Insuring the Future: The Insurance Industry’s Role in Climate Change Mitigation"

Global warming and extreme weather are changing the rules of homeowners’ insurance across the globe. In the United States, as a result of increasing damages from floods, the federal flood insurance program (NFIP) is making significant changes to reduce costly public subsidies for climate risks - a move that raises prices for the public, reduces availability of insurance, and can ripple through to real estate market.

A new study published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Nature Portfolio), examines how the effects of climate change on hurricanes is expected to affect profitability in the U.S. homeowners’ insurance market. The study, led by a team of scientists at Tel Aviv University, proposes an alternative strategy: proactively channeling the anticipated losses to the insurance industry into climate-mitigation investments. The research was conducted by a joint team from Tel Aviv University, Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, and University of Haifa, including PhD student Moran Nabriski from the Department of Environmental Studies and Prof. Colin Price from the Department of Geophysics, both at Tel Aviv University, and Dr. Ruslana Palatnik from the University of Haifa.

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