Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is fundamental to mitigating the impacts of climate change. In early 2022, the California Department of Insurance released a new disclosure and analysis of insurance company investments, expanding previous efforts. The Climate Risk Analysis report includes more specific fossil fuel investment information and a new dataset of green investments – allowing the Department of Insurance to track investments in climate pollutants and help to create a path to more sustainable investments. The Climate Risk Analysis, which includes data from 2018 and 2019, promotes future investment disclosure and analysis tools and represents a deeper dive into insurance company investments than previous analyses.

For the first time, the fossil fuel investment disclosures include specific numbers for tar sands, one of the most carbon intensive fossil fuels. This Climate Risk Analysis is also the first from a state insurance regulator to include initial green investment categories. Also, for the first time, this two-year snapshot, from 2018 and 2019, of climate risk and resilience in investment portfolios includes a full, published methodology of the analysis.

The Climate Risk Analysis is an essential component of the Sustainable Insurance Roadmap, a partnership between the California Department of Insurance and the United Nations Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative. The new analysis will be a building block for future analyses that focus on specific climate risk and resiliency sectors of investment, including nature-based investment categories. The analysis discloses investments by individual insurance companies and is searchable through the 2018-2019 Climate Risk Analysis tool on this website

S&P Global Market Intelligence conducted the investigation of insurance company data. A link to the full analysis can be found here.