PeterBosshard Profile picture
Oct 19, 2022 13 tweets 11 min read Read on X
🔥 Insurance is the Achilles heel of the fossil fuel industry. A new #InsureOurFuture report published today finds that new coal power plants have become near uninsurable and that insurers have finally started to move away from oil and gas. A short 🧵 on leaders and laggards! 🔥
So far 41 insurers, up from 36 last year, have adopted coal restrictions. 📈 Their share of the reinsurance market has grown to 62% and much of the rest isn’t insuring coal anyway. Insurance capacity for coal has dwindled to $250m – 1/10 of the capacity for other power projects!
And 13 insurers, up from only 3 last year, have adopted restrictions on oil and gas. Their share of the reinsurance market has grown to 38%, up from 3% last year. 18 insurers have pledged not to insure the Trans Mountain pipeline and 18 have done the same for EACOP.
The quality of the new oil and gas restrictions is however uneven. 👏 @Swiss Re, @Allianz and @MunichRe will stop insuring all or most new oil and gas production projects while ❓ @AXA and @Zurich will only restrict support for new exploration but not for increased extraction.
And in spite of their climate rhetoric, 🛢️ major oil and gas insurers like @AIGinsurance, @Chubb, @LloydsofLondon and @TokioMarine have not adopted any restrictions on their support for climate wrecking conventional oil and gas projects at all!
Our new report scores and ranks 30 major fossil fuel insurers on their climate policies. 👍 #1 for insurance restrictions is @Allianz, followed by @AXA, @Avivaplc and @SwissRe. @SCOR_SE is #1 for fossil fuel divestment, followed by @AXA, @Generali and @Allianz. Congrats!
At the bottom of the list 👎 are #BerkshireHathaway, @EverestRe, China’s #PICC and #Sinosure, and @StarrCompanies with a flat 0 out of 10. @Chubb, @LibertyMutual and @LloydsofLondon also score very low.
As @ESulakshana says, “is unacceptable that insurance companies are abandoning climate-affected communities while continuing to fuel the climate emergency by underwriting the expansion of fossil fuel production".
Next year it will be 50 years since insurers started warning about climate risks. They need to immediately stop insuring any new fossil fuel projects and phase out their support for existing coal, oil and gas operations in line with a 1.5C pathway. #InsureOurFuture
The climate buck stops with the CEOs. Some have taken action even while their management is dragging their feet. Others’ legacy will be utter climate destruction. An @InsOurFuture thread calls out the leaders and laggards among the insurance CEOs at bit.ly/3CMw8zs.
The climate buck stops with the CEOs. Some have taken action even while their management is dragging their feet. Others’ legacy will be utter climate destruction. An @InsOurFuture thread calls out the leaders and laggards among the insurance CEOs at bit.ly/3CMw8zs.
You will find the 2022 fossil fuel insurance scorecard report at insure-our-future.com/scorecard. Our best insurance is to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Follow @InsOurFuture and join the campaign!
For some great early coverage of the new report, check out the Guardian bit.ly/3D6roGi, Washington Post wapo.st/3TsMR1w and SCMP bit.ly/3gijtwG.

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More from @PeterBosshard

Apr 8
GOOD NEWS: Responding to strong campaign pressure, @Zurich, one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel insurers, just excluded any further support for new oil and gas extraction and for new metallurgical coal projects. A quick 🧵 on why this is important. Image
Zurich is the 6th biggest fossil fuel insurer with annual premiums from oil and gas of an estimated $510 mn. With Zurich, ALL big European insurers have now stopped insuring the expansion of oil and gas.
This creates a new benchmark for responsible insurance. Other fossil fuel insurers in the US (such as @AIGinsurance), Asia (@TokioMarine) and on the Lloyd’s market (@HiscoxComms) now must follow suit or face increased public pressure.
Read 10 tweets
Nov 9, 2023
BREAKING: 45 companies controlling 41% of the insurance and 62% of the reinsurance market have adopted coal exit policies in recent years. Only 18 carriers accounting for 20% of the insurance and 47% of the reinsurance market have restricted their support for oil & gas. 🧵 Image
👍 According to the new #InsureOurFuture scorecard published today, the number of coal exit policies has increased from 41 to 45 last year. Oil & gas restrictions are up from 13 to 18, and tar sands restrictions from 21 to 26. That’s the good news.
👎 But most insurers’ oil & gas restrictions are extremely shallow. Almost all of them continue to underwrite new LNG terminals, gas power plants and oil companies which are still expanding their production. Laggards mostly in Asia and the US also insure new oil & gas fields.
Read 16 tweets
May 24, 2023
Breaking: a new @Greenpeace report just exposed the insurance companies underwriting the massive expansion of oil and gas extraction in Norway’s North Sea. Also today, >500 British students informed fossil fuel insurers they won’t work for climate wreckers. Read on! 🧵 Image
The Greenpeace report identified 69 insurers offering cover for the 21 oil and gas companies with massive expansion plans in the North Sea. Most of them are syndicates of @LloydsofLondon such as @BeazleyGroup, @britinsurance and @HiscoxComms.
The 21 companies are planning to develop new oil and gas fields holding about 3 bn barrels of oil equivalent, which will produce some 1.3 bn tons of CO2 when burnt. Climate scientists tell us that none of these projects can go forward within 1.5C of global warming.
Read 10 tweets
Oct 17, 2022
Climate disasters like Hurricanes Ian are making insurance unaffordable for communities exposed to climate risks. 🌪️ @chiaraarena2030 and I just proposed a way how insurers can make carbon polluters rather than their customers pay for such disasters. 🧵 context.news/climate-risks/… Image
As climate change spirals out of control, (un)natural disasters are becoming more frequent and expensive. 📈 Munich Re reports that they caused losses of $280 bn last year, up from $166 bn in 2019 and $210 bn in 2020. Insurers’ business models are now stretching at the seams.
AXA’s former CEO warned in 2015: “We know that if average temperatures increase by 2°C the world may still be insurable. But it’s very clear that at +4°C it would not.” 🌡️ Even at today’s +1.2°C, insurance is becoming unaffordable for growing areas from Florida to California.
Read 13 tweets
Oct 6, 2022
BREAKING: @MunichRe, the world’s biggest reinsurer, has just adopted an oil and gas exit policy. 🔥 Munich Re underwrites 22% of the global economy so this sends a strong message to insurers, energy companies and governments still considering new fossil fuel infrastructure. 🧵
👍 Under the new policy, Munich Re will no longer insure or invest in new oil and gas fields, new oil midstream projects and new oil power plants from April 2023. This applies to Munich Re’s primary, facultative and direct reinsurance.
👎 The policy doesn’t address insurance for gas pipelines, LNG plants and gas-fired power plants, and is silent on how to address oil and gas in Munich Re’s treaty reinsurance business. A lot of progress and some more work to be done!
Read 12 tweets
Apr 29, 2022
BOOM: @Allianz, the world’s biggest and most respected insurance company, has just published an ambitious oil and gas policy. The policy accelerates the insurance industry’s shift away from the oil sector and raises the bar for other insurers, which now have to follow suit. Image
Under the new policy, Allianz will to stop insuring and investing in new oil and gas fields, new oil power plants, new midstream oil infrastructure, and practices relating to the Arctic from January 2023, and will not renew existing contracts for such projects from July 2023.
The policy also contains some significant gaps: It notably fails to rule out midstream gas infrastructure like liquified natural gas terminals as well as gas plants or fracked gas, all of which are devastating to the climate.
Read 8 tweets

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