Ensuring a sustainable environment
Making pensions climate friendly
Councils
Islington Council
The Islington Council pension fund has taken a big step towards decarbonisation with a new overarching policy and investment strategy statement. The fund has adopted an approach to make sure the scheme’s 21,000 members, including 6,600 pensioners, are not put at risk by investments in fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas as the world moves away from a carbon-based economy. Following commitments to divest from fossil fuel extracting businesses over time, Islington is going further with a commitment to decarbonisation, which, it is hoped, will have a more significant impact on climate change and protecting the environment. By focusing on the ‘carbon intensity’ of the fund’s investments, Islington has reduced this by 45% in its passive equity investments, and changes to the in-house managed assets alone reduced the fund’s equivalent carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 14,243 tonnes per annum.