Watch, re-watch or check out our summary of the virtual round table on the topic of Sustainable Transitions, which took place a couple of weeks ago and gathered the insights of Marcus Svedberg of AP4, Patricia Ribeiro of American Century Investments and William de Vries of Triodos Investment Management.
Discover which themes make the cut, and how to drive and measure impact.
As a sign that the Swedish pension fund is embracing a more muscled approach to climate change mitigation, Eva Halvarsson, CEO at AP2, announced this week that the fund will no longer invest in fossil fuel companies. The rule will apply with different thresholds across the different fuels. The Danish pension P+ started divesting from coal-extracting companies and identified 40 companies worth DKK250 million that it will divest and remove from its portfolio by the end of 2020, including BHP and Vale.
On Friday, November 20, the EU Commission published the first draft delegated act on the EU Taxonomy, the bloc’s classification system for sustainable economic activities. We reached out to Anne Kristin Kästner, Sustainability Specialist at SEB, who told us about the changes the Commission has made to the TEG’s recommendations. SEB is part of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance that works – amongst other things – on recommendations for new criteria for the Taxonomy.
Söderberg & Partners’ 2020 report on sustainable pension funds highlights that Länsförsäkringar, Skandia and SPP are Sweden’s top-rated Sustainable Pension companies. Meanwhile, Nordea and AMF were downgraded from their 2019 achievement.
Earlier this month, AP7 published its report on Corporate Climate Lobbying for 2017-2019. The study aims to increase awareness about the problem of negative climate lobbying and to encourage more investors and companies to engage in responsible climate lobbying. In another report from ShareAction, asset managers are still not effectively using their proxy voting power when it comes to environmental and social issues. While European asset managers showed some leadership, structural constraints limited their ability to drive change at home. The report also argues that BlackRock and Vanguard are still ranked at the bottom of the scale.
According to Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2021, published on December 7th, no country is performing well enough to fill the top three spots. While Sweden(4th), Denmark (6th), Norway (8th), and Finland (11th) ranked among the top 8 countries according to the report, Sweden is no “climate role model”.
Photo by Dominic Schunk on Unsplash
