OSLO, (Reuters) – Norway’s $1 trillion wealth fund is excluding some of the world’s biggest commodities firms from its portfolio for their use and production of coal, including Glencore and Anglo American.
Underlining the growing role of climate considerations for long-term investors, the fund is also excluding German utility RWE, South African petrochemicals firm Sasol and Dutch company AGL Energy over their use of coal.
Norway’s parliament agreed in June 2019 to toughen existing limits on coal investments by the world’s largest wealth fund by excluding companies that mined more than 20 million tonnes of coal a year or generated more than 10 gigawatts of power from coal.
The fund held stocks worth $1.6 billion in such companies at the end of 2019, according to fund data. Wednesday’s announcement is the first to show the tougher rules being applied.
The fund, set up in 1996 to save Norway’s oil revenues for future generations, now holds about 1.5% of globally listed shares and its decisions are often followed by other investors. It sells holdings before announcing any exclusions to avoid excessive market moves.
The fund put another set of companies – BHP , Uniper, Enel and Vistra Energy – under observation for possible exclusion later if they did not address their use or production of coal.
The value of holdings in this group stood at $3.9 billion at the end of last year.
“This is good news that the biggest producers of coal in absolute terms are finally out of the fund,” Else Hendel, acting environmental policy leader at green group WWF Norway, told Reuters.
