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SRI PROFESSIONALS SURVEY: MAJORITY OF RETAIL, INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS INTERESTED IN “FOSSIL FUEL-FREE PORTFOLIOS”
63 Percent of SRI Professionals Expect Climate-Prompted Fossil Fuel Divestment in Next 10 Years
NEW YORK CITY AND COLORADO SPRINGS – May 16, 2013 – Over half of sustainable, responsible, impact (SRI) investment industry professionals say that retail investors (65 percent) and institutional investors (53 percent) are currently expressing interest in fossil fuel-free portfolios in the face of growing signs of climate change, according to First Affirmative Financial Network’s Fossil Fuels Divestment Survey.
Released in anticipation of the 24th annual SRI Conference (http://www.SRIconference.com) October 28-30, 2013 at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the online survey was conducted by First Affirmative Financial Network between April 22 and May 8, 2013. More than 2,000 SRI industry professionals were asked to weigh-in on 12 questions regarding fossil fuel-free portfolios and related investor concerns. The survey was completed by 466 licensed investment professionals, asset managers, investors, and representatives of SRI investment companies, community development financial institutions, and social research/proxy voting organizations.
Other key survey findings include:
· 77 percent see growing risks for investors associated with fossil fuel company holdings in their investment portfolios.
· 30 percent of those surveyed either already do – or are getting ready to – offer fossil-fuel free portfolios to investors.
· 63 percent believe that investors will in the next 10 years start divesting in meaningful numbers from fossil-fuel companies due to climate change implications of such energy sources.
First Affirmative President Steve Schueth, producer of The SRI Conference, said: “The survey findings strongly suggest that fossil fuel free investing is one of the SRI industry’s next big issues. Ours is an incredibly dynamic field, and as we develop the agenda for the 24th annual SRI Conference in October, we are working hard to present speakers and sessions focused on the most timely, important, and pressing topics. Fossil fuel free investing is already becoming a nationwide movement, and it’s likely to gain momentum as the impacts of climate destabilization are felt far and wide.
In addition, the survey also found that:
· 67 percent of respondents believe that 2013 is the right time for investors to assess and perhaps alter their approach to investing in traditional energy companies.
· 40 percent of those surveyed worry about increased diversification risk in fossil fuel free portfolios, in their role as a fiduciary to clients.
· 24 percent of those surveyed said they would be able to adequately replace the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel companies in portfolios they managed/advised with holdings that exhibit similar risk/return characteristics.
The full survey findings are available online at http://216.30.191.148/sricfossilfuelsurvey.pdf.
via [sif] Fossil Fuel Free Survey Results – rthomas@socialk.com – Socialk Inc. Mail.
Are you interested in screening out certain types of investments in your 401(k)? Considering going Fossil Fuel Free but nervous you will under-perform by not owning energy producers? This webinar slide-deck walks through how portfolios can avoid Carbon Risk and not sacrifice returns.
Click to Download PDF 
London-based HSBC is a banking and financial services company, very old and very large — the sixth largest public company in the world. Greenpeace it ain’t. So it’s striking that the latest report from the financial giant sounds strikingly like the hippie alarmism of a Bill McKibben, a Joe Romm, or a … me. Then again, our hippie alarmism sounds a lot like the science surveys put out by the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, MIT, and the U.S. National Climate Assessment.So I guess we’re all hippies now.The report is called “Peak Planet” you gotta pay for it, unfortunately — Giles Parkinson has a great write-up and it’s about the threat of climate change and “the next upswing in the climate agenda.”The broad story HSBC sketches is familiar. If we want to hold warming below 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, there’s only so much carbon we can dump in the atmosphere. That’s our “carbon budget.” We can either budget for an 80 percent chance or a 50 percent chance of avoiding 2C obviously the budget is bigger if the chances of success are reduced. Like so:HSBCThe difference between the bars on the left and the bars on the right shows that, between 2000 and 2012, we used up about 420 gigatons of our budget. At the rate we’re going, says HSBC, we’ll burn through the 80 percent budget by 2026 and the 50 percent budget by 2039. To avoid that unpleasant outcome, global carbon emissions need to peak soon — by 2020 at the latest, says HSBC — and begin declining rapidly.Achieving that wildly ambitious aim would mean, as McKibben so well elucidated, leaving somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of current fossil fuel reserves in the ground. That’s about $27 trillion worth of value that must be set aside.That fact is so stark, so absurd, that it has taken some time to sink in. But it’s happening. Earlier this year, investors worth $87 trillion demanded that companies begin disclosing their “carbon risk.” As HSBC puts it, “The contradiction between global carbon budgets and fossil fuel reserves is gaining increasing attention.”
via Giant investment bank taken over by hippie alarmists | Grist.
10. United Technologies NYSE: UTX> Arm sales 2011: $11.6 billion> Total sales 2011: $58.2 billion> Total profit: $5.3 billion> Total employment: 199,900> Sector: Aircraft, electronics, engines United Technologies makes a wide range of arms — notably military helicopters, including the Black Hawk helicopter for the U.S. Army and Seahawk helicopter for the U.S. Navy. The company was the most profitable of all companies on this list, making more than $5.3 billion in 2011. It was also the largest company on this list by headcount, employing nearly 200,000 people worldwide as of 2011. Arms comprised just 20% of the company’s $58.2 billion in sales in 2011. Other products made by United Technologies include elevators, escalators, air-conditioners and refrigerators. International sales comprised 60% of the company’s total revenue in 2012.
via Ten Companies Profiting Most from War – 24/7 Wall St..
The faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design voted unanimously in favor of divesting from fossil fuels at a meeting Wednesday.
Though the faculty vote does not translate immediately to divestment, it could put pressure on the RISD Board of Trustees to work to divest from fossil fuels, said Anne Tate, chair of the faculty steering committee, which runs RISD faculty meetings.
Divestment has been a topic of campus debate since November, when the student group Divest RISD formed and began advocating administrative discussion about divesting from coal, said Emma Beede, a RISD student and founder of Divest RISD.
Beede worked with fellow members of the campaign to petition students and speak with the Board of Trustees, she said. The group’s efforts culminated in a presentation that Beede gave to the RISD faculty at a meeting last month.
An informal show of hands at the meeting revealed an almost unanimous opinion from the faculty in favor of divestment, she said. Over the next month, Divest RISD filed a motion to hold a formal faculty vote on the record.
“There was very little discussion,” Tate said, adding that Beede’s presentation in February presented a logical argument and a reasonable request of the institution.
Tate attributed the faculty’s unanimous opinion to an expression of unity and student support and faculty members’ beliefs that divestment is a wise choice in light of the threats presented by climate change.
“It’s a great opportunity for RISD to be a leader in this movement,” Tate said.
“(This vote) means that we’re seeing student activism for the first time,” Beede said, adding that RISD students have been restrained about activism in the past.
“Climate change is just the thing to bring us out of our bubbles,” she said.
Beede said the next step is to get a vote from the RISD student body. She added that Divest RISD has collected around 200 student signatures through its petition efforts.
“We’ve been focusing on the faculty mostly,” she said. “So far it’s been a low-key student campaign.”
Beede said Divest RISD’s partnership with the Brown Divest Coal campaign has been instrumental and will continue to be important in the months to come.
But Brown and RISD have “very different battles,” because RISD is a much smaller institution, Beede said, adding that Brown activists face many more obstacles in their campaign.
Nathan Bishop ’13, a member of the Brown Divest Coal campaign, said the group is thrilled about the RISD faculty vote, adding that it is “a wonderful step forward” for the community.
via RISD faculty votes supporting divestment — Brown Daily Herald.
Is It Really Possible to Have a Fossil Fuel Free Investment Portfolio?
Leslie Samuelrich – Senior Vice President, Green Century Capital Management and Will Lana, CFA – Senior Vice President, Trillium Asset Management February 4, 2013
The frequency and severity of extreme weather systems continues to impact the lives of people around the globe and increasingly in our own communities. Following Hurricane Sandy, many investors are becoming acutely aware of the presence of fossil fuel companies in their own portfolios. And growing numbers of people understand that climate change is no longer solely a threat to future generations – the damage to the environment, economy, homes, and lives is happening today.This past autumn, following an article that was published in Rolling Stone Magazine, author and 350.org founder Bill McKibben led a nationwide speaking tour encouraging thousands of investors to “Do the Math” on the carbon impact of their investments. As he repeated in cities from Seattle to Atlanta traveling mainly by biodiesel bus, of course!:
“It does not make sense to invest my retirement money in a company whose business plan means that there won’t be an earth to retire on.”
Similar to the South African divestment movement of the 1980s, students and alumni at colleges and universities nationwide are leading the charge and having some success in pressuring administrators to divest endowment funds from fossil fuel companies.
While traditional investment firms are just now grappling with this concept, Sustainable and Responsible Investing SRI pioneers like Trillium Asset Management Trillium and Green Century Capital Management Green Century have been on the forefront of clean energy and environmental investing for decades.Forgoing traditional energy companies in a portfolio can create short-term impacts on portfolio performance during certain time periods, particularly when energy companies are moving in different directions than the market as a whole. In Trillium’s core equity strategies, such as Large Cap Core and All Cap Core, Trillium seeks to invest in companies that are leaders within their industries in terms of minimizing the negative environmental impact of their activity. This also creates a platform for shareholder advocacy, which Trillium does with energy holdings in these core portfolios, as well as with its clients’ legacy holdings.That said, many SRI investors have found that not owning fossil fuel energy companies at all is an appropriate decision and can be incorporated into a portfolio with potentially minimal negative impact on performance over the long-term. Specifically, the Trillium-managed Green Century Balanced Fund Ticker: GCBLX has been fossil fuel-free since 2005 and in 2008 Trillium launched its Sustainable Opportunities product, which has been fossil-fuel free since inception.
via Is It Really Possible to Have a Fossil Fuel Free Investment Portfolio?.
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Dutch pension funds are increasingly looking to integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors beyond the developed market equity asset class, according to a new study from the VBDO, the Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development.
The study Benchmark Responsible Investment by Pension Funds in the Netherlands 2010 found that the investors are looking at ESG factors in the corporate and government bond class, real estate and alternatives.
While 39 of the funds reviewed – 65% of the sample – have an exclusion policy for public equity, the VBDO found that 32 have a similar stance for corporate bonds, and six have exclusion criteria for government debt.
As for ESG integration, the VBDO found that 20 funds “demonstrably” integrate ESG into their public equity investment selections. This compares to 11 who integrate, five systematically, in corporate bonds. Two funds, Pensioenfonds SNS REALL, and Rabobank Pensioenfonds, integrate ESG into their government bond portfolios.
via Responsible Investor.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
November 9, 2010
SRI Assets Up 13 Percent in Current Economic Downturn, While Overall Assets Increased Less Than 1 Percent; Several Factors Driving Current and Expected Future SRI Growth.
Despite the recent economic downturn, sustainable and socially responsible investing (SRI) in the United States is continuing to grow at a faster pace than the total universe of investment assets under professional management, according to the new 2010 edition of the Social Investment Forum Foundation’s Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States.
Key report findings include the following:
• The pool of assets engaged in SRI strategies – the use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria, shareholder advocacy and community investing — has grown more rapidly than the overall investment universe due to such factors as net inflows into existing SRI products, the development of new SRI products, and the adoption of SRI strategies by managers and institutions not previously involved in the field.
• Since 2005, SRI assets have increased more than 34 percent while the broader universe of professionally managed assets has increased only 3 percent. From the start of 2007 to the end of 2009, a three-year period when broad market indices such as the S&P 500 declined and the broader universe of professionally managed assets increased less than 1 percent, assets involved in sustainable and socially responsible investing increased more than 13 percent (from $2.71 trillion to $3.07 trillion).
• Nearly one out of every eight dollars under professional management in the United States today — 12.2 percent of the $25.2 trillion in total assets under management tracked by Thomson Reuters Nelson — is involved in some strategy of socially responsible and sustainable investing.
via Social Investment Forum: Press Release: Report: Socially Responsible Investing Assets in US Top $3 Trillion; Nearly 1 Out of Every 8 Dollars Under Professional Management (11/9/2010).
SocialFunds.com — Founded in 2007 in response to genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and another three million displaced, Investors Against Genocide (IAG) seeks to bring pressure on investment firms to end their investment in companies that contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity.
According to IAG, five Asian oil companies—PetroChina, CNPC Hong Kong, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Sinopec, and PETRONAS—have provided revenue to the government of Sudan for arms and funding of genocide, rather than economic development for the poor people of Sudan. Large mutual funds that have not yet made a commitment to genocide-free investing include Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and Vanguard.
In a white paper entitled Genocide-free Investing: New Opportunities for Investors, IAG documents some of the successes it has had in its engagement with financial institutions on the issue. Unlike the three above-named companies, which continue to hold large investments in companies linked to genocide, American Funds and Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF) have sold their holdings in companies with ties to the government of Sudan.
via Investors Against Genocide Expands Focus Beyond Shareowner Engagement to Include Recommendations for Financial Advisors.
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