While MetLife announced last month that it's the first U.S. insurer to achieve carbon neutrality, Prudential Financial claimed a steady decline in waste and water usage and lowered greenhouse gas emissions in its domestic operationally controlled, owned and leased office portfolio. 

"Our renewable energy investments last year were valued at more than $3.8 billion,” said Suzanne Klatt, director of environment and sustainability at Prudential Financial in Newark, N.J.
 
MetLife and Prudential along with American International Group (AIG), Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Liberty, Lincoln, Nationwide, Sun Life, Travelers Group and XL America were among 22 American companies earning the High Quality designation for climate risk reporting last year, according to a Ceres report. In 2014, only two U.S. insurers were on the list.

“Within the U.S. insurance context, Met Life has shown leadership,” said Max Messervy, manager of the insurance program with Ceres, a climate research institute in Boston. “The Hartford and Prudential are also making strides along with European insurers such as Allianz, Swiss Re, Munich Re, and AXA. These insurers have all made significant commitments to reduce their operational carbon footprints and to think really long and hard about how they're structuring their businesses, the products they're offering and their investments.”

MetLife’s sustainable business strategies includes energy reductions of nearly 30 percent across U.S. owned and operated offices, engagement with top suppliers about reducing environmental impact throughout the organization’s supply chain and green investments of $9.7 billion in 37 wind and solar farms, equity stakes in 48 LEED-certified properties and $3 billion in renewable energy projects.

“During the years of the Obama administration, there was a shift in political currents,” Messervy told Financial Advisor magazine. “We've certainly seen the corporate sector and financial services companies really begin to increase their commitments around climate change. ... There's been a general changing of the guard on the sentiments in the last eight years.”

However, President Donald Trump’s position is decidedly different than former President Obama’s view on climate change and the environment.

“While environmental performance will probably be less important to the federal government, it may continue to be important both to consumers, especially millennials, and to specific state governments, such as Californi, where there are very stringent environmental regulations and for good reason,” said Matthew Josefowicz, president and founder of Novarica, an insurance research company.

According to a Schroders Global Investor Study 2016, which surveyed 20,000 investors in 28 countries, millennials ages 18 to 35 are more likely to place greater importance on ESG factors than investors who are 36 years and older.

“The insurance industry has a very depoliticized view of climate change because they are betting money on the weather,” Josefowicz told Financial Advisor. “If you're betting money on the weather, you take the weather very seriously and you don't let that judgment be clouded by political objectives. Insurers that are insuring costal properties or have a risk profile that are affected by changes in weather patterns are naturally very concerned with monitoring and mitigating climate change.”

Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, is famous for suing the EPA over regulations 14 times when he was the attorney general of Oklahoma.

“Pruitt is quite correct that the Obama EPA violated the law in any number of dimensions and violated the constitution in several dimensions as well and that a rollback in the regulatory regime from the last eight years is appropriate as a legal matter,” said Benjamin Zycher, an economist and John G. Searle Chair with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington D.C.

Among the Obama Administration’s key environmental initiatives that President Trump is reportedly looking to dismantle include the Clean Power Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from primarily coal fueled power plants. 

But that hasn't deterred insurance companies from continuing their green policies.

“Prudential is continuing on its course of sustainability and our commitment to the environment,” Klatt told Financial Advisor. “It's always been about long-term value creation for Prudential.”

Although the Supreme Court blocked the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan until challenges at the state level could be resolved, the EPA claims that the Clean Air Act gave it the authority to create new regulations. With Pruitt as the newly appointed EPA director, that stance may change.

“While some regulations may be changed or shifted around by the Trump administration, the shift in awareness towards climate change and carbon neutrality can be sustained amongst the business community,” said Messervy. “And that's because many companies have realized that recognizing environmental social and government related issues and addressing them proactively intrinsically benefits the bottom line.”