Leading university promises to end investment in coal and tar sands, while stepping up backing for clean technologies
King’s College London has become the latest high profile university to pledge to divest from the most carbon intensive companies, vowing to end investments in tar sands and coal projects and increase its stake in clean technologies.
The move makes the university, which has the sixth biggest endowment of any UK university with £179m invested, the 26th in the UK to divest from fossil fuels as the global divestment campaign continues to gather pace.
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The decision, which was taken by a senior committee at the university last night, follows a lengthy campaign by students and alumni that included a personal intervention from archbishop Desmond Tutu, a graduate from the university.
King’s initially rejected calls for divestment back in late 2014, but a year later appointed a socially responsible investment review committee to undertake a year-long review of its investment strategy.
The committee recommended a change in its approach to fossil fuels and the university yesterday approved the changes.
The endowment is now committed to directing investment managers to divest from the dirtiest fossil fuels, such as tar sands and coal. “In practice this would mean divesting from companies where more than 10 per cent of their revenues are derived from these fossil fuels on the basis that such companies are unlikely to be a contributor to the transition to a low-carbon economy,” the policy states.
It is unclear how many companies the endowment is currently invested in that meet these criteria. However, the university also pledged to direct 15 per cent of its £179m endowment into “renewable energy, related low-carbon technologies such as energy efficiency and companies that exhibit excellent performance on measures of environmental sustainability”.
The review committee also recommended the university works with Blackrock, its primary fund manager, to engage with the fossil fuel companies it will remain invested in more directly on the issue of climate change.
The moves were greeted by Tytus Murphy, a former PhD student and current sustainability officer at King’s, who said “our Principal and senior management should be commended for agreeing to use the College’s endowment as a force for good by investing in a future world powered by clean energy”.
However, Anna Smith, a final year student and member of Fossil Free KCL campaign group, said that “whilst the decision to drop investments in highly polluting forms of fossil fuels is a positive step, the alarming rates of global warming mean that partial divestment is not enough and we will continue to campaign until King’s is completely free of its investments in dangerous gas and oil companies”.
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