by Daniel Brouse
July 1, 2025
Sarah Kapnick’s journey—from a Goldman Sachs analyst to NOAA’s chief scientist and now global head of climate advisory at JPMorgan Chase—reflects a career spent aligning climate science with financial and infrastructure decisions. She has long recognized the urgent intersection of climate risk and financial planning, an urgency that has only grown as U.S. infrastructure crumbles under the accelerating impacts of climate change.
The Climate Threat to U.S. Infrastructure
A recent CNBC investigation highlights that U.S. infrastructure is barely getting a passing grade, with climate change emerging as one of its fastest-growing threats. Historic rainfall at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport in 2023 turned runways into rivers, shutting down operations and stranding passengers. In New York City, extreme heat caused metal on the Harlem River bridge to expand so severely it became stuck open.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has given U.S. infrastructure a “C” grade, warning that every category—from airports and bridges to power and telecommunications—is increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather, drought, floods, heat, hurricanes, and wildfires. According to First Street’s climate risk analytics, 19% of all power infrastructure, 17% of telecommunications infrastructure, and 12% of airports face major risks from flood, wind, or wildfire.
As ASCE’s executive director Tom Smith puts it, “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.”
The Investor Shift: Climate Resilience as a Financial Imperative
For Kapnick, these threats are not abstract—they are shaping how capital markets, insurers, and investors must approach infrastructure financing.
“How should I change and invest in my infrastructure? Should I think about different types of insurance? How should I access the capital markets to do this type of work?” are questions Kapnick increasingly hears from clients who now recognize that most U.S. infrastructure was designed for a climate that no longer exists.
The risks extend beyond engineering challenges to capital allocation, bond ratings, and municipal finance, particularly as extreme weather events increase the likelihood of infrastructure failures and costly repairs.
Science Under Attack and the Data Challenge
Both Kapnick and Smith emphasize that resilient infrastructure investment must be rooted in science. Yet, this science has faced systemic attacks. During the Trump administration, deep cuts and staff firings at NOAA, FEMA, and NIST undermined agencies vital for advancing climate science, and funding for critical resilience programs like FEMA’s $1 billion Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities initiative was slashed.
“There’s going to be this adjustment period as people figure out where they’re going to get the information they need,” Kapnick noted, emphasizing that market and financial decisions depend on data sets many assumed would always be there.
A $3.7 Trillion Gap, A Climate Opportunity
The ASCE estimates a $3.7 trillion spending gap over the next decade just to bring U.S. infrastructure up to a “state of good repair.” For Kapnick, this represents not only a colossal challenge but an opportunity: to reimagine how capital markets, insurance frameworks, and municipal investments integrate climate risk into infrastructure planning and funding.
Integrating climate risk isn’t simply about avoiding losses—it’s about unlocking more resilient, efficient, and forward-looking investments that protect public health, safety, and welfare.
The Path Forward
Kapnick’s vision is clear: finance, science, and engineering must align to future-proof infrastructure, ensuring the systems Americans rely on are ready for the realities of climate change.
As she told her clients and policymakers: “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.”
Bridging the gap between climate science and financial decision-making is no longer optional; it is the cornerstone of protecting communities, investors, and the broader economy from the climate realities that are already here.
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* Our climate model employs chaos theory — incorporating complex social-ecological feedback loops within a dynamic, nonlinear system to comprehensively consider human impacts and projects a potential global average temperature increase of 9℃ above pre-industrial levels.
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