Extreme weather fueled by climate change is making the investments crucial to cutting climate pollution more expensive — sometimes prohibitively — to insure, Bloomberg reports. From solar panel-pummeling baseball-size hail to flooding, wildfires, and other disasters, extreme weather has “become a giant risk for the financing of these projects,” Jason Kaminsky, head of solar data and climate insurance provider kWh Analytics, told Bloomberg. “Anything that increases costs could slow down the deployment of renewable power needed for the energy transition.”
The cruel summer irony of solar energy potential being stifled by hail is especially costly. “A lot of areas that are ripe for solar energy are vulnerable to hail,” Lou Gritzo, chief science officer of FM Global (whose employees get paid to shoot ice out of a cannon at solar panels), told Bloomberg. The insurance industry is abandoning markets across the country, leaving customers even more vulnerable to climate impacts, while also insuring and investing in the fossil fuel extraction causing the climate crisis. (Bloomberg $)