Zurich Financial Services Group and Swiss Re reported yesterday on their efforts to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change.
Zurich Financial Services Group's chief executive officer James J. Schiro said he has made climate change a major issue in the company's business strategy.
He announced a new initiative to focus the company on developing business solutions to what he said is a growing risk issue that can not be ignored.
At a press conference yesterday Mr. Schiro said, "I am absolutely convinced that the private sector has a much greater role to play in the climate debate than it has played to date.
"We can not leave the climate debate to the politicians. They do not have the focus and the business acumen to address this issue. Business leaders must step-up and play an important role in driving this because this is perhaps amongst one of the top three challenges we see business facing in the next ten years."
Zurich's new climate initiative program calls for the creation of a three person internal climate office. The executives, who have yet to be named, will report directly to Mike Kerner, global chief underwriting officer, underscoring the importance the CEO says he is putting on the program.
Mr. Kerner said the three will be responsible with developing products and programs, implementing a carbon management plan, and "coordinating with key internal and external stakeholders" in implementing those plans including achieving carbon reduction targets.
Zurich also announced it is setting up a Climate Change Advisory Council of its own executives and external advisors. The first two external members to join the board are former-U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., and Ernst Ulrich von Weizs?cker.
Mr. Boehlert spent his 24 years in the House concentrating on environmental issues and is on the board of Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection and The Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund.
Mr. von Weizs?cker is dean of the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Zurich said it is funding a distinguished visitors program at Bren School and partnering with other organizations and institutions in research programs to examine economic, finance and policy issues associated with climate change.
"As a society today we have the ways and means to assess which risks are associated with climate change, and most importantly, we have the chance to develop meaningful and sustainable approaches to cope with these risks," Mr. Schiro observed.
The CEO insisted that this initiative was not a promotional program by Zurich, but an important business enterprise to deal with a growing risk issue. He said the internal climate group will be charged with instilling a corporate-wide cultural awareness of climate change and finding ways to address the issue.
"I can see why someone would embrace this topic as a social responsibility, but it's also good business," said Mr. Schiro. "Good business from both the underwriting and operating side of the business."
Further details of the program will be announced in the spring, he said.
Meanwhile, Swiss Re said that its own carbon reduction initiative "CO-you2-reduce and gain" has attracted five percent or its workforce, 400 employees, to invest in items to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as hybrid cars to drive or solar panels to power homes.
Swiss Re pays for half of the amount invested, up to 5,000 Swiss Franc ($4,560 U.S. at the current exchange rate, for initiatives to reduce an employee's carbon footprint.
The company said it aims by 2010 to have 10 percent of its workforce in the program.
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