Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Podcast

How Wildfires Destroyed California’s Insurance Market

Rob and Jesse talk with Wharton’s Benjamin Keys, then dig into Trump’s big Day One.

Los Angeles fire destruction.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Los Angeles wildfires have killed at least 27 people, destroyed more than 17,000 structures, and displaced tens of thousands. In the next few months, the billions of costs in damage to homes and property will ripple through the state’s insurance market — and likely cause its insurer of last resort to run out of money.

Benjamin Keys has studied how natural disasters, rising sea levels, and increasing exposure to risk have driven up insurance costs nationwide. He is a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and one of the country’s top experts on climate change, home values, and insurance markets.

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Keys about how California broke its insurance market, why insurance costs are rising nationwide, and how homeowners, home buyers, and communities can protect themselves. They dive into President Donald Trump’s dizzying first day of executive actions and how they’ll affect the future of energy development. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.

Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.

Here is an excerpt from our conversation:

Jesse Jenkins: We should have warned you ahead of time that this podcast always devolves back to the tri-state area. It’s just sort of inevitable. We saw this dynamic on the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy, where a lot of more working class-type communities that had homes there, they ended up either getting wiped out or having to leave and sell, and moving out. And what replaced them were very large houses — some of them built in a more secure way, up above the floodplain on elevated floors. But most of them, as I understand it, don’t have insurance.

So they are self insured, in the sense that people think they’re wealthy enough that they can just absorb the loss. That’s one type of self insurance. The folks who are coming off the federal flood insurance plan are probably folks who are not really self insured. They can’t diversify there. They don’t have enough wealth to absorb that risk. They’re just simply exposed now and rolling the dice.

Benjamin Keys: And for the time being, the cost of flood insurance is still subsidized. And so, you know, even if you see your rate jump by 18% and you say, wow, that’s expensive, it’s going to get substantially worse. And so it’s a huge mistake to leave that path, and have interrupted flood coverage. That’s a tough one. And you know, most of the flood policies that are out there are mandatory. Those are ones that are being required by the mortgage market that, say, if you live in a flood zone, you have to have flood insurance.

So actually, I have flood insurance on my house in Philadelphia. I live close enough to the Schuylkill River, a couple of blocks away, that — and my neighborhood did flood just a few years ago. We fortunately weren’t harmed by it, but that flood insurance policy is mandated by the mortgage market. And so that’s where most of the coverage comes from.

But when you look at the voluntary take-up of flood insurance, it’s very low.

Jenkins: Are we likely to see something similar for wildfire risk? That effectively, insurers say, we'll continue to write policies in California, but if you're in a wildfire prone area, we're not going to give you wildfire insurance, which would create a kind of similar issue.

Keys: It's possible that we could see a national wildfire program or a broader national disaster program develop. The insurance industry would love to carve out these risks, right? These are very difficult things.

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …

Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Q&A

You, Too, Can Protect Solar Panels Against Hail

A conversation with VDE Americas CEO Brian Grenko.

This week's interview subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s Q&A is about hail. Last week, we explained how and why hail storm damage in Texas may have helped galvanize opposition to renewable energy there. So I decided to reach out to Brian Grenko, CEO of renewables engineering advisory firm VDE Americas, to talk about how developers can make sure their projects are not only resistant to hail but also prevent that sort of pushback.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

The Pro-Renewables Crowd Gets Riled Up

And more of the week’s big fights around renewable energy.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Long Island, New York – We saw the face of the resistance to the war on renewable energy in the Big Apple this week, as protestors rallied in support of offshore wind for a change.

  • Activists came together on Earth Day to protest the Trump administration’s decision to issue a stop work order on Equinor’s Empire Wind project. It’s the most notable rally for offshore wind I’ve seen since September, when wind advocates protested offshore opponents at the Preservation Society of Newport County, Rhode Island.
  • Esther Rosario, executive director of Climate Jobs New York, told me the rally was intended to focus on the jobs that will be impacted by halting construction and that about a hundred people were at the rally – “a good half of them” union members or representing their unions.
  • “I think it’s important that the elected officials that are in both the area and at the federal level understand the humans behind what it means to issue a stop-work order,” she said.

2. Elsewhere on Long Island – The city of Glen Cove is on the verge of being the next New York City-area community with a battery storage ban, discussing this week whether to ban BESS for at least one year amid fire fears.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Spotlight

How a Carbon Pipeline Is Turning Iowa Against Wind

Long Islanders, meanwhile, are showing up in support of offshore wind, and more in this week’s edition of The Fight.

Iowa.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

Local renewables restrictions are on the rise in the Hawkeye State – and it might have something to do with carbon pipelines.

Iowa’s known as a renewables growth area, producing more wind energy than any other state and offering ample acreage for utility-scale solar development. This has happened despite the fact that Iowa, like Ohio, is home to many large agricultural facilities – a trait that has often fomented conflict over specific projects. Iowa has defied this logic in part because the state was very early to renewables, enacting a state portfolio standard in 1983, signed into law by a Republican governor.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow