Councils: Fuelling the Fire reveals that UK councils invest £16.1 billion of their workers’ pensions into companies that extract coal, oil and gas, fueling dangerous climate change.
The report uncovers:
- Councils invest £16.1 billion of pensions into fossil fuel companies out of a total of £289.9 billion, new data reveals
- No significant change on 2015 investments, despite pressure to take climate risk into account
- Manchester, Dumfries and Galloway, Torfaen, Hammersmith and Fulham authorities are among the most exposed to fossil fuel investments
Compared to 2015 data, investments in fossil fuels have gone up in real terms (from £14bn) and did not change significantly in proportion to the size of the pension funds.[3] These figures show that councils have not made any significant changes to their investments in response to calls from the climate movement, governments, and shareholders to take climate risk into account, in the two years since the Paris Agreement on climate change. However, 6 councils have made commitments to reduce their fossil fuel investments including Waltham Forest and Southwark that have committed to fully divest.