Norwegian life insurer Storebrand ASA has beefed up its climate policy, leading it to exit oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. and accelerate a full divestment from coal.<\/p>\n
The move by the Oslo-listed company, which has about $91 billion under management, is another illustration of how investors are adjusting to the risks of climate change, putting pressure on fossil-fuel producers.<\/p>\n
Storebrand has sold its holdings in Exxon and Chevron, chemicals giant BASF SE and miner Rio Tinto Group for their lobbying efforts against the Paris Agreement and climate regulation, it said in a statement. It also quit ConocoPhillips and Husky Energy Inc because of their investments in polluting oil sands.<\/p>\n
The lobbying assessment is based on the companies\u2019 official positions, the organizations they\u2019re a member of and how much resources they\u2019ve invested in climate work, Jan Erik Saugestad, the head of Storebrand Asset Management, said in an interview. Although Exxon and Chevron have joined the global Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, they\u2019ve set no firm targets for cuts across their emissions, as opposed to European rivals.<\/p>\n
More oil divestments could follow, Saugestad said. European oil majors like BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Norway\u2019s own Equinor ASA can\u2019t \u201crest easy and continue with business as usual,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The new policy also bans companies that get more than 5% of their revenues coal, a target Storebrand earlier planned to reach by 2026.<\/p>\n
Small Divestment<\/p>\n
Divestments as a result of the new policy were completed this year, Saugestad said, declining to be more specific. At a total of $47 million (almost half related to Exxon and Chevron alone), they represent a small share of Storebrand\u2019s assets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most important for us is to send a clear signal that we expect that the companies will cooperate with us,\u201d Saugestad said. \u201cIn a global context, we\u2019re quite a small player. But we\u2019re also in a leading global position on sustainable investments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Storebrand has been at the forefront of a campaign to put pressure on Brazil to protect the Amazon forest, bringing together funds with more than $4.6 trillion in assets. It\u2019s also removed all oil investments from its Swedish unit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Norwegian life insurer Storebrand ASA has beefed up its climate policy, leading it to exit oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. and accelerate a full divestment from coal. The move by the Oslo-listed company, which has about $91 billion under management, is another illustration of how investors are adjusting to the risks of climate change, putting pressure on fossil-fuel producers. Storebrand has sold its holdings in Exxon and Chevron, chemicals giant BASF SE and miner Rio Tinto Group for their lobbying efforts against the Paris Agreement and climate regulation, it said in a statement. It also quit ConocoPhillips […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}