity Objective Funds, explore the possibility of launching a “Climate Adaptation Objective Fund” led by Caisse des Dépôts, the French public financial institution.
