--- title: "who pays into a city's resilience market" canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-pays-into-a-city-resilience-market markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-pays-into-a-city-resilience-market.md subtitle: "every risk already has a payor. it pays after. a resilience market asks it to pay before, by a unit it already counts" category: nature-finance --- # who pays into a city's resilience market *every risk already has a payor. it pays after. a resilience market asks it to pay before, by a unit it already counts* The canopy on the hottest ward, the marsh that takes the surge, the floodplain that holds the storm and the creek buffer that cools the street each lower a cost that someone already pays. Who pays into a city's resilience market? The parties that may carry that cost today: an electric utility on the hottest afternoon, a stormwater utility after a storm, an insurer with a city's book, a hospital in a heat wave, a port, a large employer. Each often pays after, in its own budget. That living work goes on whether or not a city lists it. A resilience marketplace is how the parties who carry the risk can pay for it before the damage, and [*ensurance*](https://ensurance.app/?from=guide) is a set of rails a city can use instead of building its own. Neither the market nor the rails is the worth of the marsh. This post is for the payor (a utility planner, an insurer's resilience lead, a risk or facilities manager at a large employer) and for the chief resilience officer deciding whom to ask first. :::johnson **every risk already has a payor. it pays after.** A resilience market asks the same payor to pay earlier: named work at a named place, funded in a unit the payor already counts, with a public record of who paid for what. [see what a utility can fund →](/solutions/utilities?from=guide&topic=city-resilience-marketplace) ::: ## urban resilience funding starts with who already pays A city's adaptation plan names the risks (heat, flood, drought, storm surge) and the places that hold them back. It does not always name who carries the bill when those places fail. The bill does not disappear. It often lands in budgets that are already open: a utility's capital plan, an insurer's claims, a hospital's emergency department, an employer's lost hours, the city's own repair and response lines. That is the opening for **urban resilience funding** that does not start from a new tax or a new grant. Money that pays for damage after the fact is often already moving. A resilience market gives some of it somewhere to go first: the named places on the city's list. Public agencies already count what a place does against a risk; a payor's own count is the one that matters to that payor. ## does and should, by role The table shows roles, not companies. None has committed to anything. What a role "may" or "often" pays depends on the city, the contract and the year. | role | what it may pay now, after | what it could fund before, at a named place | a unit it already counts (example) | |---|---|---|---| | Electric utility serving the hottest wards | Often plans and repairs for peak load on the hottest afternoons | Canopy and pervious ground on the wards its feeders serve | Example: per peak hour | | Stormwater or water utility | Often pays to move, store and treat runoff after storms | A floodplain pocket, a creek buffer, a depaved lot that holds water | Example: per gallon held for a year | | Insurer with the city's book | Often pays claims after heat, flood and storm | The marsh in front of insured streets, the floodplain upstream | Example: per policy in the area a place protects | | Hospital or health system | May see heat illness and asthma rise in a heat wave | Canopy on the wards its patients live in | Example: a count it keeps itself, used only if it chooses to supply it | | Port or airport | May pay for downtime and repairs after a surge or flood | The marsh, dune or living shoreline in front of its berths | Example: a reportable partnership line | | Large employer | Often pays for cooling, closures and lost hours | Street trees and buffers around its sites | Example: a reportable partnership line | | The city | Often pays for streets, drains and emergency response | Whatever on its list it chooses to fund itself | Its own capital or operating line | "Should" is not a duty. It is where a payment made after the damage could start earlier, at the place. The area a place protects is the area its work reaches: the streets a canopy cools, the homes a marsh shields. "Per policy in the area" means the insurer counts the policies it already writes there; it does not mean a new policy. The stormwater unit is borrowed from a scheme that already exists; [how a city runs its own resilience marketplace](/guide/how-a-city-runs-its-own-resilience-marketplace?from=guide) names it. ## the unit is the payor's, not ours A payor should not have to learn a new unit to fund a place. A utility may already count peak hours. An insurer may already count policies in an area. An employer may already write a partnership line in its sustainability report. The market takes the payor's count as it is. Three rules keep that honest. The unit is an example until the payor names its own. A unit never comes with a price attached here; what a payor puts in is set per project, at the table. And a count the payor keeps privately, such as a hospital's own admissions, enters the conversation only if the payor brings it. ## what a payor gets, and what it does not Say a city lists the canopy on its hottest ward as one project with its own account (a ward account, called an agent, not minted). Say, hypothetically, an electric utility funded the planting and the first summers of watering. Here is what it would hold afterwards. | it would get | it does not get | |---|---| | A **certificate**: a record that it funded named work at a named place | An insurance policy or a catastrophe bond | | Money routed to the project's own account, on a split that names the steward | A promised cut in premiums or a promised reduction in claims | | A public record anyone can check of what was funded on ensurance | An offset, or an adaptation or resilience credit under any standard | | Evidence of the work, if MRV (measurement, reporting and verification) is in scope | An investment, or any return | | A line it can report in its own terms | A claim that the work would not have happened without it | The avoided loss is the payor's to measure. An insurer may run its own models on the marsh in front of its book. A utility may compare peak load on the ward before and after. Whatever each finds is its number, under its own method. Ensurance records who funded what. It does not promise what the funding saves. A certificate is not a bond either. A city that already issues resilience or green bonds keeps them; [a resilience bond is still a bond](/guide/a-resilience-bond-is-still-a-bond?from=guide) sets out the difference. ## what we deliver to each payor The ask is not "support the city". Each payor role has a page that lists the services behind the certificate. - **A water or stormwater utility**: watershed and hydrology services, climate and nature risk assessment, and MRV and monitoring, on [the utilities page](/solutions/utilities?from=guide&topic=city-resilience-marketplace). An electric utility's case is scoped at contact. - **An insurer**: regional resilience planning, climate and nature risk assessment, and MRV and monitoring, on [the insurers page](/solutions/insurers?from=guide&topic=city-resilience-marketplace). - **A large employer or port**: climate and nature risk assessment, regional resilience planning, and MRV and monitoring, on [the corporations page](/solutions/corporations?from=guide&topic=city-resilience-marketplace). The instrument in every case is the same: a certificate on the account of one listed project. For one city worked through buyer by buyer, with each buyer's exposure, see [who pays for heat resilience, by the parcel](/guide/who-pays-for-heat-resilience-by-the-parcel?from=guide). A payor with sites in more than one city could hold certificates from projects in several of them from one account, because a city's market on ensurance would sit in the same protocol as every other. Cross-city syndicates (shared accounts that carry one theme across cities) such as [urban-heat.syndicate](/urban-heat.syndicate?from=guide) and [flood-resilience.syndicate](/flood-resilience.syndicate?from=guide) already carry a risk across cities. The links are live; the depth between markets is still early, and no other city's payors are promised. ## frequently asked questions ### who pays for urban resilience today? Often the parties the damage lands on: utilities, insurers, health systems, ports, employers and the city itself, each in its own budget and after the event. A resilience market lets the same parties fund named work before it. ### is a certificate insurance? No. It is a record that a named payor funded named work at a named place. It is not an insurance policy, a catastrophe bond, an offset, a resilience credit or an investment. ### will funding the marsh lower our premiums or claims? Nobody here can promise that. The avoided loss is yours to measure under your own models. The certificate records what you funded and where. ### what unit do we pay in? The one you already count, such as per peak hour, per policy in the area a place protects or a reportable partnership line. Those are examples; you name your own. ### has any payor signed up? No payor has committed to a city resilience market on ensurance. The roles above are who carries the risk, not who has said yes. ## next step If you carry a city's risk, start from your own page: [utilities](/solutions/utilities?from=guide&topic=city-resilience-marketplace), [insurers](/solutions/insurers?from=guide&topic=city-resilience-marketplace) or [corporations](/solutions/corporations?from=guide&topic=city-resilience-marketplace). If you run the city's list, [the governments page](/solutions/governments?from=guide&topic=city-resilience-marketplace) shows the city's side. Or [tell us the city, the risk and the payor you have in mind](/contact?from=guide&topic=city-resilience-marketplace). ## sources - [Who pays for heat resilience, by the parcel](/guide/who-pays-for-heat-resilience-by-the-parcel?from=guide): one city's buyers, worked through ## the series 1. [how a city runs its own adaptation and resilience marketplace](/guide/how-a-city-runs-its-own-resilience-marketplace?from=guide) 2. [what an adaptation marketplace lists](/guide/what-an-adaptation-marketplace-lists?from=guide) 3. **who pays into a city's resilience market** (you are here) 4. [your city runs the market. the protocol is the rails](/guide/your-city-runs-the-market-the-protocol-is-the-rails?from=guide) 5. [a town joins its region's resilience market](/guide/a-town-joins-its-regions-resilience-market?from=guide) 6. [launch your city's resilience marketplace](/guide/launch-your-citys-resilience-marketplace?from=guide)