Stockholm (NordSIP) – Sweden’s AP3 announced its Sustainability goals for 2025 in its interim report for the first half of 2019. “In February, the Fund’s Board of Directors set new sustainability targets for the period 2019-2025 for increased ambitions regarding investment and owner-work,” Kerstin Hessius, CEO of AP3 wrote in her Letter from the CEO.
According to the report, the first goal should be that “AP3’s asset portfolio continues to contribute to a reduced risk of global warming.” To this end, AP3 will continue to measure and report on the carbon footprint of its investments, further halve the Fund’s CO2 footprint, primarily by influencing the companies to reduce their own climate impact conduct scenario-based analysis of climate-related risks and opportunities in its portfolio.
The second goal of AP3 is to double sustainability investments by 2025 across financial asset categories. “Investments in green bonds will double and increase to SEK 30 billion,” explains the interim report, adding that “other sustainability investments will also double to SEK 25 billion.”
The third and last of the 2025 goals focuses on AP3’s directly-owned, unlisted companies, which according to the pension fund “shall be a leader in sustainability”. To this effect, AP3 proposes to continue to push its directly-owned unlisted real estate and infrastructure companies to increase focus on both sustainable production and construction.
AP3 also reported a 9.9% real return after expenses for the first six months of the year. “Equity markets made the largest single positive contribution – 10.8% – to overall return and the Fund’s real estate investments also performed strongly,” the CEO commented.