In 2024 funds are divesting from fossil fuels as they realise that engagement does not work, and that EU Copernicus showed the world breached the Paris 1.5C levels in 2023.
But here in 2024, our funds Cheshire Pension Fund and LGPS Central continue to believe in “engagement” or “stewardship”, not divestment.
- BBC – World’s first year-long breach of key 1.5C
- Make My Money Matter – 21 x Green My Pension Campaign
- All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Sustainable Finance
- Pensions Expert – Straightjacket of Fiduciary Duty (Nov 2023)
- Make My Money Matter – Climate Crisis and Pensions
- Investment Delivery Forum
- MCSI Global Fossil Fuels Exclusion Indexes
- ShareAction – Responsible Investment for a Better Future
- “The next UK government will be in power at a crucial time. It will have to take urgent action to tackle the climate crisis, nature loss, rising inequality and public health issues. The finance sector holds the key to helping solve these challenges, through the investments it makes and the companies it supports. But current practice is too often focused on profits at the expense of people and the environment……
- “Fiduciary duty should be reformed to drive a more responsible pensions sector.”
- Dutch pension fund divests €2.8bn from Fossil Fuel Companies
- PFZW, the €237.8bn pension fund for workers in the Dutch healthcare and welfare sector has confirmed that it has now sold off the bulk of its fossil fuel holdings, including positions in Shell, BP and Total Energies
- Danish pension fund P+ tightens climate policies
- The Danish pension fund P+, which manages about $23 billion in asset, said it will no longer invest in oil and gas companies that are expanding production, joining a growing list of institutional investors tightening their climate policies.
- NEST
- NEST (The National Employment Savings Trust) which represents around a third of the UK workforce and some £36bn in assets, announced today it had appointed the Swiss investment giant to invest in firms facing issues like “climate change mitigation and adaptation, natural capital and social issues” to build a £5bn ESG fund to pump into companies tackling climate and social issues.
- CPF Investment News Report
- CPF published a 2023 TCFD Report in January 2024. In February 2024 the first ever CPF Investment News Report concluded with: ” The Fund is an active and engaged shareholder and, through its external active equity manager and LGPS Central, regularly undertakes voting and communications work, as well as working with other shareholder groups to encourage companies to improve their business practices e.g. voting and lobbying companies to align their business plans with the Paris Climate Agreement. The Fund believes it can work with other organisations to encourage and influence the behaviours of companies for the greater good of the Fund as well as the environment.”
- LGPS Central (the pool for CPF)
- In February 2024 in answers to questions at the Joint Committee, LGPS Central responded……… “LGPS Central maintains that stewardship is a superior approach to driving change in the real economy compared to divestment“….. “Thus, stewardship remains integral to our climate strategy. We believe climate change is a complex challenge requiring a nuanced response. Fossil fuel companies possess the resources, expertise, and incentive to contribute to this response, and this contribution is essential for a successful and just transition.”…………”We are advised that focusing on only the supply of fossil fuels does not address the challenge.”
- Barclays Bank
- In February 2024 Barclays announced a revised Climate Change Statement: ”… to progress its climate strategy and continues its focus on clients actively engaged in the energy transition. Following Barclays’ commitment to finance $1trillion of Sustainable and Transition Finance by 2030, Barclays also releases a Transition Finance Framework to support us to meet that target and facilitate the transition finance needed to decarbonise high-emitting sectors”
- NEST Comment on Barclays
- BBC – Barclays to end direct financing of new oil and gas fields
- UK quits treaty that lets oil firms sue government
- The UK has withdrawn from an international treaty that lets fossil-fuel companies sue governments pursuing climate policies for billions in compensation for lost profits…….. Since 2001, nearly 160 legal actions based on the ECT have been brought by investors claiming their investments had been damaged by green policies such as renewable-energy subsidies….
- Rio Tinto
- Financiers warned of huge risks to communities and biodiversity as Rio Tinto approves world’s biggest mining project. (February 2024). The Board of Directors of Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto is exposing Guinean communities and the company’s shareholders to grave risks by approving a $6.2 billion investment in the Simandou iron project without adequately studying and mitigating environmental and social risks, according to civil society organisations BankTrack and Advocates for Community Alternatives
