Coal projects outside China becoming ‘uninsurable’, says climate group

theguardian.com:

New coal power projects are becoming “effectively uninsurable” outside China because so many insurance companies have ruled out support for them, a report has found.

Recent commitments to stop underwriting coal by prominent US insurers AIG and Travelershave brought the number of coal insurance exit policies to 41, according to the latest industry scorecard by the climate campaign Insure Our Future.

The scorecard ranks the top global fossil fuel insurers on the quality of their fossil fuel exclusion policies. It shows that 62% of the reinsurance market and 39% of the primary insurance market are now covered by coal exclusions, with Allianz, Axa and Axis Capital ranking top for the robustness and breadth of their policies.

Many of the remaining insurers without coal exclusions are not active in the fossil fuel sector.

Insure Our Future says that many of the key laggards that are continuing to underwrite new coal projects are unlikely to be able to mobilise the expertise and capacity needed to insure big, complex new coal power plants.

There has also been a significant shift away from oil and gas. At the time of last year’s climate talks in Glasgow, only three companies had any restrictions on insuring conventional oil and gas projects. But in the past year, another 10 insurers have followed suit.

The latest company to do so is the world’s largest reinsurer, Munich Re, which published an ambitious oil and gas exit policy earlier this month. That means more than a third of the reinsurance market is now covered by oil and gas exclusions.

Peter Bosshard, who coordinates the international Insure Our Future campaign, attributes the shift largely to climate campaigning. “So far, there hasn’t been real regulatory pressure. And there