Is your company losing money due to climate change? Consider moving to the Midwest, survey says – Inside Climate News

The Midwest is once again being highlighted as a potential refuge from the threats of climate change, which continues to fuel increasingly destructive natural disasters around the world.

In the United States, devastating wildfires and hurricanes have caused insurance premiums to skyrocket in states like California and Florida, with some residents recently reporting paying up to $3,000 a month for home insurance. Rising costs and the threat of extreme weather have pushed people to uproot their lives and move elsewhere, often to the Midwest.

Now a new survey conducted in Michigan suggests that companies may also be looking to America’s heartland as a place to set up shop to reduce the rising costs associated with global warming.

“The evidence of climate change is mounting,” said Scott Thomsen, CEO of LuxWall, a Michigan-based window manufacturer. “We are certainly seeing it in our industry.”

Thomsen was one of 300 senior-level executives surveyed in a survey released Sept. 30 by MIT Technology Review Insights and the Michigan Economic Development Corp., or MEDC. The executives, who work across 14 industries, including retail, financial services and manufacturing, all reported that their companies had been hurt to some extent by climate change. Such damages include physical damage to property, increased operating costs, increased insurance premiums, and disruptions to supply chains.

Three-quarters of respondents said their companies have considered offshoring due to climate risks, and nearly a quarter say they have already offshored in part because of climate change. About 6% said they plan to relocate their businesses within the next five years.

Nearly half of survey participants also believe the Midwest is the least vulnerable region in the country when it comes to climate risks.

Avoiding exposure to these risks was one of the reasons LuxWall chose to call Michigan home, Thomsen said. Founded in 2016, the company considered six Midwest states for its headquarters before deciding on the city of Ypsilanti. In August, the company opened its second plant in the city of Litchfield, Michigan, with another plant planned in Detroit.

“We are really fortunate in many ways,” said Hilary Doe, Michigan growth manager and marketing manager for MEDC. “Michigan has been ranked as the top state for climate change when you look at drought or extreme heat, wildfires, floods – that kind of thing.”

“The evidence of climate change is growing like a crescendo. We are definitely seeing it in our industry.”

Scott Thomsen, CEO of LuxWall

Doe said some of the “key reasons” businesses ultimately choose Michigan are in part due to the state’s abundant natural resources, its relatively resilient electric grid and the assistance Michigan provides businesses in planning for climate risks , including helping companies access climate-related risks. financing.

Minnesota has also seen an increase in business activity in recent years as companies look to expand their operations, said Catalina Valencia, executive director of business development for the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

The trend is especially noticeable when it comes to larger projects, Valencia said. While a $75 million project would have been considered significant a few years ago, he said, the state now allows a handful of projects costing between $100 million and $300 million each year, with the occasional project costing up to $1 billion of dollars. .

Valencia noted that while companies consider climate risks when choosing to locate in Minnesota, the biggest factors attracting new businesses to the state were the bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and other federal investments. Last year, state lawmakers passed legislation providing state matching funds for projects that receive federal funds.

As climate change accelerates in the coming decades, Valencia and Doe expect more businesses to flock to their states. “Unfortunately,” Valencia said, Minnesota “may be one of the best positioned states for the future, and not just now, but especially in the future.”

The Midwest is often described as a “climate paradise,” in part because of its relatively mild climate and its proximity to the Great Lakes, which contain one-fifth of the world’s freshwater, a resource that scientists say will become scarcer with advance of the world economy. the planet is warming. The Great Lakes also provide alternative shipping ports from the United States as increasingly powerful hurricanes make it more difficult to ship goods from the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

Extreme weather events cost the United States nearly $150 billion each year in damages, lost business revenue and declining property values, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a federal report on the ways climate change is affecting the country. . According to the assessment, natural disasters causing more than $1 billion in losses now occur on average every three weeks, compared to every four months in the 1980s.

Along the East Coast from Florida to North Carolina, workers continued clearing rubble and shoveling mud over the weekend in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 232 people and left hundreds of thousands without power. of people. Florida is now preparing for a second storm, Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall near Tampa later this week with Category 3 or higher strength.

Helene, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm two weeks ago, has inundated six southeastern states and is now the deadliest storm in the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Warm ocean waters have historically helped power Helene, allowing her to discharge massive amounts of water as she traveled north.

Performing a rapid analysis, three scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said that Helene’s precipitation carries the fingerprint of climate change.

“Our best estimate is that climate change caused more than 50% more precipitation during Hurricane Helene in parts of Georgia and the Carolinas,” Michael Wehner, one of the scientists, wrote in an online statement. “We estimate that observed precipitation was up to 20 times more likely in these areas due to global warming.”