With countries striking an agreement at COP28 to transition away from all fossil fuels to reach net zero emissions globally by 2050, Europe’s insurance industry has reconfirmed its commitment to fighting climate change and “overcoming climate protection gaps.”
This morning, COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber announced the agreement, aptly named UAE Consensus, with no objections from any of the countries present.
As mentioned, the agreement calls on parties to take actions including “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.”
Michaela Koller, the Director-General of Insurance Europe, has since commented, “The science is unambiguous: climate change is causing more regular and severe natural disasters. In 2022 alone, global losses hit USD 275 billion.
“Without significantly cutting the world’s carbon emissions, this trend will accelerate. This will have many negative consequences, one of which will be that insuring against the effects of climate change will become increasingly costly.”
Koller continued, “Besides reducing emissions, it is equally important to step up adaptation efforts in order to reduce as much as possible the effects of climate change.
“Here, the main responsibility is with public authorities, but the insurance industry is committed to playing its part, and many insurers and insurance associations are in fact already involved in a whole range of initiatives to accelerate adaptation.”
As the largest group of institutional investors in Europe with over €10 trillion in assets, Insurance Europe stated that the industry is already supporting the sustainable transition.
“The industry also continues to support climate adaptation, raising awareness on the need to increase disaster resilience, sharing risk expertise and working with governments to maximise insurance coverage, for instance by building effective public-private partnerships,” the firm added.
