Dr Sophie Taysom

Dr Sophie Taysom is the founder and CEO of Keyah Consulting, a London-based climate and sustainability advisory firm specialising in real estate professional services. She holds a PhD, contributes regularly to the Financial Times Sustainable Views platform, and founded the Sustainable Real Estate LinkedIn group, now approaching 10,000 members. Her work focuses on climate risk, ESG regulation, and the intersection of insurance and asset valuation across UK and European markets.

Dr Sophie Taysom, CEO, Keyah -Cover image - Adaptation and resilience across real estate - The legibility problem

Why Adaptation and Resilience Need a Shared Language in Real Estate

Key points A commercial building approved today will still be standing in 2075. The rules it is built to, how it is valued, the initial loan conditions and insurance terms all get fixed at the point it is built. A changing context, whether it be new building requirements, climate related risks, buyer sentiment, means that

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The climate insurance question that needs a public answer

The UK’s Climate Change Committee convened a citizens’ panel this year. One question: should households facing less climate risk help pay for those facing more. The focus was on adaptation. The panel didn’t resolve it. Nobody has. That’s not a gap in the process. It’s the actual shape of the problem. Published this month in

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Sustainability acronyms in Real Estate: A Growing List

Sustainability and climate terminology in real assets moves fast. Reporting frameworks, emissions standards, and regulatory requirements change constantly. This reference covers 70+ acronyms I encounter most often working with clients across real assets, insurance, and the built environment. It spans disclosure frameworks, carbon accounting, financial regulation, and building certifications. V1.8 updated July 2026. Let me

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Flood Risk, insurance, and what remains unanswered: Who pays?

Key points The UK’s insurance protection gap stands at 29%. Flood Re, the public-private reinsurance scheme that has kept flood insurance affordable for the highest-risk households since 2016, ends in 2039. Without it, that gap will grow. The Climate Change Committee is explicit on this in its Fourth Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk. What

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Why the data gap is becoming a real asset liability

Key points The buildings being financed today will either prove their value in 2040, or they won’t The question that matters most about any building is not whether it performs well today. It is whether it will still be performing, financeable, and insurable in fifteen years. That is a harder question than it sounds and

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Closing the Data Gap Across Climate Risk and Real Estate

Key Points The questions being asked about climate risk in investment committees have changed. Sharper, more specific, harder to deflect with a sustainability report. The gap between what gets disclosed and what is actually known about asset-level exposure has become the central problem. Four interconnected issues sit behind this. None of them are new. But

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From Sustainable to Regenerative: UK Construction Week, May 2026

The construction industry has a proof problem. Not a performance problem. The capacity to build regeneratively, to design for ecological and social return alongside financial return, exists. The problem is that the evidence, the metrics, and the narratives needed to move capital toward it are still catching up with the ambition. That gap is where

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Heatwaves are disrupting valuation assumptions

New research, published today in PERE. Bank card transaction data from Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide has something to say about retail valuation models. On days above 35°C, consumer spending falls 6.8% overall. In the peak trading window, the drop hits 13%. Spending partially rebounds the following days, by about 5%. But, and this is important

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Dr Sophie Taysom, Keyah CEO — cover image for insurance, climate risk and housing

Urban climate resilience has a framing problem — and it’s costing cities

Most conversations about climate resilience in cities start in the wrong place. They begin with planning — land use, zoning, infrastructure design, flood modelling. These things matter. But treating resilience as primarily a planning problem misses where the real pressure is building. The pressure is financial. When insurers reprice flood risk in a postcode, that’s

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The Market Knows It’s Running Out of Time. It Just Doesn’t Know What to Do Next.

Key points Keyah’s market research with real estate professionals reveals a sector that understands the stakes and is still stuck. Real estate professionals are not, for the most part, unaware of what climate risk means for their portfolios. What Keyah’s recent market research found, across conversations with boards, asset managers, and advisory professionals, is something

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Uninsurable Britain? What Australia, New Zealand, and California can teach us

Key points I had the opportunity to present at a Parliamentary roundtable chaired by George Freeman MP at Portcullis House in Westminster. The roundtable is being used to inform Freeman’s Inland Flooding Bill, a piece of proposed legislation designed to improve accountability for flood risk, help residents better prepare, and tighten planning rules. Alongside me

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The Valuation Gap: Board Questions for Climate Risk Assessment in Real Estate

Key points Real estate portfolios face a fundamental valuation problem: asset prices do not yet fully reflect climate risk. For boards overseeing REITs, pension funds, and institutional portfolios, this mispricing represents fiduciary risk. Valuations anchored to historical data understate future impacts. The following questions provide a framework for assessing whether climate risk is properly reflected

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