🔒The Hartford makes $200K investment in heat-related injury research, data center energy needs at UConn

Insurer The Hartford has launched a collaboration with UConn to help employers protect workers from acute and prolonged exposure to extreme heat. The arrangement includes a philanthropic investment in the UConn-based Korey Stringer Institute, named for the Minnesota Vikings offensive lineman who died from exertional heat stroke in 2001. The Hartford will also partner with UConn’s Institute of the Environment and Energy to create a fellowship centered around energy innovation. The company says it will make an initial payment of nearly $200,000 for this collaboration, which is part of its broader ongoing support for UConn, which will total $1.5 million through 2029. This has already included The Hartford-UConn Scholarship Fund and housing scholarships supporting UConn Hartford’s new downtown residence hall on Pratt Street. The Hartford’s President A. Morris Tooker said the newly announced collaboration around heat stroke is part of a broader shift in the insurance industry toward research that promotes avoidance of loss. “What we're trying to do is shift the insurance product to be more about prevention,” he told the Hartford Business Journal. “There's lots of research that we can point to that really shows, especially in the construction industry, as the temperatures in the summer have started to rise, there's just more heat-related injuries and absences from the workplace.” Meanwhile, the environment and energy collaboration will establish The Hartford Sustainability Research Fellowship within the university’s College of Engineering. This will focus on the evolving energy needs of data centers, and explore the emerging risks related to on-site power generation, battery storage, fuel cells, renewable energy and facility microgrids “Many of our customers and our distribution partners, agents and brokers, are tasked right now with finding insurance for these data centers and the power supplies that are associated with them,” Tooker said. “They're coming in asking for our support, our risk management capabilities.” The partnership is being announced at this week’s InsurTech America symposium at the Connecticut Convention Center.