The Church Commissioners and the Church of England Pensions Board are to remove Shell, BP, and other oil and gas firms from their investment portfolios, because they are not reducing their carbon emissions quickly enough.
The investment bodies were instructed by the General Synod in 2018 to disinvest from fossil-fuel companies by 2023 unless the latter could prove that they were on the path to tackling climate change, in line with the Paris Agreement (News, 13 July 2018).
The Commissioners, who manage a £10.3-billion endowment fund, announced on Thursday that they had “decided to exclude all remaining oil and gas majors from [their] portfolio, and will exclude all other companies primarily engaged in the exploration, production and refining of oil or gas, unless they are in genuine alignment with a 1.5°C pathway, by the end of 2023.
“In 2021, the Church Commissioners excluded 20 oil and gas majors from [their] investment portfolio. [They are] now also excluding BP, Ecopetrol, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, Pemex, Repsol, Sasol, Shell, and Total, after concluding that none are aligned with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, as assessed by the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI).”
The Church Commissioners and the Church of England Pensions Board are to remove Shell, BP, and other oil and gas firms from their investment portfolios, because they are not reducing their carbon emissions quickly enoughhttps://t.co/AvBQ86cUjC
— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) June 22, 2023