Insurers have green muscle

There’s a lot of “hot air” around global warming. The insurance industry’s ClimateWise organisation, grouping 41 insurers together, representing 60% of the UK general insurance industry and 50 % of the life sector, has the potential to be just that.

Its chairman is Allianz’s Andrew Torrance. So just how is Allianz doing, practically?

There’s all the usual PR puff that could, to a cynic, be considered hot air. There’s a partnership with the WWF, giving the cuddly panda link. There’s the saving money using second hand car parts and calling them recycled and there turning off computers and lights.

But the company has actually made a start on some more concrete proposals both internally and potentially for customers. The results – they say if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it – seem impressive. By changing the type and position of recycling bins in the company’s Guildford head office, Allianz has reduced it waste sent to landfill by 38 tonnes a year. In its Bristol office, the last on out turning off the lights has cut the electricity bill by 3%.

Richard Foulerton is the new corporate social responsibility manager. He says: “The Allianz Group has a target to reduce emissions by 20% by 2012, which goes beyond the targets set globally by the Kyoto Protocol. Allianz Insurance has been set a target of 25% reduction, which reflects our greater contribution given our size and resources. The Environmental Champions programme, which has run for ten months and has been facilitated externally by the Global Action Plan, has achieved some significant savings in terms of energy use through the 'I love my planet' initiative, which encourages employees to switch off lights and desktop electrical equipment.”

The next phase to is get customers to change their behaviour too. In 2008 Allianz Engineering introduced a range of energy inspection services aimed at helping businesses run more efficiently.

One set of office buildings surveyed recently was made up of six interconnected buildings dating from between 1971 and 1990 and covering a total of 9,000m². It was mainly open plan with a small share of the floor area used for meeting rooms and individual offices. The buildings also housed a restaurant with kitchen and computer rooms.

Allianz claims it identified changes that would shave £80,000 a year or 15% of their annual energy bills and cut 472 tonnes of CO2 every year – the equivalent of around 4,200 return flights from the UK to France.

If every insurer could do that for even a small proportion of their clients, the industry really would be taking a lead. Yes, the clients still have to be convinced to make the changes but insurers would at least turn saving the plant from a load of hot air into a hot topic.