NEW YORK, N.Y. — The environmental arm of insurance company American International Group has announced its Sustain-a-Build program, offering insurance policy discounts for LEED-certified green building projects.
Under the new program, companies that receive LEED certification for their facilities will be eligible for discounts of as much as 10 percent on their premiums for new Pollution Legal Liability (PLL) policies.
"AIG Environmental created the Sustain-a-Build Initiative to encourage our customers to adopt environmentally sound construction and building operations," said AIG Environmental's CEO Joseph Boren in a statement. "In the long run, we feel that LEED-certified buildings will help builders better manage environmental risks."
AIG's PLL policies are aimed at commercial real estate developers and renovators, who face potentially serious risks from environmental hazards at sites that are being renovated, expanded or demolished. The risks come not only from employee or contractor exposure to toxics on-site during the work, but also from current federal laws, which put commercial building owners at potential legal risk from contamination that occurred well before taking ownership of a building.
As a result, green building practices, especially those certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, can minimize the risk of toxic exposure in the present and in the future, making new policies like AIG Environmental's PLL policies all the more necessary.
Further information about the Sustain-a-Build program, which is not currently up on AIG Environmental's website, is available by emailing
aigenvironmental@aig.com.
