Infrastructure projects worth around ₹2.95 lakh crore in India are facing severe climate risks, according to a recently released report by a Delhi-based research organisation.

The report titled “Climate Risk and Insurance for India’s Infrastructure” comes close on the heels of the just-concluded World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, where Indian ministers and officials were busy projecting the country as the potential third-largest economy and an ideal destination for big investments.

The report prepared by Climate Trends pointed out that increasing climate risks were outpacing the country’s ability to insure large-scale infrastructure initiatives, including hydropower projects, mountain highways and urban infrastructure, and this trend would expose governments and investors to growing financial stress.

“…India’s infrastructure push may be expanding climate exposure faster than risk-transfer mechanisms are adapting,” the report said, underlining that insurers are becoming increasingly concerned about infrastructure projects.

“As India seeks big investments at the World Economic Forum and plans double-digit growth over the next five years, it would be remiss to not point out the risks to India’s infrastructure posed by climate impacts and extreme weather events — which are unarguably increasing in frequency, severity and geographical spread,” pointed out Aarti Khosla, director of Climate Trends and one of the report authors.

The report identifies “flooding, extreme rainfall, cyclones and landslides… as high to very high risks (scores 4–5) for capital-intensive infrastructure such as urban assets, highways, ports and hydropower projects, driving repeated losses and rising insurability concerns”.

“We have prepared the report based on our ground-level findings, including feedback received from several leading insurance companies of the country, like SBI General Insurance, Munich Re India, Swiss Re India, and General Insurance Corporation of India,” said one of the researchers associated with the report.

Swiss Re, a leading global insurance firm, “estimates that India’s life and non-life insurance premiums will grow at one of the fastest rates in the world through to 2028, at 6.7 per cent and 8.3 per cent, respectively”, the report said. It linked the finding to the fact that India has been recently ranked as the seventh most vulnerable in terms of climate impacts.

Projects under the climate scanner have mostly been planned in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, with a cumulative investment of around ₹2.95 lakh crore.

“These (vulnerable projects) range from Odisha’s Paradip port modernisation project, to ₹5,000 crore worth of port projects in Andhra Pradesh...,” the report says.

The report points out: “Tunnels and highways worth ₹38,000 crore in Himachal Pradesh, Teesta hydropower project in Sikkim, Zoji-la tunnel and BRO roads project in Ladakh, to Arunachal Pradesh’s Etalin, Dibang and many other dam, highways and hydropower projects (too are vulnerable).”

“Investing in new infrastructure is essential to driving growth. However, the heightened climate vulnerability needs detailed discourse, especially on the risks to the capital expenditure-heavy undertakings inthe eastern sections of the country,” Aniruddha Bhattacharya, the lead author of the report, told The Telegraph on Sunday.

“Infrastructure projects are under climate threat across the world and long-term climate risk needs to be accounted for and integrated into capital expenditure, to minimise the rise in insurance premiums,” observed Nilanjan Ghosh, head of development studies at the think-tank Observer Research Foundation.

In 2025, India experienced a record number of extreme weather events on more than 99 per cent of the days between January and November, according to the Delhi-based think-tank Centre for Science and Environment.