Duration
About 3.5 hours
You set every stage timing from the professor panel, so it fits one block or splits across two sessions.
Climate Risk Simulation
Climate risk simulation where students pick a scenario
The Finsimco Climate Risk Simulation gives each student an industrial group with nine assets, three scenarios and one capital budget. They commit to a path, and the other two then run against the same plan.
- About 3.5 hours, single-player
- Transition, physical and stranding
- In-class, online or hybrid delivery
At a glance
Format
Single-player simulation
Each student holds the exposure, scenario and capital roles in turn and submits one allocation.
Level
Undergraduate to MBA
Adjustable: two scenarios on one carbon price, up to a physical damage model, disclosure and a lender test.
Professor tools
Timeline and session controls
Manage students, adjust stage timings, control progression and monitor individual inputs.
Prerequisites
Cash flow
Students need to read a cash flow. Carbon pricing, scenario analysis and stranded assets are taught inside.
Delivery
In class, online or hybrid
The web-based simulation supports in-person, remote, blended and homework-supported delivery.
Assessment
Optional, per student
Every submission is individual, so the exposures, the capital allocation and the review answers export per student.
Course fit
Fits finance and sustainability modules
Designed for Sustainable Finance, Climate Risk, Risk Management, Corporate Finance and Energy Finance courses.
Concepts covered
The topics a climate risk module has to cover: transition risk against physical risk, carbon price paths and scenario analysis, stranded assets and the date that creates them, the earnings impact of a carbon price, an orderly against a disorderly transition and climate disclosure and lender stress tests.
The figure behind every climate disclosure. Three carbon price paths run from today to 2050: an orderly transition rising steadily, a disorderly one that waits until policy is forced and then climbs steeply, and a hot house path that barely moves. The lower panel takes the hit to 2035 earnings under each and splits it between transition cost and physical damage. Orderly is cheapest at eighteen per cent, almost all transition. Disorderly costs thirty-five, because the same adjustment is compressed into half the time. Hot house costs thirty, almost all physical.
Learning outcomes
Written to drop into your module descriptor without rewriting. On completing the simulation, your students will be able to:
- Separate transition risk from physical risk and explain why the responses differ.
- Translate a carbon price path into an earnings impact for a specific asset.
- Explain why a stranded asset is created by a date rather than by a temperature.
- Build a capital plan that performs acceptably across more than one scenario.
- Explain why a delayed transition is more expensive than an orderly one.
- Evaluate a climate plan after the fact and state what it was actually betting on.
What students do
Each student runs the group alone, holding the exposure, scenario and capital roles in turn. All three want something different from the same asset register, and only one allocation is submitted.
The gameflow every student sees before they start. The three roles come into play during the measurement and the scenario runs; briefing, the assessment and the debrief are worked as a single view. Materials arrive stage by stage: asset register and role cards at briefing, then the emissions data, scenario set and damage curves for the plan, then the scenario runs, impairments and lender stress test once the paths open.
Exposure
Students work out what each asset is exposed to, split between the cost of the policy response and the cost of the weather, which behave nothing like each other.
Scenario
Students choose which of three futures the plan is built against, knowing the other two will be run against it as well and that none of them is free.
Capital
Students allocate a budget that cannot cover everything, between abatement that pays under one scenario and resilience that pays under another.
How it works
Five stages. Students measure exposure, commit capital against one climate path, and then face all three.
- 1
Stage 1 · 15 min
Briefing Docs · Asset Register · Role Cards
1Briefing
Students watch the intro video, review a group with nine assets across cement, chemicals and logistics in four countries, and take on all three roles, checking the emissions profile, the capital budget and the success criteria before any assessment begins.
- 2
Stage 2 · 60 min
Emissions Data · Scenario Set · Damage Curves · Tool Tips
2Measure & Choose
The exposure is measured and a path is chosen. Working as exposure, the student scores nine assets on transition and physical risk separately and dates when each becomes unusable; as scenario, compares three carbon price paths and commits to one; as capital, drafts an allocation that cannot cover everything on the list.
- 3
Stage 3 · 55 min
Scenario Runs · Impairments · Lender Stress Test · Live Scores
3All Three Paths
All three paths run against the same plan. Policy is forced early under one of them, a flood takes a logistics hub under another, a lender applies a climate stress test that the plan was not designed for, and the assets that looked safe on the chosen path are impaired on the other two.
- 4
Stage 4 · 40 min
Review Questions · Allocation · Outcome Report · Review Pack
4The Assessment
The plan is assessed. Students are asked which scenario they were really betting on, which assets they wrote off too late, how much of the damage was policy rather than weather, and what a plan that performed acceptably under all three would have had to give up.
- 5
Stage 5 · No limit
Winners · Completion Summary
5Debriefing
Students review their own allocation, compare scenario choices across the cohort, revisit the impairments that separated them and reflect on the feedback. Winners and the completion summary give you a structure for the discussion.
What the experience looks like
The student interface carries the exposure, the scenarios and the allocation. The professor panel carries the timeline, the controls and every individual plan.
Exposure
Students work asset by asset, with transition cost, physical damage and the year the asset becomes unusable side by side, and a written reason required for every stranding date.
Scenarios
The three scenario columns are the point. The asset that is safe under the chosen path is impaired under the other two, and the plan was only funded for one.
Professor Controls
Your view. Adjust any stage timing, start or stop the session, and compare which scenario each student committed to with how they fared on the other two.
See how this simulation fits your module
Explore the student and professor experience, and discuss timing, setup and syllabus fit.
Where it fits your syllabus
It works best as the session that makes a disclosure framework operational.
Teach before it
How to read a cash flow. Carbon pricing, scenario analysis and physical damage modelling are explained inside the activity.
Where it sits
Mid module, typically weeks five to nine, after the basic risk framework.
What it sets up
Climate disclosure standards, transition finance, carbon markets, insurance and catastrophe modelling, and any assessment asking students to produce a scenario analysis.
The climate risk course guide sets out where it sits in a full module.
What students get wrong
The three mistakes students make on this case, and what each one gives you in the debrief. Our simulations are designed around them: read the learning science behind it.
1
They treat hot house as the cheap scenario
No carbon price looks like no cost, so students allocate everything to abatement that only pays under tight policy and nothing to resilience. The flood arrives in year eleven and the logistics hub is not insured for it, which is the single most common failure in the room.
2
They date the stranding by the technology
An asset is written down when a rule fixes the year it stops being usable, not when a better alternative appears. Students who model the technology and ignore the legislative calendar take the impairment years later than the auditor does.
3
They optimise for one path
A plan that is excellent under an orderly transition and ruinous under the other two is a bet rather than a strategy. Students rarely price what robustness would have cost, which is the question the board actually asks.
How to debrief it
The debrief runs itself. Every student sees their results, the cohort comparison and the decisions that produced them, with nothing for you to prepare. If you would rather lead the discussion, these questions work straight from a slide, and they use what your cohort actually did.
- Which scenario were you really betting on, and did you say so?
- Which asset did you write off too late?
- How much of your damage was policy, and how much was weather?
- Whose plan held up best across all three paths, and what did it give up?
- What would a genuinely robust allocation have cost you?
Assess the exposure work and the bet, not the outcome
Assessment is optional. Run the simulation ungraded as an applied activity, or use platform data as supporting evidence. Every student generates exposure scores, a scenario choice, a capital allocation, an outcome and written rationales. Because the simulation is single-player, every input belongs to one named student, so there is no group-work marking to untangle. All of it exports as CSV or PDF, per student, so you can assess reasoning rather than a result.
What professors can assess
- Whether transition and physical exposure were measured separately rather than merged
- Whether the allocation follows from the scenario the student actually committed to
How to interpret the score
- A good result under the chosen path is not proof the plan was sound; read the other two
- Use the leaderboard for cohort comparison, not for grading
On generative AI: written rationales are exactly what marking teams now worry about. Because every rationale here is tied to an exposure assessment the student recorded inside the platform before the scenarios ran, the reasoning can be checked against the evidence rather than taken on trust.
Low risk to try with a class
Students rate it
93% of students rate Finsimco simulations Excellent, across more than 30,000 responses.
You are not on your own
Teaching notes, a setup and facilitation guide and a gameflow diagram come with it, and we support your first delivery directly.
No grading commitment
Run it ungraded the first time. Assessment is optional and can be added once you have seen how your cohort responds.
A bad session is recoverable
Pause or stop at any point and resume later without losing submitted data, so an overrun costs you a timetable slot, not the activity.
Read what lecturers say.
What AACSB and AMBA say about simulations
Ron Tuninga, Managing Director for EMEA at AACSB, and Victor Hedenberg, Membership Director at AMBA, on why simulation-based learning belongs in business education. Watch both interviews.
FAQs
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Get the course fit sheet
A one-page summary of this simulation, covering stages and timings, roles, concepts, learning outcomes and the debrief questions, plus a full sample teaching pack from one of our live simulations, so you can see exactly what you would be running.
Book a Demo
During the call, we can:
- Show the student and professor experience
- Discuss format, timing and syllabus fit
- Walk through setup, live delivery and optional assessment evidence
- Answer questions from your module team