Parliament voted to order the nation’s pension fund to shift holdings
out of billions of dollars of stock in companies that rely at least 30
percent on coal.
Norway Will Divest From Coal in Push Against Climate Change
Photo
A coal-fired plant in Germany. Norway’s $890 billion government pension fund will shift money away from companies using coal.Credit
Patrik Stollarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Norway’s $890 billion government pension fund, considered the largest sovereign wealth fund
in the world, will sell off many of its investments related to coal,
making it the biggest institution yet to join a growing international
movement to abandon at least some fossil fuel stocks.
Parliament
voted Friday to order the fund to shift its holdings out of billions of
dollars of stock in companies whose businesses rely at least 30 percent
on coal. A committee vote last week made Friday’s decision all but a
formality; it will take effect next year.
The
decision — which could seem paradoxical, given that Norway is a major
producer of oil and gas — is certain to add momentum to a push to divest
in fossil fuel stocks that emerged three years ago on college campuses.
The Church of England announced last month that it would drop companies involved with coal or oil sands from its $14 billion investment fund, and the French insurer AXA said it would cut some $560 million in coal-related investments from its portfolio.
Members of the Rockefeller family, whose fortune derives from Standard Oil, also pledged last year to remove fossil fuel investments, beginning with coal, from their philanthropic Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
There
is no question that the decision by various funds to sell fossil fuel
stocks has little or no impact on the vast market capitalization of most
companies. For that reason, the divestment movement has long been
dismissed by many institutions, especially oil companies, as symbolic.
But
divestment decisions from funds like Norway’s are important because
they require, as a first step, discussions that once seemed taboo, said
Bob Massie, a longtime climate activist and a founder of the Investor
Network on Climate Risk, an organization of institutional investors
affiliated with the business environmental group Ceres.
“It
lays the groundwork for the transformation of cultural and political
views in a major topic that people would rather avoid,” he said. “This
requires people to say, ‘What are we going to do? What are our choices?
What do we believe in?’ ”
Mr. Massie, who was deeply involved during the 1980s in the South African divestment movement and who wrote a well-regarded history
of it, said that in both cases, “There’s a mysterious process by which
an ‘unthinkable, ridiculous’ proposition becomes ‘possible.’ ”
Divesting
from the economically battered coal industry is a more selective move
than a broad action against all fossil fuels, of course. But Jamie Henn,
a co-founder of 350.org, a group that has promoted divestment, said
that coal was the most environmentally damaging fossil fuel, and that
the various divestment decisions “send a clear political signal that we
think will hasten the industry’s inevitable decline — and push
governments to take broader action.”
Marthe
Skaar, a spokeswoman for Norges Bank Investment Management, which
manages the huge Norwegian fund, said its goal was “safeguarding and
building financial wealth for future generations in Norway.” Its reasons
for divesting include “long-established climate-change risk-management
expectations,” she said.
The
fund’s 30 percent threshold for divestment applies to whether a
company’s business is based on coal, as in mining companies, or the
percentage of its revenue that comes from coal. The second category
would include power companies that burn coal.
Norway’s
decision underscores its ambivalence about fossil fuels. The fund
itself is nicknamed the “oil fund” because its wealth comes from the
nation’s oil and gas revenues. But proponents of the move say that it
helps prevent Norway from compounding the environmental damage that its
own production causes by investing in environmentally destructive
companies.
Truls Gulowsen, the head of Greenpeace
Norway, called his country’s decision “a great first step” that showed
his nation now understood that it was “nonsense to use oil money to
invest in coal.” Now the nation must further understand “the nonsense of
investing oil money in more oil,” he added.
Svein
Flatten, a member of Parliament from the Conservative Party, said that
lawmakers acted because investments in coal companies have “both
financial risks and climate risks.” He added, however, that this was not
a step toward any other action. “The fund shall not be, and they really
are not, a tool for political purposes,” he said.
Many institutions have pushed back against the divestment movement. Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard, has stated that while climate change
is an important issue, the university can address it through research,
education and its own practices, and that dropping fossil fuel
investments is not “warranted or wise.” The endowment, she has said,
should not be used “to impel social or political change.” Middlebury
College, where 350.org founder Bill McKibben teaches, has also resisted student pressure to divest.
David W. Oxtoby, the president of Pomona College in California, opposes divestment.
He said in an interview that schools and institutions that announce
divestment decisions often do so in symbolic moves with no real
sacrifice or change of policy.
“We
actually don’t have any investments in coal, but to make an
announcement of that type didn’t seem terribly useful,” he said. Dr.
Oxtoby, a climate researcher, called the divestment activism a
distraction from efforts that could bring about real change, such as
getting government to tax oil and gas to reduce consumption.
Norway’s
decision, Dr. Oxtoby said, is similarly symbolic — especially when
compared with the kind of commitment that might involve leaving
significant portions of the nation’s oil and gas reserves untapped.
The
business trends that have made coal an undesirable investment will
ultimately humble oil and gas companies as well, Mr. Massie said. He
cited research that suggests averting some of the worst outcomes of climate change
will require leaving much of today’s fuel reserves unburned. This means
companies with large fossil-fuel reserves could be forced to leave them
in the ground.
Those “stranded assets,” he argued, will be a financial burden on the companies. The oil industry has roundly rejected the stranded-asset hypothesis, however.
Those
who resist calls for divestment often say they prefer to pursue a
strategy of engagement with fossil fuel companies, which means using
their influence as investors to encourage companies to alter their
policies.
“The
choice of whether to divest or not is good,” said Geeta B. Aiyer, the
founder of Boston Common Asset Management, an investment firm with a
focus on sustainability, “but it’s only the beginning.” She said that
engaging with companies across the board could help bring about a future
with lower levels of carbon emissions.
Mr. Massie said he was skeptical that working with the oil industry
companies would lead to any major changes in their strategy or
policies. “The results are not likely to be substantial,” he said. “And
we have run out of time.”
Bevis Longstreth, a former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Ronald Reagan who has become a divestment activist,
said that the most compelling part of Norway’s decision was dropping
stocks of companies that burn a significant amount of coal. That, he
said, is “a really big deal” that could push companies to shift the
mixture of their power generation.
He
added that his participation in the divestment fight might seem odd
given that he was rooted for so long in the financial establishment.
“Am I crazy? No. I’m an advocate,” he said. “And I’ve got nine grandchildren.”
A version of this article appears in print on June 6, 2015, on page A1 of the New
copy http://www.nytimes.com/
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