Lægernes Pension shuts down oil and gas companies
21 March 2023
110 oil and gas companies are excluded from Lægernes Pension’s investments. It is the consequence of a strengthened strategy to ensure that the pension fund contributes to realizing global climate goals.
Lægernes Pension has turned off the tap and completely shut down the pension fund’s investments in companies that extract and produce oil and gas. This has happened as a consequence of a new and intensified climate strategy, which has meant that in 2022 Lægernes Pension excluded 110 oil and gas companies from its investments and sold DKK 423 million in the oil and gas sector.
With the new climate strategy, the pension fund contributes to reaching the Paris Agreement’s goal of a maximum of 2 degrees of warming. In addition, the risk of losing money on oil and gas companies that have invested heavily in drilling platforms, refineries and oil reserves, which risk falling in value as new and more sustainable forms of energy and energy sources gain ground, is reduced.
Today, 80 percent of the global production of energy comes from fossil energy sources such as oil, gas and coal. If the Paris Agreement’s goal of a maximum of 2 degrees of global warming is to be realized, the contribution of fossil energy sources to global energy production must be reduced to just 20 percent in 30 years.
The energy sector is too hot
The opt-out is a consequence of the oil and gas companies’ conversion to green forms of energy going too slowly. The emissions from the companies that extract oil and gas from the underground affect global warming by 10 degrees in isolation and are thus far from the Doctors’ Pension’s climate target and the Paris Agreement’s requirement of a maximum of 2 degrees. In short, the energy sector is way too hot.
In a different way, things look positive for the utility companies that produce electricity and heat. Historically, coal plants have been responsible for electricity and heat production. But now the American and European companies in particular are investing massively in green energy and are in the process of implementing a change along the lines of the one we know from Denmark’s Ørsted. The utility companies in which the pension fund has shares have a temperature of just under 2.9 degrees and are well on their way to reaching the target. The supply sector is also the sector that contributes the most to Lægernes Pension’s green investments.
The sale of oil and gas companies of DKK 423 million corresponds to 1.3 percent of the pension fund’s holdings of shares and corporate bonds.
Source: Lægernes
