Today, climate campaigners from across the world call on insurance giants AIG, Lloyd’s of London and Tokio Marine to immediately stop insuring and investing in coal. The Insure Our Future network placed a full-page ad in the Financial Times calling out the insurance laggards as climate groups in Japan, South Korea, United States and the United Kingdom held both physical and digital actions demanding the three insurers “Insure Our Future, Not Fossil Fuels”.
Mobile billboard trucks circled the three insurer’s offices in New York City and London, while campaigners gathered outside of the Tokio Marine offices in Tokyo and Seoul. At the same time, activists from around the world emailed the CEOs and other senior level executives with demands that they drop coal.
While 24 insurers have committed to stop insuring coal with immediate effect, AIG, Lloyd’s of London and Tokio Marine continue to provide the insurance for this climate wrecking industry to operate. A groundbreaking report released this month by the International Energy Agency concludes that there is no room for any new coal, oil, or gas in a net-zero by 2050 pathway, and thus no longer any justification for insurance companies to support fossil fuel expansion.
Email these companies’ executives and demand they stop giving coal a lifeline.
Lloyd’s adopted a climate policy in December 2019, but it allows for continued insurance of existing coal, tar sands and Arctic energy projects until 2030, and has no plan to exit new oil and gas. Lloyd’s market is insuring some of the world’s dirtiest projects, including the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline in Canada, the Adani Carmichael coal mine in Australia, and oil drilling in The Bahamas.
Lloyd’s of London are the new masters of greenwash — putting out climate policies while continuing to prop up the world’s worst fossil fuel projects. But they have the opportunity to prove us wrong. If they are at all serious about protecting the planet, Lloyd’s needs to do what so many other insurers are doing and quit coal now.
Flora Rebello Arduini, SumOfUs Senior Campaigner
AIG is the largest insurer outside of China that has zero restrictions on coal underwriting. It is also one of the few companies willing and capable of insuring multi-billion-dollar coal projects. AIG has refused to drop the Trans Mountain pipeline, and has connections with the Adani Carmichael coal mine. AIG is also among the world leaders in insuring oil and gas projects.
AIG enables fossil fuel extraction that pollutes our planet and our communities. In 2019, less than 1% of AIG’s premiums were earned from coal, yet the corporation refuses to rule out underwriting coal projects. AIG has also invested at least $26 billion in fossil fuel companies, further compounding the company’s devastating environmental impacts. It’s beyond time for AIG to drop coal cover and phase out insurance for all fossil fuels.
Elise Peterson-Trujillo, Climate Campaign Coordinator at Public Citizen
Tokio Marine’s September 2020 coal policy “in principle” rules out insuring new coal projects, but contains so many loopholes that it enables any power project conceivable in the pipeline to receive insurance. Tokio Marine is a top-10 insurer in the global coal as well as the oil and gas sectors, including in the ‘emerging market’ countries of Latin America, Southern/Eastern Africa and Southeast Asia.
Tokio Marine has so far refused to rule out insuring new coal projects like the ones at Matarbari in Bangladesh and at Indramayu in Indonesia. Continuing to underwrite these projects will lock us all into a future reliant on the dirtiest fuel on the planet. Tokio Marine’s Annual Investor Relations Conference is today — what better time than now to commit to stop enabling any expansion of the global coal sector — with absolutely no exceptions?
Yuki Tanabe, Program Director at the Japan Center for a Sustainable Environment and Society (JACSES)
