Insurance companies have been warning about the potential impacts of climate change for decades. These are the institutions that are supposed to protect us from catastrophic risk. And yet many of the same companies continue to insure and fund fossil fuel projects.
To this date, insurance companies have invested more than $600 billion in fossil fuel companies. Imagine if they spent that on renewable energies instead?
Coal fired power station in Germany
How do insurance companies fuel climate change?
Without insurance, most coal projects wouldn’t happen. They depend on insurers to cover the legal, financial and natural risks of their projects. By insuring new coal plants, mines, power utilities, and infrastructure projects, insurers enable these companies to continue destroying our planet.
Insurers are among the world’s largest asset owners. They are uniquely placed to support the transition away from coal and fossil fuels and to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2ºC degrees. If they shifted their trillions away from fossil fuels to sustainable energy, the impact would be huge.
In 2015, before the Paris Climate Agreement was signed, Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) warned that, “There is no space for new coal.” But almost three years later, many companies are still building new coal power plants.
Right now, 1500 new coal power plants are being planned across the world. According to research by Urgewald and Coal Swarm, these would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by a staggering 42.7%. The result would be a climate hell.
With support from many global insurers, they have the finance they need to go through with these projects.
Smoke from coal-related industries causes severe air pollution in Inner Mongolia
How do we change this?
As part of the Unfriend Coal network (keep up to date with this campaign here), Greenpeace is fighting to get insurance companies to stop underwriting new coal ventures and divest their funds away from this polluting industry.
As an immediate step, we’re demanding that insurance companies get out of the coal business and support the transition to clean energy. When we find an insurer enabling more coal projects, we’ll hold them to account and expose their involvement in dirty energy for their customers.
That’s where we need you, to help expose the corporate laggards and demand real climate change action from the insurance sector.
And are the insurance companies listening?
Activists protest outside the annual meeting of Generali Insurance
So far 16 insurers, including Lloyds of London have divested an estimated $22 billion from coal companies. Since 2017, global insurance groups like AXA, Zurich, SCOR and now Allianz have decided to stop insuring some or all new coal projects, and Swiss Re has announced that it will follow suit soon.
AXA, the French insurance company, has promised to divest another €3.1 billion from coal, tar sands and pipeline companies and will stop insuring these companies for any new fossil fuel projects.
Generali, the biggest Italian insurance company, has taken a first step towards a cleaner investment policy, but it is far from being enough. Greenpeace Italy is still demanding that Generali stops insuring coal and fully divest from this harmful industry.
And this is just the beginning. Are you on board?
Based on an interview with Katya Nikitenko (Senior Finance Campaigner, Greenpeace Switzerland) and Luca Iacoboni (Climate and Energy Campaigner with Greenpeace Italy) by Cecilia Calello, Campaign Operations Manager for the Climate and Energy Team at Greenpeace International