Suncorp under pressure to ditch fossil fuel investments

In a potentially huge ecological shift, the floods and bushfires that have ravaged parts of Queensland this year have prompted shareholders of the state’s biggest company to call for it to stop investing in fossil fuels.

ENVIRONMENTAL activist shareholders of Suncorp says its lucrative insurance business is under threat from global warming weather events but have failed to get the financial group to target specific reductions in fossil fuel investments.

Environmental group Market Forces moved at Suncorp’s annual general meeting Thursday to push the company to set targets to reduce investment in and underwriting of oil and gas projects. Suncorp has already committed to phase out investments in coal by 2025.

Suncorp chairman Christine McLoughlin said the company accepted that human activity was causing climate change and the frequency of severe weather events was accelerating.

But Ms McLoughlin said Suncorp had taken steps to reduce its exposure to the fossil fuel sector and disclosure of specific investment targets was not needed.

She said fossil fuel related business made up less than 1 percent of its insurance business and a negligible part of its lending and investment portfolio.

Activist shareholders said that targets were necessary as Suncorp’s insurance business came under threat from worsening natural disasters linked to global warming. Jan McNicol said Suncorp’s insurance business could end up in a “death spiral” due to global warming.

However, a resolution that would have led to Suncorp disclosing short, medium and long term fossil fuel reduction targets was voted down by an overwhelming majority of shareholders.

Grazier Simon Gedda said that he became convinced that human activity was causing worsening weather conditions when a flood hit his central Queensland property in 2017.

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“It went through the second storey of our home and was 14 foot higher than the previous record flood in 1991,” Mr Gedda told the AGM.

“We were given 10 minutes to pack some stuff and get out. Any scepticism about the human impact on global warming ended that day.”

Suncorp CEO Steve Johnston and chairman Christine McLoughlin at Thursday’s annual general meeting.

Mr Gedda said he was concerned that continued investment by Suncorp in oil and gas projects would put its insurance clients at continued risk of severe weather events.

Another shareholder Paul Jukes said that while he welcomed Suncorp’s decision to stop funding new coal projects it needed to exit all fossil fuel projects.

He said the recent bushfires that swept through old growth rainforest on the Gold Coast hinterland was a sign of worsening global warming induced weather events. “This is not normal,” said Mr Jukes.

Suncorp chief executive Steve Johnston said the company’s involvement in funding and underwriting of fossil fuel projects was minimal and there were no plans to increase its investments in oil and gas.

Flooding in North Queensland earlier this year left an estimated 500,000 head of cattle dead.