Barusseau Law: from climate adaptation to corporate investment decisions

Barusseau Law: following its adoption in the Senate, climate adaptation enters a new phase

The Barusseau bill aims to prevent rather than repair, rebuild better, and preserve insurability. But how can these intentions be turned into concrete investment decisions for businesses and local territories?

A new step for climate change adaptation

On October 19, 2026, the Senate adopted, at first reading, the bill put forward by Deputy Fabrice Barusseau aimed at recognizing a national climate change adaptation policy and adapting insurance mechanisms. With a few amendments. The text will now return to the National Assembly, which had unanimously adopted its initial version.

As a reminder, the ambition of this bill is twofold: to reduce vulnerabilities in the face of increasingly damaging climate events and to safeguard an insurance system facing an increase in claims.

For businesses, local authorities, and asset owners, the central question is: how can we identify the assets most at risk, and the most effective adaptation investments?

1. Quantifying the necessary resources

The text draws on the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan (PNACC) and the Reference Warming Trajectory for Climate Change Adaptation (TRACC), at least as far as local authorities are concerned. The objective is primarily to provide a common framework for adaptation decisions.

The Senate reinforced the territorialization of this trajectory by ensuring it is taken into account in regional climate-air-energy plans (PCAET) and foreseeable natural risk prevention plans (PPRN). The text also specifies that the PNACC must define an operational and financial strategy to reduce physical, health, economic, and social vulnerabilities. This strategy must be based on an assessment of the necessary investments.

This evolution is what businesses are already implementing.  Recognizing climate risks is good. Being able to quantify the consequences and the means needed to reduce them is far more useful in the short and medium term.

This approach requires having climate information that is sufficiently precise to identify exposed assets, evaluate their vulnerability, and determine relevant adaptation measures. In practice, it will be necessary to plan for the use of additional scenarios alongside TRACC that incorporate the latest historical data, stress tests, etc., to properly scale the consequences and the required works.

2. Resilient repair: stop rebuilding yesterday's vulnerabilities

The second major breakthrough concerns the introduction of a resilient repair principle.

Today, following a climate event, compensation mechanisms required repairing the damage suffered on a like-for-like basis, within the limits of the indemnity principle. However, repairing a building identically can only lead to reproducing the exact vulnerabilities that caused the claim in the first place. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

A flooded business was thus forced to reinstall its equipment and electrical systems in the exact same place, only to suffer new damages during a subsequent flood. The bill makes it possible to break away from this logic.

It provides for the possibility of financing work that enables an asset to be rebuilt or repaired more resiliently, including when this work entails an additional cost. The Senate, however, framed the mechanism: supplementary compensation exceeding the value of the insured property must be stipulated contractually.

Senators also introduced an additional possibility: in certain situations where maintaining a property in an exposed area becomes difficult to sustain, resilient repair expenses could contribute to the acquisition of another property.

This provision implicitly recognizes a fundamental reality: adaptation does not always consist of protecting an existing asset. It can also lead to modifying its use, its layout, or its location.

For businesses, this approach opens new post-disaster perspectives: strengthening protections, relocating certain equipment, or even considering a full relocation. The response depends on several parameters: the cost of the measures, their effectiveness, the asset's value, its strategic importance, and the evolution of climate risks over its lifespan. The challenge lies in comparing adaptation costs with the future losses they help prevent, exactly what Tardigrade AI's tools already make it possible to do.

3. CatNat Insurance: preserving risk pooling while financing increased risks

The third pillar of the text concerns the balance of the French natural disaster compensation scheme, known as CatNat. This scheme is based on a principle of solidarity and risk pooling. However, the rise in climate-related damages places increasing pressure on its funding. According to projections recalled during the Senate debates, claims linked to certain natural events could increase by 40% to 60% by 2050, and even more for damages related to clay shrinkage and swelling. This obviously raises the question of the sustainability of such a scheme.

The Senate chose to strengthen the revision mechanism for the CatNat premium surcharge. While the initial text called for a periodic review, senators retained the principle of an automatic revaluation (surcharge) at least every five years, so that resources evolve at the same pace as expected claims. In other words, if there were still any doubt, the cost of insurance is going to increase.

The initial legislation planned to distribute this increase with an additional surcharge for certain categories of highly exposed assets, notably secondary residences and commercial properties with a value exceeding 20 million euros. The Senate eliminated this possibility. The text nevertheless retains the option of differentiating the surcharge rate between individuals and businesses.

This choice highlights the difficulty of reconciling two objectives: maintaining access to insurance and encouraging prevention investments. Risk pooling allows solidarity to be maintained in the face of risks, but for the benefit of all, an incentive must still be preserved for everyone to invest in adaptation.

4. Prevention, information, and insurability: other contributions from the Senate

Senators also reinforced several provisions regarding prevention.

Particular attention was paid to clay shrinkage and swelling (RGA), a phenomenon capable of causing significant damage to buildings.

The text reinforces information disclosure requirements during real estate transactions, provisions regarding geotechnical studies, and the inclusion of preventive solutions that limit soil moisture variations. These measures reflect a desire to favor preventive actions over heavy and repeated repairs.

The Senate also adopted provisions aimed at improving the independence of insurance adjusters and limiting certain risk selection practices that could undermine access to CatNat coverage. Here again, the goal is to maintain confidence in the insurance system while enhancing its capacity to cope with evolving risks.

These developments serve as a reminder that the insurability of an asset depends on several factors: its exposure, its vulnerability, existing prevention measures, and the insurance system's capacity to pool damages.

5. For businesses, the real challenge is economic

While the bill represents a significant step forward, it leaves an essential question unanswered: how do we transition from a general adaptation policy to concrete investment decisions?

A company with several dozen, hundred, or thousand sites cannot simultaneously undertake all conceivable protection works.

It must establish priorities.

Yet, the most exposed sites are not necessarily those that present the greatest economic losses. A moderately exposed site can represent a major financial risk if it hosts a critical activity, expensive equipment, or logistical functions that are vital to the operations of other facilities.

Conversely, a highly exposed asset can sometimes be effectively protected through relatively inexpensive measures.

The right question is therefore not just: which sites are the most exposed? But rather: where does each euro invested in adaptation most effectively reduce future losses?

To answer this question, it is necessary to be able to:

• Assess climate risks at the scale of each individual asset, taking into account their future evolution according to up-to-date climate scenarios.

• Translate hazards into financial consequences: material damage, business interruption, operational downtime, and additional costs.

• Identify potential adaptation measures, their capital and operational expenditures, as well as their effectiveness.

• Compare avoided losses against the necessary investments.

• Prioritize measures across an asset portfolio, taking into account budgetary constraints and site criticality.

• Measure the residual risk following adaptation.

This approach makes it possible to move from a climate assessment to a genuine capital allocation strategy. It also helps structure the dialogue between companies, their insurers, their financiers, and their various stakeholders.

6. From climate exposure to the optimization of adaptation investments

At Tardigrade AI, we believe that adaptation must be addressed as an economic and financial decision.

Our HORIZON platform was developed to respond to this challenge.

It makes it possible to evaluate physical climate risks at the asset level, quantify their financial consequences, and build adaptation pathways.

The analysis does not stop at identifying hazards. It integrates asset vulnerability, potential physical damage, business interruptions, and associated financial losses.

Companies can thus obtain an estimate of the cost of inaction, and then compare different adaptation measures based on their costs, their effectiveness, and the losses they help avoid.

At the portfolio level, this approach enables the selection of priority investments according to available budgets, site criticality, and risk reduction targets.

It also makes it possible to measure the residual risk after implementing the chosen measures.

In addition, PROTECT allows organizations to anticipate weather events likely to cause damage or business interruptions up to five days in advance, at the scale of each individual site, in order to trigger operational prevention and protection actions.

These two approaches are complementary: anticipating events in the short term to protect operations, and investing in the medium and long term to sustainably reduce their vulnerability.

7. What are the next steps for the Barusseau law?

The adoption of the text by the Senate on October 19, 2026, does not mark the end of the legislative process. Amended by the senators, the bill was forwarded to the National Assembly on October 20 for a second reading.

Deputies will notably have to vote on the amendments concerning CatNat pricing, the financing terms for resilient repair, and the new provisions relating to prevention. If both chambers fail to adopt an identical text, the parliamentary shuttle may continue.

However, an uncertainty remains: will this bill find its place in the parliamentary schedule before the 2027 presidential election?

The schedule is particularly tight, especially due to the review of budget bills and other legislative priorities. As the presidential deadline approaches, the opportunities to finalize new reforms may also diminish. While there is no legal prohibition against legislating in the final months of a presidential term, political practice tends to make passing legislation more difficult as a presidential election nears.

The risk therefore exists that this bill, despite the progress made and the support it has received, may not complete its parliamentary journey before 2027.

This would be regrettable, but this uncertainty also serves as a reminder of an obvious truth: climate risks do not follow the parliamentary schedule.

Conclusion: adaptation does not need to wait for the law

The Barusseau bill is an important and welcome initiative. It is essential that the State set a direction, organize national solidarity, modernize insurance mechanisms, and encourage investments in prevention and adaptation.

But must we wait for the law to pass before acting? Certainly not.

When it comes to safeguarding assets, protecting employees and customers, ensuring business continuity, or maintaining the ability to insure assets, every company already has every reason to take the lead.

Especially since the means to act already exist.

Today, it is possible to anticipate extreme climate events, assess the damage and business interruption losses they could cause, quantify the cost of inaction, identify the most effective adaptation measures, and determine the necessary investments to sustainably reduce risks.

The most forward-thinking companies have not waited for the State to show them the way forward. They have already begun integrating climate risks into their operational, real estate, and financial decisions, prioritizing their investments, and deploying concrete protection and adaptation measures.

At Tardigrade AI, this is precisely what we enable them to do with PROTECT and HORIZON: anticipate short-term events, measure their medium- and long-term financial consequences, and transform this information into investment decisions.

The State has a vital role to play in accelerating and supporting adaptation. But the responsibility to protect one's assets, operations, and people does not wait for a law to be enacted. Adaptation is no longer a question of awareness. It is a matter of decision. And the time is now.

(Photo credit: Yannick Billioux / ABACAPRESS.COM)