We’ve recently launched our new Responsible Investment Strategy. The Strategy outlines our plans to tackle climate change and other sustainable issues and is very much written with you, our members in mind.
We’ve included a number of case studies to ‘bring to life’ some of the great investments that your money supports, whilst giving a good financial return for the pension fund.
The example pictured below is from one of our sustainable investments through Generation Investment Management. M-Kopa Solar is a provider of pay-as-you-go solar power for off-grid households in Africa. Providing affordable access for low-income households to solar power instead of burning kerosene for lighting.
Please do have a look at the Strategy and read about other examples of responsible investment. Please also check the Fund’s website as we intend to publish further case studies on a regular basis.
The World and all of us face a climate emergency. We assessed how we could have a more urgent impact and identified that expressing our concerns direct to the Boards of companies is one way to do this.
In 2019 we attended 9 company AGMs and asked questions on how companies were adapting to and managing climate change. It is worth noting that our attendance was welcomed by the companies.
In 2020 we'll increase the number of AGMs we attend and we hope there'll be an opportunity for some members to attend and ask a climate change-related question.
We held some webinars recently explaining how your money is invested. The full recording of 'How the EAPF Invests' is available now. In it, we highlighted some of our key targets which are:
- We aim to always have at least 33% of our investments in sustainable assets
- By 2025 17% of our investments will directly tackle climate change
- We'll decarbonise our equity portfolio, reducing our exposure to future emissions by 95% for coal and 90% for oil and gas by 2025 compared to the exposure in our underlying benchmark as at 31 March 2015.
The 17% to directly tackle climate change may sound low but we are one of the leading funds in the World (as recognised by the UN Principles for Responsible Investments). As a pension fund there are a number of factors that influence how we invest. We want to be as bold and ambitious as realistically possible, while ensuring that our scheme remains well funded.
If you have any thoughts, questions, comments on any aspect of the responsible investment of your pension fund please get in touch by email at EAPFInvestment@environment-agency.gov.uk