More carrot, less stick: Munich Re CEO Wenning’s message to climate activists

Climate activists need to start using their influence to make the world play the long game towards decarbonization, not the short game of investment and business exclusions, Joachim Wenning (pictured), CEO of  Munich Re, told an online industry conference late Friday, December 3.

"They focus to my taste a little bit too much on what you have to stop doing, what you have to exit, without looking at what needs to develop and evolve," Wenning said in a late session for the Reuters Next online conference.

A "real transformation" would focus more closely on enabling a 3-4 times increase in renewable capacity and a launch of large-scale carbon removal, Wenning says.

"That needs to work and when that works, brown investment or brown insurance will gradually be crowded out anyway," Wenning said.

Wenning echoes industry peers with a preference for handling brown industry in a way that will help those partners secure funding for their own transformation towards net zero targets. A one-day move to a carbon free world would only take food off of tables, Wenning argued.

NGOs with a climate focus have proven very successful in forwarding their agenda, Wenning says in apparent praise, with top gains in building public awareness and influencing investor tastes and demands.

"The ESG policy of how we exit some of these status quo investments, some of these status quo insurances, this is new, but it is frankly not the solution of the transformation."

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