Howden's DUAL unveils two real estate insurance products
DUAL's Climate Risk & Resilience team has introduced two insurance products to support asset owners and investors in meeting environmental regulations and performance standards in the real estate industry.
The first product, DUAL Energy Efficiency Retrofit (EER) insurance, is tailored for building retrofits, providing certainty around energy performance.
It covers energy reduction, asset performance and compensates for any lost energy revenue.
The EER insurance is targeted at a spectrum of real estate stakeholders including those in social housing, the public sector, and commercial and industrial investment.
Complementing this, DUAL's Environmental Investment Protection (EIP) insurance mitigates risks associated with environmental and biodiversity factors in property transactions.
It aims to preserve property values by offering protection against contamination risks and future legislative changes.
These launch of these products comes prior to the UK Real Estate Infrastructure and Investment Forum (UKREiiF), set to take place in Leeds from 20–22 May.
DUAL UK CEO Simon McGinn said: 'Climate events continue to focus minds on the role insurance can play in building resilience. The development of two new products under the DUAL umbrella is a fantastic example of how MGAs [managing general agents] can provide insurance for emerging and niche risks. Our highly experienced underwriters are acutely attuned to the needs of the market, and I am excited to see DUAL pushing boundaries in our range of products and building out our portfolio even further.
'I am delighted that our ability to write specialty business with these innovative products will inject new opportunities and help unlock growth for our clients in the real estate industry.'
Last month, DUAL Europe set up a new marine hub in Hamburg, Germany, its third such hub in less than two years.
"Howden's DUAL unveils two real estate insurance products " was originally created and published by Life Insurance International, a GlobalData owned brand.
The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Developers propose more than 100 new gas power plants in Texas
Companies plan to build more than 100 new gas-fired power plants in Texas in the next few years amid a race to meet enormous electrical demand from energy-hungry industries, according to a report released Wednesday by the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit. The projects would amount to 58,000 megawatts of new generation capacity, enough to power more than 8 million average American households, although many likely won't move past the planning stage. The report said proposed plants in Texas aim to support data centers for artificial intelligence and other heavy industries. They would also add an estimated 115 million metric tons of greenhouse gases every year to the atmosphere — as much as nearly 27 million more gasoline-powered cars on the road. 'Building more natural gas infrastructure and power plants would saddle Texas' growing population with more health-harming pollution and contribute to planet-warming greenhouse gases,' according to the 24-page report written by research analyst Griffin Bird. The research reviewed permit applications, government data, public announcements and records from Texas' grid operator to tally 108 proposed new gas plants and 17 expansions. That includes four projects currently under construction, 33 that have received permits but haven't broken ground and 98 that are proposed. More than 60 projects aim for completion by the end of 2028. The rapid buildout mirrors a global trend and comes as Texas authorities expect statewide power demand to nearly double by 2030, driven largely by a proliferation of advanced computing facilities. 'The sheer volume of additional gas projects quickly popping up in Texas that EIP have been flagging through air permit applications is indeed astonishing,' said Jenny Martos, manager of the oil and gas plant tracker at Global Energy Monitor, a California-based nonprofit. Martos said gas power expansion globally is largely seen in Asian countries. In the U.S., Texas leads all other states in existing gas power generation and planned gas power generation, as well as production of oil and gas. It is also a leader in renewable energy. Still, Martos said the gas projects face 'headwinds' and uncertainties. Among them: the use and possible regulations of artificial intelligence technology and the massive speculative energy demands related to AI's evolution. A year ago, the Biden Administration was urging 100% renewable energy in the United States by 2035. Now, the AI boom has upended all calculations. Energy projects face supply delays and prices have surged for gas-fired turbines, essential for production. 'Manufacturers were caught flat-footed,' said Daniel Cohan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston. 'The cost of the gas turbines is now more than the cost of wind and solar farms, even before considering that you have to pay for the fuel.' Authorities in Texas have taken steps to support natural gas as the predominant power source, even after years of steep growth in the state's wind and solar power generation. During legislative sessions in 2023 and 2025, lawmakers provided a total $10 billion in public financing of low-cost loans for new gas plants. No such taxpayer funds were designated to encourage wind or solar farms. Projections of data center growth and energy consumption have led to optimistic expectations for Texas gas producers. Residents who live near planned gas plants are less enthusiastic. In the tiny town of Blue in Lee County, neighbors are fighting plans for a massive power plant that would primarily serve private, commercial customers many miles away. They are worried about air, noise and light pollution and their quality of life. 'If you're going to build a bunch of gas plants, don't plop them down in the middle of nice, quiet, peaceful communities like ours,' said Travis Brown, a former state department of agriculture worker and spokesperson for a group called Move the Gas Plant. 'Preserving what's left of rural Texas should be a priority. That's an important part of our culture and our heritage.' While natural gas burns much cleaner than coal, it still creates soot and emissions including greenhouse gases that warm the planet, nitrogen oxides that contribute to ozone formation, and known human carcinogens like benzene and formaldehyde. The Environmental Integrity Project report found, in some cases, Texas allowed developers of large gas power plants to circumvent big parts of the permit process for major pollution sources. Companies underrepresented prospective emissions in their applications and then sought 'standard' permits meant for smaller facilities rather than new 'major source' permits, the EIP report found. Major source permitting requires more time for public notice and comment and companies must commit to the best available emissions control technology. One example cited by EIP: EmberGreen and EmberYork, related companies that received permits for two 900 MW gas plants in the towns of Sealy and Wharton. The permit applications represented the facilities' emissions as below the thresholds of major pollution sources for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde when assuming 3,900 hours of operation, or about 162 days, per year. However, EIP wrote, the facilities' permits contained no requirement to limit operations to 3,900 hours per year, or to report operating hours. Likewise, a 930 MW gas plant by ENGIE in Robstown received permits as a minor source assuming 2,000 hours of annual operation. But its permit also included no limitations of operating hours. The state's environmental regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, has routinely enabled industrial developers to avoid the requirements of major source pollution review by issuing smaller permits, according to a 2023 investigation by Inside Climate News and the Texas Tribune. The TCEQ did not respond to queries from Inside Climate News about the new report, nor did EmberClear or ENGIE. Patton Dycus, EIP's senior attorney, said federal law requires emissions sources to be evaluated based on their full capacity to emit unless they are specifically limited in permits. In April, Dycus wrote the federal Environmental Protection Agency urging a review of Texas' permitting of the new gas plants. 'If new gas-fired plants that are major sources of criteria pollutants are constructed without the required Clean Air Act construction permits, that construction would be unlawful,' the letter said. 'TCEQ must not permit future similar gas-fired power plants through standard permitting.' Disclosure: Rice University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O'Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer. Get tickets. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
The Hill
4 days ago
- The Hill
AI data centers could drive a new wave of Texas air pollution, report finds
The boom in artificial intelligence (AI) risks filling Texas air with toxins, a report has found. State regulators are considering proposals for more than 100 new gas power projects — the vast majority of them entirely new plants — to power a new wave of data centers, according to findings published early Wednesday by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). More than 30 have already been permitted in a process that amounts to a 'rubber stamp,' the EIP said. 'To meet its increasing demand for electricity, Texas should be encouraging more clean energy instead of feeding public subsidies to dirty fossil fuels,' Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement. The plants spread across the state but cluster around Houston, the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio and the oilfields of West Texas. If all are built, they could produce as much pollution each year as another 27 million new cars and trucks — the equivalent of doubling Texas's current motor vehicle fleet, the report found. Oil and gas pollution includes volatile organic carcinogens such as benzene, asthma-triggering compounds including ozone and nitrogen oxides and lung-burrowing particles like PM 2.5. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state's environmental regulator, declined The Hill's request for comment on the analysis. The report comes in the wake of the failure of a slate bills at the Texas legislature that had sought to restrict the growth of renewables in favor of gas power — an issue that drove an acrimonious inter-party debate within the state's ruling GOP. One major reason for that failure: the state's insatiable demand for electricity, which the state's grid managers have estimated could double by the end of the decade, largely due to new cryptocurrency miners, data centers and oilfield operations. In the fight over the renewable restrictions, wind, solar and battery advocates pitched their technologies — which can be installed much faster than gas — as ideal to meet that demand. 'Everything is supposed to be bigger in Texas, but there's no need to go big with gas plant pollution when there are cleaner alternatives,' said Adrian Shelley, the Texas director for civil society group Public Citizen. 'Texas is already number one in clean energy, which helps save the electric grid and reduce consumer costs, so we should rely on clean energy to increase our supply of electricity,' Shelley added. But with a 'frantic race' to build capacity amid long wait times to connect to the grid, data center developers are increasingly turning to a new wave of privately owned gas plants, according to reporting this week from The Texas Tribune. One such plant, outside the rapidly growing Central Texas town of New Braunfels, will generate about 1.2 gigawatts of power — about two-thirds as much generation capacity as is needed for the million-plus people of nearby Austin. But all that power will go entirely to data centers, the Tribune found. Despite the plants' size — some are large enough to power a medium-sized city — EIP contends that Texas regulators incorrectly classified three of them as belonging to a Clean Air Act category designed for minor sources of pollution. That would mean that the gas plants will not have to use the best available technology to clean their emissions, causing a greater release of health-harming chemicals.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Yahoo
Ether Trader Bets Millions on ETH Blasting Above $3.4K by June-End
Last month, CoinDesk reported that big money is becoming increasingly bullish on ether ETH, with price charts indicating a potential rally above $3,000. New evidence has now emerged, supporting those claims. On Thursday, a trader paid a premium of over $2 million to purchase a total of 61,000 contracts of June-end expiry ether call options at strikes $3,200 and $3,400, according to data source crypto options exchange Deribit. Theoretically, the $3,200 call is a bet that ether's price will rise from the current $2,460 to over $3,200 by the end of the month. The purchase of the $3,400 call indicates expectations for a move above that level. In other words, the trader anticipates a price surge of over 30% in three weeks. A call option gives the purchaser the right but not the obligation to buy the underlying asset at a predetermined price at a later date. A call buyer is implicitly bullish on the market and pays a premium for the asymmetric upside exposure. The premium paid, in this case, $2 million, is the maximum amount the buyer stands to lose in case the market doesn't rise as expected. The bullish flow is consistent with the renewed optimism among some analysts about ether's price prospects. According to Youwei Yang, Ph.D., chief economist at BIT Mining, protocol upgrades, institutional moves, and anticipation around new financial products have all come together to restore investor confidence in ether. Ether's parent blockchain, Ethereum, recently implemented the Pectra upgrade to enhance scalability, validator flexibility, and user experience, introducing key features like EIP-7702 to enable regular wallets to leverage smart contract capabilities. "The Pectra upgrade, which went live on May 7, has been a key turning point. By raising the validator cap from 32 to 2,048 ETH and doubling blob throughput, Ethereum took a major step forward in both staking efficiency and Layer-2 scalability," Yang said in an email to CoinDesk. "It's a clear signal that the network is serious about scaling and improving its core infrastructure. That's the kind of technical progress that brings not just developers, but also users and capital, back into the ecosystem," Yang added. Yang cited SharpLink Gaming's announcement that it would move $425 million into Ethereum as a treasury reserve asbold endorsement of ether as the corporate Treasury asset. "It reminds us of the early wave of Bitcoin treasury adoption by corporates, and it could be just the beginning of something similar for ETH," Yang noted. Lastly, speaking of institutional adoption, speculation has been circulating that U.S. regulators will soon approve a spot ether ETF with a staking mechanism, opening doors for institutions to take exposure to both the price and the staking yield, a feature missing in BTC in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
