Insure Our Future is a campaign asking the insurance industry to stop insuring new oil and gas.
Insurance is part of the financial structures that enable new fossil fuel projects to be built, so insurance companies have the power to prevent new fossil fuel extraction. The less insurance that's available, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to build new fossil fuel projects; it might even become impossible.
The Insure Our Future campaign launched five years ago. In that time, 41 insurers have adopted coal exit policies, and 12 have adopted exit policies for oil and gas, including significant insurers like Swiss Re, Allianz and Munich Re.
In February 2023, Quakers in Britain joined the campaign by writing an open letter to Lloyd's in partnership with African Quakers [PDF]. The letter particularly highlighted the damaging potential of the proposed East African Oil Pipeline, a project that some insurers have already ruled out insuring.
This was followed in April 2023 with a letter signed by 24 UK faith representatives [PDF], reiterating the hope that Lloyd's of London would adopt better fossil fuel policies.
Quakers in Britain has also used shares loaned by Share Action to support Friends to attend insurance company AGMs, where Friends have raised the issue of fossil fuel policies with company leaders.
To stay up to date with the Insure Our Future campaign, sign up to the Faith in Action newsletter and visit the Insure Our Future website.
As part of the Insure Our Future campaign, Quakers in Britain have been focusing on the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).
International companies plan to drill for oil at two oil fields in western Uganda, where 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil have been discovered. A portion of the oil would be refined domestically, but the majority would be exported via EACOP; without EACOP, drilling for oil at the site would not be possible.
If built, the pipeline would be the longest heated pipeline in the world. It would export a total of 848 million barrels of oil, producing 379 million tonnes of CO2. At peak emissions, it would emit more than the combined annual fossil fuel emissions of Uganda and Tanzania. It would also displace over 100,000 people, with concerns already raised about the process for compensating those who've lost their land, and would cross important freshwater sources with inadequate protections against oil leaks.
22 (re)insurance companies have said they won't offer insurance for EACOP, and no international (re)insurance fund has been found yet. Insurance campaigning has already caused significant delays for the pipeline.
For more information on the campaign to stop EACOP, visit the StopEACOP website. If you'd like to take action to support the campaign, take a look at the StopEACOP Adopt a Lloyd's insurer toolkit and email climatejustice@quaker.org.uk for support.
26 February 2024
