Climate activists gathered in front of the City of Boulder’s Penfield Tate Municipal Building last week to urge the city to rethink its insurance providers. In a letter to city staff, the activists specifically called on the city to only use insurers that aren’t underwriting or investing in oil and gas operations. AIG and Chubb were highlighted during the press conference for their roles in the fossil fuel industry.
“Insurance giants like AIG and Chubb are insuring and investing in fossil fuel companies and projects,” said Micah Parkin, executive director of 350 Colorado, a climate action organization. She pointed out that as these insurers back fossil fuel companies, they are raising rates for ordinary people grappling with “worsening wildfires and flooding resulting from the heat-trapping emissions from the fossil fuel industry.”
The City of Boulder has 27 insurance policies with 18 different carriers. Two of those carriers are AIG and Chubb.
Jonathan Koehn, director of the city’s Climate Initiatives Department, said the Feb. 29 press conference has already sparked some conversation within the city about its insurance decisions.
“Addressing the root causes of climate change, like our economic system’s reliance on fossil fuels, is an area where cities can have a real impact,” Koehn told Boulder Reporting Lab. “Supporting companies that share our sustainability values is a way we can leverage systems change to help mitigate the climate crisis.”
Koehn added that, until now, insurance has been “an overlooked area where cities can have a real impact” and said that the city is currently “exploring provider options.”
The activists also provided a letter to the Board of County Commissioners thanking them for their 2020 proclamation to screen insurers based on their investment in and insurance of fossil fuel companies. At the time, the county was heralded as the first local government to target insurance companies’ role in propping up fossil fuel projects.
Yet, according to county staff, the proclamation has not yet led to change. The county still uses insurers that invest in and insure fossil fuel projects “due to a difficult insurance market and the resulting reduction of carriers in the Public Entity Sector,” Gloria Handyside, the commissioners’ communications director told Boulder Reporting Lab.
The county carries policies with 20 insurers. One of them is Chubb.
The recent effort in Boulder is part of a broader campaign, called Insure our Future, aimed at the global insurance industry for its role in underwriting risky, high-carbon projects.
Last summer, U.S. senators sent letters to an array of insurers, including AIG and Chubb, urging them to reassess their involvement with oil and gas companies.
“Underwriting and investing in dangerous fossil fuel projects makes it harder to achieve global climate goals,” the letter to AIG said. “AIG also continues to be one of the largest insurers of fossil fuels in the United States, collecting as much as $675 million in premiums for covering the fossil fuel industry in 2021.”
In a similar letter, senators asserted that Chubb, despite limiting its coal investments, “is still a major insurer of fossil fuel projects, with an estimated $500 to $800 million in annual premiums from the industry.”
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