Pelagic Capital · Municipal Bond Climate Risk

Climate risk is absent from muni bond pricing. Courant closes that gap.

A Courant Grade measures what climate can do to a municipality and what that does to their ability to repay debt. Four components, public data, one score.

Grade an Issuer

The Model

Four components · Cause, consequence, capacity, time

35%

Physical Hazard Exposure

Flood, heat, storm, and wildfire risk to the issuer's geography. The root cause of all downstream risk.

30%

Tax Base Vulnerability

Exposure of local property values to climate-driven decline. Property taxes secure over 25% of outstanding muni debt.

20%

Fiscal Resilience

Community capacity to absorb a climate shock. Federal aid dependency is treated as a risk signal, not a buffer.

15%

Duration Drift

How physical risk compounds over the life of the bond. A 30-year bond matures in a fundamentally different climate.

A+ · A · A−

Low Risk

B+ · B · B−

Moderate

C+ · C · C−

Elevated

D+ · D · D−

High Risk

Severe