A Year in Review: CSAA Insurance Group’s Climate Journey

By: Jami Goldman

It’s been a year since I joined CSAA Insurance Group as its first-ever sustainability program manager, and I’m taking stock of what a year it’s been and how quickly it has flown. In a race against time, climate change is the single greatest threat to our planet and there is no time to waste. So, what did we accomplish at CSAA IG in 2022, and where are we heading next on our climate journey??

Progress toward our goals

Overall, I’m feeling good about the progress we made, while acknowledging that there is a long way to go, and the work will get tougher moving forward. But I remain optimistic.?

We focused on accelerating our environmental stewardship through increased visibility of our climate journey, both internally and externally.?We continue to work diligently to achieve our goal of 50% decarbonization from our baseline of 2016, and?carbon neutrality by 2025. We have achieved >40% greenhouse gas emissions reduction across Scopes 1 (fleet), 2 (purchased energy) and 3, inclusive of employee commute, business travel and work-from-home emissions.?We also saw new challenges in the wake of the pandemic as the world opened back up. An increase in business travel and employee commutes as some employees returned to the office regularly means greater emissions. While some travel remains business-critical, we continue to evaluate this with a climate lens to balance emissions and business needs moving forward.

Our decarbonization strategy emphasizes multiple tactics:?

• Right-sizing our real estate footprint;
• Reducing our fleet, converting to more environmentally friendly vehicles (92% hybrids), and transition planning to zero emission vehicles;?
• Digitizing operations;
• Reducing business travel; and
• Continuing to support and educate the 84% of our employees who work from home full-time on actions they can take to reduce their carbon footprint.

Working towards our 2025 goals, the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs) continues to play an important role in our shift to?“green?“electricity that began in 2021. By purchasing RECs, we are helping to drive increased demand for development of green energy projects across the utility-provider landscape.?

Accountability and transparency are also key to our sustainability strategy. For the first time, we voluntarily submitted our climate journey to the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project),?a not-for-profit charity that runs a global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts. More than 18,000 companies reported in 2022. It is the gold standard of environmental reporting with the world’s most comprehensive dataset. CSAA IG scored a C for 2022. While we were hoping for a higher score, we are confident this work will help propel our journey forward with a better understanding of opportunities for improvement and more informed goals to deepen accountability.

In 2022, we added a new dimension to our risk management work around climate change by adopting the Task Force on Climate-Related Disclosures (TCFD) reporting. Through this work we are identifying the risks and opportunities to our business and policyholders in the face of climate change.?

What is Next?

We have plans to continue to?think big and move fast?on our climate journey in 2023.?

• We continue to evaluate further Scope 3 emissions for inclusion in our 2025 goals and beyond.?
• We are partnering with IDEO, a global design company, for CSAA IG’s first-ever external climate challenge. It’s an open innovation program to invest in new solutions that help protect frontline communities in the face of climate change related events, especially wildfires. We are partnering with likeminded organizations to generate more ideas for a bigger impact. Find out more here.?
• We continue to support initiatives and organizations that align with our aspirational environmental goals.?
• We will further integrate sustainability into our culture to engage employees, solicit ideas and encourage action.
• Alongside these actions for impact, we are looking at how climate change will affect our business and strategizing ways to address risks and identify opportunities in the new, green economy.

The impacts of climate change are being felt more and more each year, and we are at the forefront of this change the insurance industry. Natural disasters directly linked to climate change are happening more frequently with greater severity. CSAA IG’s purpose is to help people prevent, prepare for and recover from life’s uncertainties. We will continue to work with a sense of urgency on our climate journey. And I will continue my due diligence to help guide us forward.?