AIG hones carbon-cutting path, ballyhoos green investments and D&I gains

AIG worked its second-ever ESG annual report to ballyhoo a swathe of green investments, minority promotions and net-female hiring.

Tracking carbon emissions remains in the infant stages, but a rough view of the challenge of net zero is forming.

AIG can cut more emissions represented on its investment book (51% of its total) than stem from its underwriting practices (48%), the report indicates.

In underwriting, the list of guilty parties goes well beyond the usual suspects. Utilities account for only 27.8% of the emissions represented by the underwriting portfolio; mining and oil and gas extraction account the next 12.8%. Manufacturing, management companies and logistics rank high.

AIG's own emissions from corporate activity, the lingering 1% on  AIG's emissions tally, were up year on year in 2021, but still down neighbourhood 19% from 2019 levels.

In investments,  AIG's current equity and corporate bond portfolios are well off mark, aligning more to a 2.7°C temperature increase by 2050 than the targeted 1.5.

The rough and ready early plan is to cut carbon-emissions at home and carbon emitters from the books, but with awareness that only a net zero is possible, not a gross zero.

Offsetting investments over the recent period have included $120 million in a portfolio of 446 distributed-generation and utility-scale assets across 23 US states for 446 MW of gross capacity.

The list also includes $160 million in Norwegian wind farms with a combined 2,146 MW of gross capacity as well as a green bond portfolio.

S&G elements include a two percentage point (pps) increase in Asian, Black and Latino representation in executive and senior management and a 0.6 pps increase in women across staff to 54.7% of the global workforce on 52% female hiring in 2021.

Did you get value from this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.