Divestment (Part 2)

The FT reported yesterday that ‘Funds worth $2.6tn pledge to dump coal’. So, where does the industry go from here? At the recent European Energy Venture Fair (http://bit.ly/1iwmyFU), I heard an excellent talk by Peter Tertzakian (http://bit.ly/1MpLEk7) during which he observed that the oil & gas lobby is doing as much as it can to…

A need for nuance

Investors in the energy and environmental space know that, for better or worse, policy matters. Some examples are obvious, like direct government subsidies for renewable power generation. Others are equally recognisable but have a more indirect impact, like landfill tax. And then there is a large number of ‘micro’policies such as industry- and product-specific standards…

Divestment: The rights and wrongs

Climate-driven divestment is all the rage. Recent high-profile announcements by large investors, such as the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, that they are considering selling out of companies whose business relies on the production or consumption of coal has set the cat among the pigeons in the fossil fuels world. The coal lobby has denounced the…