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The Impact of Energy Investments on the Financial Value and the Carbon Footprint of Pension Funds
By Michael Zonta, Melanie Issett, Celinda Ma, and Olaf Weber - School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED), University of Waterloo, June 26, 2023
This report presents the results of analyses conducted on a group of pension funds that face popular demands to decarbonize their investment holdings (Climate Safe Pensions Network (CSPN)). A key argument made by advocates is that fossil fuel-free portfolios would have seen superior investment performance during the last decade. The scope of the analyses includes the historical public equity investments of the funds and are based on data provided by either Bloomberg or Capital IQ2. The analyses were conducted between 2013 and 2022 for the funds with publicly accessible data. Data for eight of the funds were available, including:
Data for eight of the funds were available, including:
- Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC)
- Alaska Retirement Management Board (ARMB)
- California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS)
- California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS)
- Colorado Public Employees' Retirement Association (CoPERA)
- New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS)
- Oregon Public Employees' Retirement Fund (OPERF)
- State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB)
if six of the eight U.S. public pension funds had divested 10 years ago, they would have been $21 billion richer, an average 13% higher return rate. These six pensions collectively represent approximately 3.4 million people.
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