Norway wealth fund falls short on its climate ambitions, NGO says

OSLO (Tiafx) – Norway’s $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the realm’s largest, falls short on its climate ambitions by failing to aid a pair of shareholder proposals pushing oil firms to carve their greenhouse gas emissions, an NGO disclose stated on Monday.

The fund pools the Nordic country’s recount revenues from oil and gas manufacturing. Since 2022 its purpose is for the 9,000 firms it invests in globally to attain receive zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, in accordance with the Paris Settlement.

As piece of its strategy, the fund’s management, Norges Bank Funding Administration (NBIM), has map expectations for company boards on climate commerce and votes at annual total conferences on this effort.

It says it engages with firms in a pair of ways, collectively with by strategy of balloting on shareholder proposals, and in severe cases can divest from firms if they fail to reply.

The fund is failing short, nonetheless, on that ambition, in conserving with a disclose by Norwegian NGO Framtiden i vaare hender (the Future in our Palms), shared with Tiafx prior to its newsletter on Monday.

The disclose analysed the fund’s balloting disclose final year on 16 climate resolutions at 9 oil majors, collectively with BP (NYSE:BP), Shell (LON:SHEL), TotalEnergies (EPA:TTEF), Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM).

It came upon the fund supported seven such resolutions and backed strategies the crew stated had been “climate inappropriate” in the closing 9 of those 16 cases.

“NBIM has, every so often, antagonistic severe shareholder resolutions on climate all over annual total conferences. This misalignment between NBIM’s climate engagement strategy and its exact balloting behaviour signals a troubling gap in movement,” stated the disclose.

NBIM additionally voted in opposition to all climate resolutions at the annual total conferences of 4 oil majors – BP, Shell, TotalEnergies and Marathon – that had been flagged by CA100+, an investor-led initiative that advocates for the largest emitters to handle their emissions, as firms that fall short in their efforts to handle climate commerce.

“NBIM’s failure to endorse climate resolutions in accordance with internationally agreed targets undermines its role as a steward of sustainable finance,” stated the disclose.