Lloyd's of London Quits Net Zero

Green ideology is finally meeting its nemesis: reality and the bottom line

Insurance market Lloyd’s of London (not to be confused with the Lloyds Banking Group) has taken another step away from Net Zero. According to the Financial Times, Lloyd's new boss Patrick Tiernan has said that the owners of the insurance market “will no longer ask insurers to stop providing insurance cover for coal or other planet-warming fossil fuels”.

A number of newspaper reports covering the story put the blame (or credit, if you prefer) at the White House. Lloyd's move came “amid a backlash led by Donald Trump against pro-green financing”, says the Telegraph. The Guardian says: “Donald Trump has been expanding oil, gas and coal production, ordering companies to ‘drill, baby, drill’ while ditching green energy programmes.” And the green-leaning FT, too, uses the slogan to contextualise this nail in the global Net Zero coffin, mentioning that "US President Donald Trump ditched dozens of clean energy programmes in favour of fossil fuels, and urged oil and gas companies to ‘drill, baby, drill’”.