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How divesting of fossil fuels could help save the planet

December 12, 2017

Recently, a number of institutional investors, including Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec in Canada and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, announced their intent to reduce their exposure in investments linked to fossil fuels.

The announcements show that investors withdraw their funds to either mitigate financial risks or for ethical reasons. But the question remains whether divestment and divestment announcements have a financial impact on the share price of fossil fuel companies.

We’re a team of researchers at the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED) at the University of Waterloo. We recently conducted an analysis that suggests divestment announcements have a statistically significant negative impact on the price of fossil fuel shares. Our study aggregates the impact of more than 20 announcements across 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies.

The results suggest that share prices dropped on the days that institutional investors announced they were divesting of fossil fuels.

We’ve concluded that investors, and the market as a whole, perceive divestment as integral to the long-term valuation of the fossil fuel industry. Lower share prices increase the costs of capital for the fossil fuel industry, which in turn decreases their ability to explore new resources and exploit proven resources.

And if the majority of proven reserves remains in the ground, we may be able to meet our climate change goals.

Reserves must stay grounded

The continued exploitation of fossil fuel reserves alone has the potential to increase greenhouse gases and global temperature well beyond the 2°C threshold required to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

To achieve the 2°C target, however, no more than one-fifth of the current proven fossil fuel reserves can be burned.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Divest The Globe’ protests urge banks to cut ties with fossil fuels

November 2, 2017

‘Divest The Globe’ protests urge banks to cut ties with fossil fuels

On Monday, activists in Washington, D.C. demonstrated outside the John A. Wilson Building — home to both the mayor and city council. (350 DC)

While banking executives from over 90 of the world’s largest financial institutions gathered in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Monday for the start of a three-day meeting on the environmental and social impacts of their infrastructure investments, activists in at least 15 U.S. states and several other countries staged protests under the banner of “Divest The Globe.” Their message to the banks was simple: cut ties with fossil fuel companies, or face major divestment campaigns.

The demonstrations unfolded in over 50 cities — including Seattle, where at least six people were arrested during a protest at a Chase bank — and are being called the largest ever protest against banks’ investments in fossil fuels. As the meeting continues in Sao Paolo over the next two days, solidarity protests are expected in more cities across Europe, Asia and Africa.

The group largely responsible for organizing these Divest The Globe actions is the Seattle-based, indigenous-led divestment campaign Mazaska Talks, which means “money talks” in Lakota. They chose this gathering of bankers as their target because it’s the annual meeting of the Equator Principles Association, which provides guidelines, or so-called Equator Principles, “for determining, assessing and managing environmental and social risk in projects.”

According to organizer Jackie Fielder, activists want to ensure the association gets its “Equator Principles in line with the Paris Agreement, as well as internationally-recognized standards on indigenous rights upheld in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.” Fielder went on to cite “the spirit of the Standing Rock resistance camps” as inspiration for the Divest The Globe protests, saying it “really raised the consciousness of people to think about where their money has been going when it’s sitting in a bank.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fossil fuel divestment campaign grows as protesters target UK banks

February 14, 2015

Fossil fuel divestment campaign grows as protesters target UK banks

With Britain’s big five banks investing £66bn in fossil fuel extraction, campaigners believe pressure is building on banks to sell off toxic assets

At least 1,400 UK customers are set to move their accounts in protest at their banks’ multibillion-pound funding of the fossil fuel industry. The campaign, mirrored by actions in Australia and South Africa, is part of a global day of actionby the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.

The Go Fossil Free campaign has already persuaded 180 institutions, worth $50bn (£33bn) and including local authorities, universities and churches, to sell off their investments in coal, oil and gas. The campaign will stage a series of protests on Saturday, with hundreds other events planned in more than 50 countries.

A spokesman for the Move Your Money campaign, Fionn Travers-Smith, said: “Britain’s biggest banks have been using people’s money to fund fossil fuels and climate change for too long, and the public simply don’t want to support these socially and environmentally catastrophic industries.”

The divestment movement asks investors to commit to selling their investmentsin the biggest 200 fossil fuel companies over five years. A series of analyses have shown that there are already three times more fossil fuels in accessible reserves than can be burned if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided, as world leaders have pledged.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Divestiture is nothing but a distraction | Ensia

October 21, 2014

Divestiture is nothing but a distraction | Ensia.

As a college president and chemist, I have worked throughout my career in areas connected to climate change. As an educator, I have written chemistry textbooks and regularly teach courses in which the most urgent issue is climate change. As a president, I frequently face decisions about investments in sustainable practices, whether green buildings (our most recent construction has been certified LEED platinum) or reductions in water and energy use, or curricular changes in support of our strong environmental-analysis major.

And yet on the topic of divestment of stock in companies that produce and market carbon-based fuels — an issue that is gaining attention on college campuses and in the news media — I am a profound skeptic. Why? Because we have passed the point for symbolic actions and need to take real steps to achieve change. Feel-good measures that have no effect on actual greenhouse-gas production are a diversion from the critical actions we must take before it is too late.

Many of those involved in the divestment movement say quite candidly that they do not expect divestment (even by major universities with much larger endowments than our own, and recently by our Claremont Colleges neighbor Pitzer College) to have an effect on the policies of the companies involved, but that this is one way of getting attention for the issue, to get on the front page of The New York Times.

…click on the link above to read the rest of the article…

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