{"id":28776,"date":"2017-12-12T07:42:58","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T12:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28776"},"modified":"2017-12-12T07:42:58","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T12:42:58","slug":"how-divesting-of-fossil-fuels-could-help-save-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28776","title":{"rendered":"How divesting of fossil fuels could help save the\u00a0planet"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"magazine\">\n<div class=\"magazine-header\">\n<div class=\"magazine-title\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header class=\"grid-twelve large-grid-eleven\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"content-header-block\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title instapaper_title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-divesting-of-fossil-fuels-could-help-save-the-planet-88147\"><strong>How divesting of fossil fuels could help save the\u00a0planet<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<div class=\"grid-twelve large-grid-eleven\">\n<div class=\"grid-ten large-grid-nine grid-last content-body content entry-content instapaper_body\">\n<p>Recently, a number of institutional investors, including <a href=\"http:\/\/nationalpost.com\/pmn\/news-pmn\/why-canadian-pension-plans-must-divest-of-fossil-fuel-investments\">Caisse de d\u00e9p\u00f4t et placement du Qu\u00e9bec<\/a> in Canada and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/11\/16\/business\/energy-environment\/norway-fund-oil.html\">Norway\u2019s sovereign wealth fund<\/a>, announced their intent to reduce their exposure in investments linked to fossil fuels.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n<p>The results suggest that share prices dropped on the days that institutional investors announced they were divesting of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n<p>And if the majority of proven reserves remains in the ground, we may be able to meet our climate change goals.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reserves must stay grounded<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The continued exploitation of fossil fuel reserves alone has the potential to increase greenhouse gases and global temperature well beyond the 2\u00b0C threshold required to prevent the worst effects of climate change.<\/p>\n<p>To achieve the 2\u00b0C target, however, <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/nature08017\">no more than one-fifth of the current proven fossil fuel reserves can be burned<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How divesting of fossil fuels could help save the\u00a0planet Recently, a number of institutional investors, including Caisse de d\u00e9p\u00f4t et placement du Qu\u00e9bec in Canada and Norway\u2019s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[211,328,17460,17463,17461,17464,17462],"class_list":["post-28776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-divestment","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-olaf-weber","tag-the-conservation","tag-truzaar-dordi","tag-university-of-waterloo","tag-vasundhara-saravade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28777,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28776\/revisions\/28777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}