Coal exclusion policy
Commitment by an insurer or investor to stop covering or financing certain fossil activities based on defined thresholds.
A coal exclusion policy is a formal commitment by which an insurer stops covering, and an investor stops financing, thermal coal activities above defined thresholds, for example a share of revenue or energy production, or an absolute volume of new capacity. These policies often extend to tar sands, the Arctic and oil and gas expansion. They are the most visible operational tool of sustainable underwriting. Their real effectiveness is debated: a withdrawal by major Western insurers can be offset by alternative capacity in less scrupulous markets, displacing the risk without reducing it globally. Policies vary widely in granularity and severity, complicating comparison between players and feeding the rankings of specialized NGOs that measure commitment credibility.
In May 2015, AXA became the first major insurer to announce its divestment from coal. Other European insurers and reinsurers then excluded cover for new coal mines, while capacity partly redeploys toward Asian markets.
coal exclusion, coal policy, tar sands exclusion
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