Divestment fact sheet

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/30/us-universities-fossil-fuel-investments-students-complaints

London and Boston are determined to lead through action, joining forces to champion a monumental initiative to preserve our future. C40, a global network of mayors of major cities, has established an agreement: divesting from fossil fuels, investing in a sustainable future, or the divest/invest accelerator. In this unprecedented collaboration, 19 cities, spearheaded by London, are advocating green finance, divesting from fossil fuels, and catalysing investment in climate solutions.

Together these cities represent more than 50 million people and over $360bn in assets under management.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/12/new-york-university-fossil-fuel-divestment

https://grist.org/accountability/one-person-stopped-californias-divestment-from-fossil-fuels-again/

https://divestmentdatabase.org

According to a divestment commitment database maintained by Stand.earth, a climate action advocacy group, 1,591 organizations worldwide with a collective $40.51 trillion in assets have publicly committed to some level of fossil fuel divestment. Pension funds represent 11.7% of those commitments, compared with 35.8% from faith-based organizations, 15.7% from educational institutions and 11.9% from foundations.

ConocoPhillips has been put on divestment watch by some of Europe's biggest pension funds, after using proceeds from a recent debt financing to expand its business in oil sands.

https://carbontracker.org/reports/loading-the-dice-against-pensions/

Statement by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander

Divest NY News | August 2023

Divest or Engage?

Hoping fossil fuel giants will see the light on climate hasn’t worked. Change only comes with mandates and force

Divesting from fossil fuels could add billions to pension funds University of Waterloo study reveals that US pension plans could have banked an extra $21 billion if they had acted a decade ago.

Not this year.

Time To Divest From Fossil Fuels

Seattle University First in the State to Divest from Fossil Fuels

CalPERS CEO bracing for return of California fossil fuel divestment bill

The news story Will California’s largest pensions, CalPERS and CalSTRS, divest from fossil fuels? published in CalMatters, in an attempt to sound evenhanded, empowers opponents of divestment who are claiming that it would violate fiduciary duty. The goal of opponents to divestment is to to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

The CalMatters story states:

Some of the bill’s opponents say that requiring the funds to divest from fossil fuels would conflict with their fiduciary duty to their members, including the California Professional Firefighters, a union.

“Forcing any California pension system to make investment decisions that may harm the fund in an attempt, in this case, to affect global climate policy, violates their fiduciary mandate and puts the retirements of hard-working Californians at risk,” wrote president Brian Rice in a statement.

Already, the concept of fiduciary responsibility is causing legal headaches for divestment efforts. Three New York City pension funds are being sued for allegedly violating their fiduciary duties after they divested $4 billion in fossil fuel holdings.

But that suit (which would require NYC to buy fossil fuel assets) has little chance of success, although it may take years before the suit is resolved. It's only reason to be filed is to create a chilling effect.

When a news story doesn't dig deep enough to reveal the issues at stake, it becomes part of the problem.

California's Pension Funds Are Wrecking The Planet And Losing Billions. It's Quite A Trick

In fact, a just-released report from the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, in partnership with Stand.earth found that CalPERS managed to lose $4.7 billion over the last decade, or $3,163 per pensioner, by staying invested in fossil fuel, and that the smaller CalSTRS managed to lose $4.9 billion, or an astounding $5,114 per beneficiary.

That’s because, along with being actively bad for the planet, fossil fuel has been actively bad for its shareholders. It dramatically underperformed other asset classes for the past decade, and for an obvious reason: A new industry, renewable energy, has arisen that delivers the same product, just more cheaply and cleanly.

The new investment restriction announced today will apply to all oil and gas companies that do not have short, medium and long term emissions reduction targets aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, as assessed by the independent Transition Pathway Initiative. The exclusion will apply to equity and also debt investments.

“Today we announce our intention to disinvest from all remaining oil and gas holdings across our equity and debt portfolio,” said John Ball, Chief Executive Officer of the Church of England Pensions Board. “There is a significant misalignment between the long term interests of our pension fund and continued investment in companies seeking short term profit maximisation at the expense of the ambition needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Recent reversals of previous commitments, most notably by BP and Shell, has undermined confidence in the sector’s ability to transition”.

The Pensions Board has engaged the sector over the past ten years with a view to bolstering the level of ambition in company strategies to decarbonise in line with the Paris Agreement. While some companies have come close to achieving alignment as assessed by the TPI, none have met the threshold to remain investible.

As a result, the Pensions Board will no longer prioritise engagement with the oil and gas sector on climate change and will instead refocus its efforts on reshaping the demand for oil and gas from key sectors such as the automotive industry.

... The Pensions Board has engaged with the oil and gas sector on climate change for over a decade, and has conducted a very intensive engagement with Shell. In 2021, we signalled support for Shell’s Climate Transition Plan, but called for greater ambition. At Shell’s 2023 Annual General Meeting the Pensions Board expressed disappointment that Shell had failed to increase the ambition of its short, medium and long term emissions reduction targets and called for it to increase its ambition on climate change.

https://www.churchofengland.org/media-and-news/press-releases/church-england-pensions-board-disinvests-shell-and-remaining-oil-and