Insurance is on the front lines of climate risk, and may help shape how we respond to it.

---

Insurance is one of the quiet pillars of the modern economy. It underpins where we build, how we invest, and whether communities can recover after disaster. In many ways, it defines what risks we’re willing, and able, to live with.

But that foundation is under strain. Across the United States, rising losses from wildfires, floods, and other extreme events are driving up insurance costs and pushing insurers out of some markets. In states like California and Florida, homeowners are finding it harder, and more expensive, to secure coverage. When insurance becomes unavailable, the consequences extend beyond individual households, affecting housing markets, local economies, and community stability.

Carolyn Kousky, founder of Insurance for Good and a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, explores how climate change is reshaping insurance markets and what that means for the future of risk, investment, and resilience. She explains how insurance doesn’t just respond to risk, but can also influence it by shaping investment in resilient infrastructure, guiding development decisions, and affecting the flow of capital into cleaner energy systems.

Carolyn Kousky if a senior fellow with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and founder of Insurance for Good.

Related Content:

Measuring What Matters: Rethinking Energy Insecurity Metrics https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/measuring-what-matters-rethinking-energy-insecurity-metrics/

Policy Design Issues for Border Carbon Adjustments https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/policy-design-issues-for-border-carbon-adjustments/

Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Arctic is emerging as a new front in the global competition over strategic minerals, raising questions about how the supply chains behind the energy transition will be governed.

---

In recent months, Arctic resources have moved to the center of geopolitical debate. President Trump has publicly proposed that the United States take control of Greenland, citing its strategic location and mineral wealth, while leaders in Denmark and Greenland have rejected the proposal.

The dispute comes at a time when critical minerals are becoming central to the global energy transition. Electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and advanced technologies all depend on them. Yet much of the world’s refining and processing capacity is concentrated in a small number of countries, most prominently China. That concentration has intensified concerns about how geopolitical rivalry could shape access to the materials that underpin the transition to cleaner energy.

Saleem Ali, Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware and a leading voice on mineral diplomacy, discusses where frontier resources, in the Arctic and beyond, fit into this evolving landscape. He assesses whether emerging resource frontiers can meaningfully rebalance global mineral supply chains, or whether their importance has been overstated.

Ali also discusses a proposal for a governance framework, a Global Minerals Trust, designed to reduce resource nationalism and prevent critical minerals from becoming instruments of geopolitical leverage. He examines whether cooperation is realistic in a period of growing competition for strategic resources.

Saleem Ali is the Blue and Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware.

Related Content

Policy Design Issues for Border Carbon Adjustments. https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/policy-design-issues-for-border-carbon-adjustments/

Battling for Batteries: Li-Ion Policy and Supply Chain Dynamics in the U.S. and China. https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/battling-for-batteries-li-ion-policy-and-supply-chain-dynamics-in-the-u-s-and-china/

Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two Penn legal experts discuss the strategy behind EPA’s rescission of the Endangerment Finding and the court challenges ahead.

---

On February 12, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency formally rescinded the endangerment finding, the 2009 determination that established the legal basis for federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. For 16 years, that finding has underpinned EPA climate policy, reflecting the agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health and that, under the law, it was required to regulate them.

The move represents a major shift in federal climate policy. But agencies cannot simply reverse themselves without making a legal case that can withstand court review. Cary Coglianese of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and Shelley Welton of the Kleinman Center and Penn Carey Law examine the legal rationale behind the rescission and how it draws on recent Supreme Court decisions that have narrowed federal agency authority.

Rather than disputing climate science, the EPA’s argument rests on a more limited reading of its powers under the Clean Air Act. Welton and Coglianese explain how that argument fits within the Court’s evolving approach to administrative power, and what it could mean for the future of federal climate regulation.

Cary Coglianese is Director of the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Shelley Welton is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy with the Kleinman Center and Penn Carey Law.

Related Content

Policy Design Issues for Border Carbon Adjustments https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/policy-design-issues-for-border-carbon-adjustments/

Boomtowns in the Battery Belt: Risks and Opportunities of Clean Energy Investments in Small Towns of America https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/boomtowns-in-the-battery-belt-risks-and-opportunities-of-clean-energy-investments-in-small-towns-of-america/

Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.