The Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand conference on climate change adaptation heard from several sources that infrastructure project proponents were yet to require tenderers to show how they would identify and respond to climate change risks – despite the life of projects in some cases being up to 50 years.

Perhaps most telling was a comment from a Tenix employee, who said the company had never been asked for such information in requests for tender.

Australian Climate Commission commissioner Gerry Hueston, former president of BP Australasia, was the conference keynote speaker.

He argued that most larger companies understood the issues but he questioned the balance between shareholder return and management of "longer date" risks.

He is pessimistic about change in the near term.

"We have all of this exposed infrastructure … that is going to need a really timely understanding of the risks of climate change going forward and an understanding of when investments are needed," he said.

"I am not an optimist on that.

“I think we are going to see a hell of lot of havoc and damage in the future, because just think about how good we are at forward thinking infrastructure. It is always just in time or after the event.

“We don't build infrastructure for the future, we build infrastructure for today."

Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education adaptation and science division head Benedikte Jensen was more upbeat, diplomatically noting there is plenty of low hanging fruit.

In other words, we have a long way to go.

"We have a lot of options to control our destiny," she said.

“An example of this is the US and Hurricane Sandy. At the time that hit New York, Wall St and the stock exchange were shut down.

“You might ask why was it shut down? Because the US stock exchange had all its trading infrastructure in the basement on Wall St.

"You would think if you were really building climate variability into your business planning … that wasn't a good idea and there is something we can do, a tangible action, to protect the vulnerability of the US's financial markets."

One key player starting to address "resilience planning" is ANZ, according to its environmental sustainability head Catherine Bremner.

For example, it is building retail branches in container ships in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, "because they are easy to assemble, easy to use and you can deal with them straight after a flood or earthquake".

She acknowledged it was like turning a supertanker – but pointed to another challenge: climate risk skills are sorely lacking among infrastructure firms.

The bank recently went to tender for new data centres and wanted information on climate risk management but found the responses limited.

"Very few were able to comprehensively say what they would do differently," she said.

“There is an education need in the construction and property sector in Australia. You need some sort of framework.

“I remember when I was working in the UK and it was a big change for the government to stop procuring on the lowest capital cost but lifecycle cost.

“They put in this tri-generation unit, a £10 million ($A17 million) investment [and needed] $1000 for the controls. They weren't put in, so they couldn't run the unit efficiently in this hospital, which was crazy.

“This is a 25-year investment you can't run now. You've bought a Rolls Royce and don't know how to turn it on."

Issues around new infrastructure are one thing but a far thornier question is how to handle existing infrastructure.

Who pays for coastal retreat or maintenance on buildings now at risk from climate change – which is particularly pertinent this week given the leaked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change draft report projecting sea level rise of 29-82cm by the late 21st century.

The question of private and public costs is tricky.

According to SMH News Online, Suncorp has just begun cutting insurance premiums for residents of Queensland's flood-prone Charleville following completion of a $20 million levee and diversion project.

The publicly funded project will see the average home and contents premium fall from $3000 a year to around $2600, with some saving up to $990.

Yet benefits to the public are also clear.

Suncorp reportedly said Roma had for almost a decade been discussing a levee costing between $2 million and $10 million – the public cost of rescuing residents by helicopter in 2011 alone cost about $10 million.

This month's report from the Senate inquiry into extreme weather events from climate change made 10 recommendations, including "that building codes incorporate mitigation measures that take into account foreseeable risks from extreme weather events".

It is a start but there is a long way to go.