Climate Activists Want To Make Fossil Fuel Industry Go Naked

As part of a strategy “to keep fossil fuels in the ground,” a movement to pressure insurance companies to avoid underwriting fossil fuel projects is underway in California, expected to take hold nationwide, and has already made headway in Europe. In 2016, California’s insurance commissioner asked carriers to voluntarily divest from thermal coal projects and required larger carriers to publically disclose their fossil fuel investments. Now a consortium of activist groups is pressuring the current insurance commissioner to require carriers to disclose which fossil fuel companies they are insuring, as well as those in which they are investing, and a recent Webcast made clear they are planning to take it a step further: pressuring the carriers to stop underwriting the projects. It’s a strategy that already has made headway in Europe, with major companies including Zurich, Allianz, Swiss Re, Munich Re, both divesting from and curtailing the underwriting of fossil fuel companies. One company that insures in both Spain and Latin America has said that it would stop underwriting new coal mines and power plants. The idea behind the movement is in part to impede what’s believed to be the largest source of CO2, the burning of coal, by forcing hundreds of new coal projects already in the pipeline to be called off for lack of insurance.