Boston, May 17, 2024 – Chubb investors cast 28% of votes in favor of a shareholder proposal filed by Green Century and the As You Sow Foundation Fund asking the company to disclose climate emissions associated with its insurance and investment activities.
For the past two years, Chubb has fought similar resolutions that also sought comprehensive and detailed emissions reporting.
Chubb is the largest publicly-traded commercial property and casualty insurance company in the world. The company insures companies that drill for oil and gas, operate oil pipelines, and build liquified natural gas terminals, including in communities on the Gulf Coast of the United States. Chubb had previously insured the infamous Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline in Canada, which transports crude oil and tar sands oil from landlocked Alberta to Canada’s Pacific Coast. Producing tar sands fuel is even dirtier than coal.
“At a time when the heat waves, droughts, and hurricanes related to climate change are increasing, Chubb, at the very least, should keep investors informed about the risks they face from the emissions its insurance and investments enable,” said Green Century President Leslie Samuelrich. “If a global insurance company with the sharpest actuaries can’t begin to measure and report this data, then that should worry all of us.”
Chubb Conflicted About Climate Change
Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg has stressed that Chubb works to support industries that either help business and individuals reduce their carbon footprints or to create new technologies that produce carbon-free energy. In the company’s 2023 annual report, Chubb acknowledged that climate change-fueled severe weather and natural catastrophes may have challenged its profitability. Chubb also made headlines in late 2021, when it decided to pull homeowners insurance coverage in wildfire prone areas of California.
Nevertheless, Chubb ranks 4th on the Insure Our Future’s 2022 list of top fossil fuel insurers in the world, and is a key insurer of Brazil’s national oil company, which directs exploratory and ongoing drilling in some of the world’s most sensitive ecological sites around the Great Amazon Reef and along Brazil’s coastline.
“As investors, we know there are short-term rewards for providing insurance to fossil fuel interests,” commented Green Century Shareholder Advocate Andrea Ranger. “However, the long-term consequences of short-term decisions is what we’re concerned about. Climate change has a very long tail, and we want insurers to prevent, not worsen, this looming threat.”
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