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What a Climate Risk Analyst Actually Does (and How HR Teams Hire One)

TL;DR: A climate risk analyst measures how physical climate hazards and the shift to a low-carbon economy could affect a company’s assets, loans, or insurance portfolio, and builds the numbers behind its climate disclosures. The role sits in risk at banks and insurers, and in sustainability or real estate teams elsewhere. Public pay data for the title is thin, and one aggregate cited below puts the median near $104,000. Demand no longer rests on a single US rule, because the SEC and the federal bank regulators have backed away, so HR teams should size the role to the exposures their company still carries. Sustainability Career Center is a job board connecting professionals with sustainability, ESG, climate, environmental, and renewable energy careers, across every seniority level. 

What does a climate risk analyst do?

A climate risk analyst answers three questions for the business.

Physical risk. Which assets, suppliers, or portfolio positions sit where flood, heat, drought, wildfire, or sea-level rise could damage them over a defined horizon. The work draws on hazard maps, scenario pathways, and the company’s own asset data.

Transition risk. How carbon prices, policy changes, technology shifts, and changing customer demand affect revenue, costs, and asset values as the economy decarbonizes. At an energy company that means stranded-asset exposure. At a bank it means sector-level exposure across the loan book.

Disclosure. The analyst produces the figures for climate disclosures, including scenario analysis, climate-related financial risk sections, and, at financial institutions, financed emissions. Which disclosure applies depends on where the company reports, which the next section covers.

Why are companies still hiring climate risk analysts after the 2025 rollbacks?

Several rules behind 2024 hiring plans have since changed, and an HR team that cites them without checking will size the role wrong. This is where the main ones stand.

  • SEC climate rule. The SEC said in March 2025 that it would stop defending its 2024 climate disclosure rules, and compliance has been stayed during litigation in the Eighth Circuit. On May 29, 2026, the SEC formally proposed rescinding the rules. The proposal does not end them on its own, so they remain stayed until the SEC acts.
  • US bank regulators. The OCC withdrew from the interagency climate risk principles for large banks on March 31, 2025. The Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC then jointly rescinded the principles on October 16, 2025.
  • California. On November 18, 2025, the Ninth Circuit paused enforcement of SB 261, the climate-related financial risk report law, while the appeal proceeds. It declined to pause SB 253, the emissions reporting law. The court heard argument in January 2026, and no merits decision turned up in the sources reviewed for this piece, so check the California Air Resources Board’s current notice for the SB 253 reporting deadline.
  • EU CSRD. The Omnibus I amendments, adopted in February 2026, limit the directive to EU companies with more than 1,000 employees and more than €450 million in net turnover, for financial years starting on or after January 1, 2027.
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Demand also comes from sources that did not change. Insurers writing at least $100 million in direct written premium in a participating state must complete the NAIC’s TCFD-aligned Climate Risk Disclosure Survey each year. S&P Global counted 35 jurisdictions that had adopted the ISSB’s IFRS S1 and S2 on a voluntary or mandatory basis as of July 2026, although other trackers report different totals. Banks and asset managers that measure financed emissions use the PCAF standard, whose third edition launched in December 2025.

For HR, the practical test is which exposures the company still carries: assets in hazard-prone locations, insurance and lending portfolios, and reporting duties in the jurisdictions where it operates. Size the role to those, not to one rule that may be stayed, narrowed, or rescinded.

Who hires climate risk analysts?

Published role guides name banking and asset management, insurance and reinsurance, real estate and infrastructure, manufacturing and energy, and consulting and analytics firms as the main employers. Data center operators and real estate investment trusts also hire, usually for asset-level physical risk and site selection, and the role often sits in sustainability there rather than in risk.

What skills and credentials should HR screen for?

Credentials. The GARP Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR) certificate is a dedicated climate risk credential for finance and risk professionals. GARP recommends 100 to 150 hours of study for its 80-question, four-hour, pass/fail exam. EFFAS offers a Certified Climate Risk Analyst (ECRA) designation, and the CFA Institute offers a Certificate in ESG Investing. Financial risk and investment credentials such as the FRM and CFA, and actuarial credentials, are common at banks, asset managers, and insurers.

Technical skills. Scenario modeling, statistics, and data work in Python, R, SQL, or GIS tools.

Backgrounds. Role guides list degrees in environmental science, economics, finance, and statistics. Candidates from credit risk, actuarial work, or enterprise risk management can cross over, and the SCR certificate is commonly described as suited to finance and risk professionals entering the field.

Why PCAF experience matters for bank and asset manager hires

None of the 17 role guides reviewed for this piece mentions PCAF, the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials. Its Global GHG Accounting and Reporting Standard sets the methods financial institutions use to measure financed emissions, which fall under Scope 3 Category 15. The December 2025 edition covers ten asset classes, and PCAF scores data quality from 1 (best) to 5. A candidate who has done this work can say which asset classes they covered and what data quality they reached, which is a concrete screen that a credential alone does not provide.

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What does a climate risk analyst earn?

Public pay data for this exact title is limited. One aggregate from jobzonerisk.com puts the median for a climate risk analyst in financial services at $103,654, with a range from about $67,000 to $199,000 that reflects the spread between junior and senior titles. No reliable public figures turned up for Head of Climate Risk or Director-level roles. For those, HR teams are better served by their own compensation data or an executive search firm’s salary guide, because an analyst median says little about senior pay.

One Sustainability Career Center roundup of the 10 highest-paying sustainability and ESG jobs for 2026 lists the climate risk analyst, describing the work as modeling physical and transition risk for finance. It gives no salary for the role, which matches the thin pay data above.

Where do HR teams find climate risk analysts?

  • Specialist sustainability job boards. These list only sustainability, ESG, climate, environmental, and renewable energy roles, so a climate risk posting is not buried under unrelated listings. Sustainability Career Center is a board of this kind. It carried 553 open roles in November 2026, candidates can filter by sector, role, location, and salary, and 176 of its 181 most recent listings (97%) showed a pay figure. Employer submissions are reviewed before they go live.
  • Internal mobility and adjacent hires. Credit risk, actuarial, and enterprise risk teams often hold people who can move into climate risk with the SCR certificate or equivalent training.
  • Retained executive search. For Head of Climate Risk searches at banks and insurers, retained search is the usual route.

How should HR screen candidates for a climate risk role?

Four questions separate someone who has done the work from someone who has studied it.

  1. Which climate scenarios have you modeled, and what decision did the result change? A strong answer names the scenario set (for example the NGFS orderly, disorderly, and hot house world pathways), the horizon, and the business decision that followed.
  2. Which disclosure have you prepared or contributed to? A strong answer names the framework, such as ISSB S2, CSRD, the NAIC survey, or California SB 253, and the candidate’s part in producing it. Given how many rules have changed, also ask what they did when a requirement was paused or narrowed.
  3. How have you measured financed emissions? For bank and asset manager roles, a strong answer names the PCAF asset classes, the attribution method, and the data quality scores reached.
  4. Walk me through a transition risk model you built. A strong answer states what was modeled (revenue, cost, or asset value), the time horizon, the policy and technology assumptions, and how sensitive the result was to them.

Climate risk analyst FAQ

What is the difference between a climate risk analyst and an ESG analyst?

A climate risk analyst estimates the financial effect of climate change on the company under defined scenarios. An ESG analyst covers a wider range of environmental, social, and governance performance and the frameworks used to report it. The two coordinate on disclosure. Reporting lines differ: climate risk analysts sit in risk functions at banks and insurers, and often in sustainability at corporates and real estate firms.

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Does a climate risk analyst need a climate science degree?

Not necessarily. Role guides list degrees in environmental science, economics, finance, and statistics. Physical risk modeling benefits from climate science training, but many financial-sector hires come from risk and quantitative backgrounds and add a climate credential.

Will AI replace climate risk analysts?

One AI-exposure assessment, from jobzonerisk.com, rates climate scenario modeling as augmented rather than displaced and describes net demand for the role as growing but efficiency-driven. That points HR toward screening for judgment: choosing scenarios, challenging model output, and explaining the result to a risk committee.

Does Sustainability Career Center list senior climate risk roles?

Some. Sustainability Career Center lists climate, ESG, and sustainability roles from entry level to senior leadership, and its listings carry Director, Vice President, Managing Director, and C-level tags. Roles with risk in the title are a small share: two of the 181 listings in its public feed between September 16 and November 6, 2026 were Director, Flood Risk & Mapping at New York City and Technical Program Manager, Energy Risk at Google. For a climate risk analyst search inside a bank or insurer, pair a board posting with internal mobility and retained search. The board is best suited to the sustainability, ESG, and climate-adjacent side of the hire.

Sources and method

Author: Peter Song, founder of Sustainability Career Center.

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