Businesses investing in green technologies should prioritize risk controls and harness data to differentiate their risks to insurers, according to industry experts.

Making solar power assets more resilient so they can withstand hail and other severe convective storm events is critical, said Jason Kaminsky, CEO of kWh Analytics Inc., a San Francisco-based managing general agency.

“If you’re in an area exposed to high winds, maybe you use a different method to attach the modules that’s more secure, or maybe you pick a module that has thicker glass and is more resilient to vibrations when the wind or hail comes,” Mr. Kaminsky said.

For Texas locations, installing solar panels on the ground rather than on a roof could have a dramatic effect on a loss profile, because if the panels catch fire the building would likely not be damaged, he said. 

Building codes set a minimum standard for construction, but companies should consider exceeding the minimum requirements, said Ian Giammanco, managing director for standards and data analytics and a lead research meteorologist at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety based in Richburg, South Carolina.

“It’s really important that, as our materials change, the testing standards that the building codes reference keep up with all of that. There’s where we can get ourselves into trouble if we don’t and you introduce a material that has a vulnerability that we don’t know about,” Mr. Giammanco said.

To achieve decarbonization goals in the built environment, a significant amount of testing, learning and experimentation will be needed, said Charlie Sidoti, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based executive director at InnSure Corp., an industry-funded climate nonprofit. 

“It just requires a higher level of due diligence by the industry, as opposed to walking away and saying, ‘We’re not going to do this,’” Mr. Sidoti said.

Advances in artificial intelligence and the greater availability of data will help insurers price risks more accurately for future climate scenarios, said Richard Hartley, CEO of London-based insurtech Cytora Ltd.

If a property owner is building in an environmentally friendly way, that additional data should mean that more insurers will be willing to quote or offer coverage, Mr. Hartley said.