refinq
-
Aug 4, 2025
refinq Among Top Climate Adaptation Startups in 2025
In 2025, StartUs Insights ranked refinq among the world’s Top 10 Climate Adaptation Startups—recognising our bold, AI-driven approach to turning climate and nature risk data into actionable strategies. While many focus on mapping risks, we specialise in delivering implementable solutions that protect assets, strengthen supply chains, and unlock green finance opportunities. From nature-based infrastructure planning to TNFD and ESRS E4 compliance readiness, refinq empowers risk, finance, operations, and sustainability teams to act decisively in a changing climate.
Transforming Corporate Climate Resilience with Action-Oriented AI
Introduction
In its 2025 Innovator’s Guide, StartUs Insights recognised refinq as one of the Top 10 Climate Adaptation Startups globally. While we're officially ranked #2, at refinq we like to think we’re number one in boldness, innovation, and impact.
This recognition comes at a pivotal moment, as companies worldwide move beyond climate compliance and toward proactive climate adaptation strategies. In this article, we explore why refinq earned this distinction, the unique opportunities we unlock, and how our AIdriven approach compares to broader trends in climate tech.
1. What Is Climate Adaptation? The Startup Landscape in 2025
The Role of Climate Adaptation Startups
Climate adaptation startups are innovators that help businesses build resilience to climate risks using tools like AIpowered risk intelligence, geospatial naturerisk analytics, smart irrigation, and biodiversityaware supply chain assessments. Unlike mitigation, adaptation focuses on reducing vulnerability—protecting assets, operations, supply chains, and communities from the physical impacts of climate change.
Globally, over 3,200 climate adaptation startups were identified in 2025, spanning solutions from simulation platforms and digital twins to naturebased flood defences and ecosystem restoration.
Why Adaptation Is Gaining Momentum
Businesses want the cure, not just a better description of the sickness.
As the impacts of flooding, droughts, heatwaves, landslides, and biodiversity decline intensify, investors are increasingly funding projects and technologies that anticipate and avoid losses, rather than only mitigate emissions. Adaptation finance is forecast to become a $2 trillion market by 2026, and regulators are actively integrating adaptation disclosures into corporate sustainability standards. We have moved from compliance for risk mapping towards compliance for action.
2. Why refinq Stands Out – From Vision to Platform
2.1 Boldness in Focus
“We took a risk on being a bit different. Where many very strong companies have devoted time to mapping nature and climate data in increasing detail, we focused instead on taking each thread of data and seeing how we could generate recommended actions that could be deployed by corporates.”
Dr Stuart Auld, Director of Science, refinq
Rather than simply visualising risk exposure or biodiversity data, refinq connects data to actionable interventions. That shift from mapping to implementing resonated with both corporate users and industry analysts.
2.2 A Shared Source of Truth
refinq enables risk, finance, operations, and sustainability teams to operate from one integrated platform—a single source of truth. This helps companies:
Identify and prioritise environmental risks and nature-related opportunities
Align internal stakeholders through unified data and dashboards
Support emerging naturerelated frameworks like TNFD, CSRD, and ESRS E4 not just for disclosure—but for strategic foresight and competitive advantage
2.3 ActionDriven Use Cases
➤ Nature-Based Infrastructure
Determine which factory sites may require deep-rooted vegetation planting to reduce flood or landslide risk.
➤ Supply Chain Resilience
Identify suppliers operating in biodiversity hotspots to proactively assess ecological or regulatory risks.
➤ Disclosure & Strategic Readiness
Build internal capacity for frameworks like TNFD and ESRS E4, not just to comply, but to lead.
➤ Green Finance Opportunities
Demonstrate adaptation strategies that reduce risk exposure to access preferential lending or sustainability-linked finance.
➤ Climate-Adaptive Innovation
Design products or services that are future-proofed specific climate conditions, like infrastructure suited to water scarcity or heat stress.
3. refinq Among Top Climate Adaptation Startups
refinq was ranked #2 in StartUs Insights’ Top 10 Climate Adaptation Startups of 2025. The list highlights startups with AI-powered risk intelligence, geospatial analytics, and actionable adaptation tools. StartUs evaluated thousands of companies across global innovation hubs.
4. Industry Context: Complementary Players & Market Trends
AI Meets Nature: A Growing Trend
Startups across the adaptation landscape are integrating AI with geospatial and ecological data. Other innovators highlighted include companies using digital twins for infrastructure planning or scenario simulation for regional flood resilience.
What sets refinq apart is our ability to translate that data into specific actions that reduce physical risk, improve regulatory readiness, and build long-term resilience.
A Rising Ecosystem of Adaptation
With over 3,000 startups in the space and institutional capital increasingly backing adaptation solutions—from oyster reefs to sponge cities—the market is entering a growth phase. Businesses that act early are poised to gain the greatest strategic and financial advantage.
source: startus insights: top climate adaption startups 2025
5. The refinq Process
Step-by-Step Implementation
Step | Action |
|---|---|
1 | Assess your assets and value chains using refinq’s Nature Intelligence Hub |
2 | Identify and prioritise locations with climate or nature risk |
3 | Generate tailored adaptation recommendations |
4 | Align internal teams on shared priorities |
5 | Prepare compliance disclosures for TNFD, CSRD, ESRS E4 |
6 | Demonstrate strategies for green finance eligibility |
7 | Develop climate-adaptive products or services |
Real-World Impact Example
Imagine a coastal manufacturing facility in a flood-prone zone. refinq flags flood risk and recommends enhancing vegetation buffers and re-routing logistics. The operations, risk, and sustainability teams use one shared dashboard to coordinate. Lenders recognize the site’s resilience improvements and offer preferential financing.
6. Why Clients Choose refinq
From Mapping to Action: We move beyond data visualizations to deliver implementable actions.
Multi-Team Collaboration: One tool for risk, finance, operations, and sustainability.
Disclosure-Ready: Built for TNFD, ESRS E4, and CSRD compliance.
Science-Based: Forecasts risk under multiple climate scenarios through 2100.
7. What’s Next for Climate Adaptation
Scaling Climate Adaptation Finance
As green finance instruments grow in complexity and availability, organizations will be rewarded for presenting credible, science-backed adaptation plans.
Evolving Regulation
New standards like TNFD and ESRS E4 will push businesses to disclose risks tied to nature and climate—making tools like refinq essential.
Benchmarking Leadership
Early adopters of adaptation intelligence platforms will set the benchmark for strategic readiness, supply chain resilience, and stakeholder confidence.
8. Final Thoughts: From Recognition to Resilience
“Being named one of the Top 10 Climate Adaptation Startups in 2025 validates our belief: that climate adaptation isn’t just about risk—it’s about opportunity. With the right tools, companies can use nature-based intelligence to adapt to a rapidly changing world, minimise operational losses due to climate events and capture new markets and clients.”
Franziska Walde, Co-Founder, refinq
About refinq
We provide a SaaS platform that enables risk, finance, operations, and sustainability teams to work from one shared system, integrating climate and nature-related data into actionable recommendations aligned with emerging regulatory standards.
Sources & Further Reading
StartUs Insights – Top 10 Climate Adaptation Startups 2025:
https://www.startus-insights.com/innovators-guide/climate-adaptation-startups/
StartUs Insights – Top 5 Climate Resilience Startups in Smart Cities:
WSJ – Investors Are Funding Ways to Adapt to Climate Change:
refinq – About Us:
Green Hero Global – 10 Startups Using AI to Fight Climate Change:
Related Article(s)
What is refinq and how does it help organisations manage climate and nature risks?
refinq is a cloud-based Nature Intelligence platform that quantifies, visualises, and monitors climate and nature-related risks at the asset level. It identifies material nature-related risks across assets and supply chains, quantifies their potential financial impact, and provides practical mitigation and adaptation actions tailored to each site. The platform is designed to support full compliance with IFRS S2, ESRS E1 to E4, EU Taxonomy, and TNFD frameworks, ensuring organisations can meet regulatory demands while strengthening long-term operational resilience.
Which data does refinq need to perform a risk assessment?
The platform requires only essential inputs, such as the geographical location of each asset and its business activity classification. Additional data, like asset value, water consumption, adaptation measures, or building structural characteristics, can be included to refine assessments but are not mandatory. Where information is missing, refinq applies conservative assumptions to ensure results remain robust and actionable.
What types of climate and nature risks does refinq assess?
refinq assesses the full spectrum of physical and transition risks across both climate and nature. This includes physical climate hazards such as extreme heat, flooding, windstorms, drought, and wildfires, as well as nature-related physical risks like biodiversity intactness, species extinction risk, land degradation, forest fragmentation and soil organic carbon. We also evaluate transition risks, including regulatory, market, technological, and reputational drivers, that may impact companies as policies tighten and expectations evolve around climate and biodiversity. Risk results are location-specific and available across multiple IPCC AR6 scenarios and time horizons, offering a comprehensive view of future exposure.
How granular is your climate and nature data?
We generate asset-level climate and nature risk assessments globally using high-resolution environmental datasets, enabling far more granular analysis than typical sources. Depending on the hazard, refinq uses resolutions such as ~25 m for landslides, ~100 m for soil erosion, and ~10 km (5′) for water stress. Our nature-risk layers include global 10 m land-cover change data and 500 m Net Primary Productivity (NPP). This level of granularity allows organisations to pinpoint risks at individual sites with high accuracy and confidence.
Does refinq comply with global reporting standards and frameworks?
Yes. refinq is fully aligned with leading global disclosure standards and frameworks, including TNFD, TCFD/IFRS S2, ESRS, EU Taxonomy, and SBTN. The platform generates audit-ready outputs that simplify documentation, support external assurance, and streamline climate- and nature-related disclosures across regulatory and voluntary reporting requirements.
What is the temporal coverage and frequency of refinq’s climate and nature datasets?
refinq uses historical climate baselines dating back to 1851 and provides future projections through 2100 under multiple IPCC AR6 SSP–RCP scenarios, including SSP1–2.6, SSP2–4.5, SSP3–7.0, and SSP5–8.5. Temporal frequency varies by hazard, water stress, temperature and precipitation-related metrics are available in monthly and annual time steps, while satellite derived information, such as NDVI can be provided bi-weekly in less clouded regions. Default assessments use 30-year horizons with configurable checkpoints such as 2030, 2050, and 2080 to align with asset lifetimes and planning cycles. refinq’s biodiversity layers span 2000 to 2025, or the most recently available year. They capture global trends in land-cover change, ecosystem condition, biodiversity loss, and species risk extinction, ensuring a consistent and up-to-date view of nature-related pressures across all assets.
What is the update frequency of refinq’s climate and nature datasets?
Both climate and nature datasets are automatically refreshed each year. This update process is embedded into refinq’s automated CI/CD data governance pipeline, ensuring that all baselines, projections, and derived risk indicators remain aligned with the most current scientific models and observational data.
How transparent is refinq’s data and methodology?
refinq provides full transparency across all datasets, models, and analytical assumptions. Every metric includes detailed documentation covering its description, data source, processing steps, and scoring thresholds. Our data originate from trusted scientific and institutional sources such as Copernicus, Joint Research Center (JRC), World Resources Institute, IUCN, and peer-reviewed datasets like Biodiversity Intactness Index. All methodological choices, including emission scenarios, model selection, and assumptions, are openly disclosed.
What outputs does refinq provide?
Users access a centralised dashboard that brings together portfolio-wide overviews, detailed site-level profiles, geospatial visualisations, and downloadable reports. Both assets and portfolios come with comprehensive data sheets and reports containing climate and nature risk metrics, financial impact estimates, and tailored mitigation and adaptation actions. All outputs are delivered in an audit-ready, standardised format aligned with leading international reporting frameworks, ensuring full suitability for CSRD disclosures and internal risk governance.
Can we customise risk thresholds or scoring in refinq?
Risk thresholds for state of nature and climate hazards are not customisable. These thresholds follow scientific, and peer-reviewed methodologies to ensure comparability, auditability, and compliance across portfolios. However, refinq provides flexibility where it matters: users can **adjust vulnerability, dependency, and impact risk scores at asset level** when they have site-specific information. For example, if an asset is less dependent on an ecosystem service, has water-efficiency measures, or already has adaptation actions in place (e.g., flood barriers), the platform updates risk scores, ensuring that risk levels reflect real conditions on the ground.
What is GaiaGuide, and how does it support action planning?
GaiaGuide is refinq’s AI-powered feature that translates climate and nature risk insights into tailored, science-based mitigation and adaptation measures for each location. Instead of stopping at risk identification and quantification, refinq provides practical, site-specific and nature-positive actions that organisations can implement immediately, bridging the gap between analysis and real-world resilience.
Does refinq help prioritise risks and track mitigation and adaptation measures?
Yes. refinq includes a dedicated **risk-monitoring and prioritisation module** that helps organisations identify which climate and nature-related risks require attention first. Portfolio-level insights and risk rankings highlight hotspots, while asset-level views clearly show which hazards, vulnerabilities, impacts, or ecosystem dependencies drive each risk score. Users can also document mitigation and adaptation measures already in place, such as water-efficiency improvements, or biodiversity-positive interventions. These measures dynamically update vulnerability, dependency, and impact scores so that risk levels accurately reflect real resilience on the ground.
Does refinq provide early warning or real-time insights?
refinq’s Weather Alert module offers 16 or 30-day forecasts for extreme weather events, supporting operational planning, incident preparedness, and short-term decision-making. These alerts complement the long-term climate risk analytics and can be integrated into existing operational workflows. For example, a retailer can reroute inventory and adjust staffing in advance of a forecasted heatwave or severe storm to prevent disruptions and protect operations.
Is refinq suitable for companies operating outside the EU?
Absolutely, refinq’s global datasets and regulatory mappings cover all regions and markets. While we support CSRD/ESRS compliance in the EU, our risk assessments are built for multinational and non-EU organisations as well.
Which industries benefit most from refinq?
refinq supports asset-heavy sectors (utilities, energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, real estate), financial institutions (banks, insurers, asset managers), and companies with global supply chains. Any organisation with physical locations or dependency on natural ecosystems can benefit from our platform.
Does refinq provide API access and support integrations with client systems?
refinq offers full API-based integration, enabling secure and seamless data exchange with client environments. The platform provides a comprehensive REST API, as well as bulk export capabilities (CSV and XLSX). Custom attributes are supported through flexible asset-level tags, and all data updates propagate across the platform in near real time, ensuring that analytics layers always receive the most current information. To support rapid onboarding and developer-friendly workflows, refinq provides **OpenAPI-compliant Swagger documentation**, offering a complete, interactive specification of all available endpoints. This enables teams to explore, test, and integrate with the API efficiently and reliably. Overall, the system is designed to fully support API-driven integrations and operational workflows.
Which data formats does refinq support?
refinq supports a wide range of geospatial and data formats, including CSV, XLSX, NetCDF, TIFF, ZARR, and GPKG, within its internal processing pipelines. To ensure seamless integration with organisational workflows, all client-facing outputs are delivered in easily usable formats such as XLSX, CSV, and JSON (via API). This makes the data fully compatible with common tools like Excel, Power BI, GIS platforms, and enterprise data lakes without requiring additional preprocessing.
What are the pricing options for refinq?
refinq uses an annual subscription model, with pricing tailored to the number of locations assessed, the volume of data or API usage, and the modules included - such as Physical Climate Risk, Biodiversity & Ecosystems, Transition Risks & Opportunities, Financial Impact, or the Weather Alert system. The commercial model supports batching through predefined SKUs (e.g., +100 sites), allowing organisations to scale their coverage and functionality over time as needs grow. Each subscription includes a 10-hour support package for onboarding, technical guidance, and expert Q&A, with the option to expand support hours, API capacity, or activate additional modules. The licence covers internal organisational use, while external redistribution of raw data requires prior approval.
What onboarding support does refinq provide during implementation?
refinq offers a structured onboarding process that includes guided setup, data validation support, and role-based training for technical and non-technical users. Clients receive a 10-hour support package as part of their subscription, covering onboarding assistance, technical walkthroughs, and expert Q&A to ensure a smooth start. After onboarding, users benefit from optional add-on support hours that can be scaled as organisational needs grow.
What documentation are available to clients?
Clients receive comprehensive technical documentation, full dataset metadata, and detailed methodological assumptions, as well as access to our Solution Architecture and Security overview via trust.refinq.
How does refinq handle identity and access management (SSO, roles, and user IDs)?
refinq integrates with enterprise identity providers via SAML-based SSO (e.g. Microsoft Entra ID) and supports configurable user ID formats to match client standards. Access is managed through role-based access control (RBAC) with the principle of least privilege, allowing permissions to be grouped by user role and managed centrally. User lists can be exported via API or the admin interface for reconciliation with internal identity management systems.
What password and authentication security controls does refinq use?
refinq enforces strong password policies, including minimum length, complexity requirements, prevention of password reuse, and mandatory password change on first login. Passwords are never stored in plain text, only hashed, non-recoverable values are kept, and session timeouts and account lockouts after repeated failed attempts provide additional protection. Multi-factor authentication (2FA) is supported via the client’s SSO provider.
How does refinq protect data and monitor security (encryption, logging, and audits)?
All data in transit is protected with HTTPS/TLS 1.3, and all databases run on encrypted storage. Sensitive fields are encrypted or masked, and client data is logically segregated in a multi-tenant architecture. The platform generates detailed audit logs for access and data changes, stores them centrally and securely, and retains them for at least one year with recent logs available for immediate analysis. Clients may conduct penetration tests, and refinq maintains formal information security, data protection, backup, and disaster recovery policies, with ISO 27001 certification in progress and cloud provider SOC reports available on request.