According to an industry expert, insurers in Germany will exercise caution when investing in nuclear power. "I believe that insurers are generally more likely to rule this out because of the critical attitude of many people to nuclear power in Germany," said the chairman of the German Actuarial Association, Herbert Schneidemann, the news agencies dpa and dpa-AFX. "Personally, I believe that hardly any company can afford to call nuclear power in Germany green and then refer to the EU taxonomy."
Actuaries are actuaries who use methods of probability theory and statistics to assess financial uncertainties in insurance companies.
With the taxonomy, the EU Commission in Brussels has launched a kind of catalog for climate-friendly investments. Criticism is that from January 2023 onwards it is also considered climate-friendly to invest money in certain gas and nuclear power plants. "Nuclear power would be good technology in terms of climate technology, but it is something that is at the expense of the future," said the actuary and CEO of the insurance group Die Bayerische.
In principle, Schneidemann sees good opportunities for the industry to contribute to climate protection. Insurers could leverage investments to get companies moving and greener. In addition to investments in wind turbines, for example, the industry could achieve at least as much if it helps "to make brown industries a bit greener. It doesn't help if you tell brown industry: You won't get any more money from us." He therefore considers a gradual transformation of insurers' capital investments to be important. According to the latest data from the insurance association GDV, the investment portfolio in the industry amounted to almost 1.8 trillion euros at the end of 2020.
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