Dalkia CEO demands more insurance support for renewable energy

The CEO of a renewable energy company in France has asked the insurance market to provide more support for innovative technologies that will help trigger the energy transition.

Speaking at the annual conference of France’s risk management association AMRAE, Sylvie Jéhanno, the chairman and CEO at Dalkia, the renewable energy company that belongs to the EDF group, said that insurance prices are too high and it remains difficult for the company to find cover for some risks.

The comments concur with recent analysis carried out by AMRAE, which spotted ongoing hesitancy from insurers to provide capacity at reasonable rates and conditions for the renewable energy sector.

“We must not look at insurance as a cost centre, but it is really too expensive,” said Jéhanno,  adding that the company’s relationship with the insurance market is “evolving”.

She remarked that it is sometimes difficult to find cover when the company develops new technologies to boost the production of clean energies.

Jéhanno gave the production of geothermal energy, which requires extensive digging underground to find hot water sources, as an example.

“That will generate a certain number of risks,” she said.

In order to make investment decisions based on risk assessments, it would be helpful to count on insurance coverage for that sort of situation, Jéhanno added.

“And we found that there are some covers for that kind of project, but it was not possible to arrange it,” she said.

The CEO urged insurers to work on a partnership basis with companies like Dalkia to accompany them through the development of renewable energy projects that, in her words, are “a bit new”.

“It is not an easy subject for insurers. When we innovate, we do not have much data or a cost history, so it is complicated to model it,” Jéhanno conceded. “But we must build the energy transition together, and there will be risks that we need to tackle together.”