The Rao Foundation is proud to support RMI (founded as Rocky Mountain Institute) in its work to reshape how the insurance industry approaches climate resilience — laying the groundwork for markets that better protect people, communities, and businesses from escalating climate risks while unlocking new investment in resilience solutions.
As extreme weather grows more frequent and severe — from wildfires in California and Colorado to flooding and hailstorms here in Texas — insurance costs are rising, and so is the need for up-front investment in solutions that make communities more resilient. But connecting the communities that would benefit most from resilience with those who can afford to pay for it is not simple. Unlocking that investment requires greater coordination across insurers, businesses, communities, governments, and homeowners — and an opportunity to redefine how resilience is valued, financed, and rewarded across the market.
With The Rao Foundation’s support, RMI established a trusted forum for insurers, brokers, resilience solutions providers, and other stakeholders to collectively examine the barriers preventing greater investment in resilience. Through a series of roundtables and expert consultations, RMI surfaced shared challenges and opportunities that culminated in the publication of Recalibrating the Role of Insurance in Resilience, launched during London Climate Action Week 2026. The report provides a roadmap for how insurers can move beyond pricing climate risk toward helping drive the investments that reduce it.
Building on this foundation, RMI is generating evidence to help insurers and policymakers prioritize the resilience investments with the greatest societal and economic value. This analysis includes work identifying gaps in how economic losses from power outages are measured and a technology deep-dive on the resilience benefits of battery energy storage systems. Additional RMI research is exploring how successful state-level policy programs that incentivize resilient home upgrades could hold lessons for scaling resilience investment nationwide.
Together, these efforts will provide practical tools to strengthen the business case for resilience investments and inform future insurance and public policy decisions. By combining rigorous techno-economic analysis with practical implementation pathways, RMI is helping insurers, policymakers, and communities identify where resilience investments deliver the greatest value — and how market and policy actors can reimagine incentives to accelerate their adoption. We believe this work is an important step toward a future where communities everywhere are better protected from a changing climate.
RMI works to transform global energy systems through market-driven solutions to secure a prosperous, resilient, clean energy future for all. For more than 40 years, the independent nonprofit has worked with businesses, policymakers, and communities to scale renewable energy solutions, reduce energy waste, and boost access to affordable clean energy. Learn more about RMI here.