Norway’s largest pension fund will divest holdings worth $58 million in Canadian oil sands producers because of their contributions to climate change.
The fund, KLP, said it is limiting exposure to “companies involved in an activity that is not aligned with a 2ºC. temperature target.”
The Paris Climate Summit of 2015 set a goal of limiting the Industrial Age increase in globally averaged temperature to that increment.
KLP said it will shed holdings in Cenovus Energy, Suncor Energy, Imperial Oil, Husky Energy, and Tatneft. Its holdings in those companies total $33 million in equity and $25 million in bonds.
“We have gone from removing companies with 30% of their business coming from oil sands to 5%,” it said. “This may well set a new investor standard.”
The divestment follows the Norwegian Finance Ministry’s Oct. 1 announcement of a pullback from oil and gas divestment plans of the country’s sovereign wealth fund (OGJ Online, Oct. 3, 2019).
