The study says pension funds now account for 56 percent of assets in the movement, followed by private companies with 37 percent, educational institutions with 5 percent, and healthcare institutions, municipalities, philanthropic foundations and others, with less than 1 percent each of the total.
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The investment, according to campaigners, is part of a £3.8bn pot administered by the council and has been invested in fossil companies alleged to be contributing to climate change.
Wiltshire Pension Fund operates Wiltshire Council’s pension scheme and a spokesman for the pension fund did not dispute the figures but said it now has no direct investments in fossil fuel companies.
“Not only are they contributing to the devastating effects of climate change but they are putting people’s pensions at risk at a time when the financial community is becoming increasingly sceptical about channelling money into fossil fuel companies”. It also shows what proportion of investments are held directly and indirectly, and highlights the potential benefits of councils reinvesting in positive solutions.
He said: “Public pensions locked in to fossil fuel funds are financing risky climate change, and are a threat to the pensions of millions of public sector workers”.
350.org, Platform, Community Reinvest and Friends of the Earth are calling upon local authorities to reinvest their £14 billion in fossil fuel shares in low carbon infrastructure.
Cllr Chas Booth, City of Edinburgh Councillor, proposed a motion for the Lothian Pension Fund to investigate fossil fuel divestment.
She said that Green Party members on the London Assembly would push the city’s boroughs towards investing in renewable energy. We need to look to the future, not kill it by persisting with what belongs in the past.
Any pension fund must “carefully consider risk in relation to each of its investments and also its wider portfolio”, he said.
Ric Lander, the charity’s finance campaigner in Scotland, said: “Communities around the world are calling for an end to the environmental destruction that comes with coal mining, fracking and deep-sea drilling”. Our pensions shouldn’t be fuelling this damage: we should be redirecting this money to socially useful projects such housing and clean energy.
“Most fund members and taxpayers won’t be happy to learn that their money is funding climate change”, he added. A report earlier this month by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research found that burning all fossil fuels will melt the entire Antarctic ice-sheet causing oceans to rise by 50 metres.
Pressure has been mounting again on United Kingdom schemes to take action after legislation was passed in June to divest California’s two public pension funds from certain coal companies.
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The council, alongside other United Kingdom authorities, has been criticised by fuel divestment campaigners as part of the Fossil Free United Kingdom movement.
