Peter Bosshard Profile picture
Oct 19 13 tweets 11 min read
🔥 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

Oct 17
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
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
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
Mar 17
BREAKING NEWS: @SwissRe, one of the world’s ultimate risk managers, brings new momentum to the insurance industry’s shift away from fossil fuels with a new oil and gas policy today. A quick 🧵 on the breakthroughs, the gaps and the steps which other insurers now need to take.
The new policy presents some major breakthroughs: Swiss Re is the first major oil and gas insurer to rule out support for almost all new oil and gas projects. More importantly, it plans to phase out support for any oil and gas companies without credible net-zero plans by 2030.
In a first for the insurance industry, Swiss Re’s phase-out commitment not only applies to the up and midstream sectors, but also to downstream companies (oil refineries, gas utilities, petrochemical plants etc.) without credible net-zero plans.
Read 11 tweets
Aug 25, 2021
Ending cover for new oil and gas projects would not just be good for the climate and insurers’ brand. @SocieteGenerale just found it would also be good for their shareholders. What are oil insurers like @Allianz, @AXA and @Zurich still waiting for? 🧵bloom.bg/3yaxDDm
Ending exposure to fossil fuels is seen as a sign of forward-looking management. As @MoodysInvSvc has found it also reduces the risk that insurers have to pay out massive damages for climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. bit.ly/3khIV3M
In December 2020, Societe Generale already increased the valuation of insurers with strong coal exit policies like AXA by up to 6%. Such a bump amounted to a green premium for shareholders of several billion dollars. bloom.bg/3jeTsO3
Read 6 tweets
May 18, 2021
BREAKING: In a welcome reversal, the @IEA today concluded that “there is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply” in a net-zero pathway to 2050. This punctures all the fossil fuel expansion plans in shallow corporate net-zero pledges. A brief #InsureOurFuture thread.
The IEA finds that reducing carbon emissions to net zero calls for “a complete transformation of how we produce, transport and consume energy”. This transformation will create 30 million jobs and result in at least 2 million fewer premature deaths per year from air pollution.
Even if the IEA continues to underestimate the potential of wind and solar and talks up CCS, “net zero means a huge decline in the use of fossil fuels” according to the roadmap, and the demand for coal, oil and gas will fall by 90%, 75% and 55% in the next three decades.
Read 8 tweets

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