NGFS chair says 2025 extreme-weather losses hit $200bn, double 2000s average

DNB President and NGFS Chair Olaf Sleijpen used a Frankfurt sustainable finance speech to lay out early estimates of this summer's European heat damage and present NGFS case-study findings on 31 extreme weather events from 2021-2025. The speech frames adaptation as a second-best policy and argues scenario analysis shows transition costs are now smaller than unmitigated climate damage.

• Sleijpen cited an early, unofficial estimate that combined weather effects could cut EU GDP by around 1% this year, approximately €180 billion.
• Coceral estimated Europe lost almost 9 million tonnes of grain crop this summer, with a financial loss of about 2 billion euros.
• NGFS case studies of 31 extreme weather events from 2021 to 2025 found GDP losses ranging from 0% to more than 50% and inflation increases of 0 to 17 percentage points.
• Global extreme weather damages recorded in 2025 exceeded $200 billion, double the average annual amount recorded in the 2000s, according to Sleijpen.
• Oxford Economics estimated adverse weather could add more than 1 percentage point to food-price inflation next year.

Executive summary

Olaf Sleijpen, President of De Nederlandsche Bank and Chair of the Network for Greening the Financial System, delivered a speech on climate change's economic impact at the Sustainable Finance Gipfel in Frankfurt on 1 October 2026. He described this summer…

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