Search Results (10)

Pension funds have become major targets for the incorporation of climate change into their investment decisions. Recently, divestment from carbon intensive companies or industries has been the object of a wave of campaigns directed at these institutional investors. This paper uses Foucault’s dispositive of security to investigate the decisions of one organization, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which in 2021 divested from seven oil sands companies. Conceptualizing divestment within a security dispositive helps us build theory which understands divestment within existing security-oriented arrangements. It shows how changes build upon the existing dispositive, and that by looking to existing governing arrangements we can see elements that act as operators to change their direction and emphasis. In the case of pension fund divestment, risk is the operator that both sustains the investment function and also tilts the arrangement towards climate change. In these existing arrangements lay the ingredients for future social relations. Full article

The service of mineral insulating oils for power transformer insulation and cooling aspects cannot be disavowed. However, the continued use of mineral oils is questionable due to environmental unfriendliness and the divestment from fossil fuels. This has provoked the quest for green alternative insulating liquids for high-voltage insulation. Natural esters are among the remaining alternatives that are renewable and environmentally friendly. Regardless of their environmental and technical merits, natural esters have some limitations that are slowing down their total acceptance by transformer owners and utilities. Critical limitations and concerns include esters’ pour point, viscosity, oxidative stability, and ionization resistance. In this work, the state of the art of “natural esters for transformers” is explored with the aim of potential improvements. The sections of the article are geared towards technical viewpoints on improving the overall workability and serviceability of natural esters in high-voltage applications. A comprehensive review of the existing literature is achieved, based on performance improvements of the natural ester using “additives” and “chemical modification”. The authors hope that this report may be helpful to transformer owners as well as influence the progression of natural esters for power transformer applications. Full article

It is discussed intensively whether divestment decease sales in the fossil fuel industry or whether investors divest from the fossil fuel industry because of stranded assets. Furthermore, it is unclear what the consequences of these activities are for the fossil fuel industry. Therefore, the study explores the direction of causality between cash flow factors, such as production factors and sources of financing and sales of the fossil fuel industry using lagged regression models and applying the Granger causality test. Our sample consists of fossil fuel companies from the Carbon Underground 200 list. Because R-squared values for both lagged financial factors and lagged sales were similar, we suggest a “bi-directional causality” between the financial flow factors and sales. We conclude that divestment (because of ethical concerns) can cause lower sales and that lower sales can cause divestment because of fear of the risk of stranded assets. Because a third factor usually causes bi-directional causations, we conclude that the need for the fossil fuel industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is the third factor that influences both the ethical and financial motivation of divestment. Consequently, the study contributes to theoretical approaches to divestment. Full article

Climate change, green consumers, energy security, fossil fuel divestment, and technological innovation are powerful forces shaping an increased interest towards investing in companies that specialize in clean energy. Well informed investors need reliable methods for predicting the stock prices of clean energy companies. While the existing literature on forecasting stock prices shows how difficult it is to predict stock prices, there is evidence that predicting stock price direction is more successful than predicting actual stock prices. This paper uses the machine learning method of random forests to predict the stock price direction of clean energy exchange traded funds. Some well-known technical indicators are used as features. Decision tree bagging and random forests predictions of stock price direction are more accurate than those obtained from logit models. For a 20-day forecast horizon, tree bagging and random forests methods produce accuracy rates of between 85% and 90% while logit models produce accuracy rates of between 55% and 60%. Tree bagging and random forests are easy to understand and estimate and are useful methods for forecasting the stock price direction of clean energy stocks. Full article

In the last decade, the fossil fuel divestment (FFD) movement has emerged as a key component of an international grassroots mobilization for climate justice. Using a text analysis of Facebook pages for 144 campaigns at higher education institutions (HEIs), this article presents an overview and analysis of the characteristics of the higher education (HE) FFD movement in the US. The results indicate that campaigns occur at a wide array of HEIs, concentrated on the east and west coasts. Primarily student led, campaigns set broad goals for divestment, while reinvestment is often a less clearly defined objective. Campaigns incorporate a mixture of environmental, social, and economic arguments into their messaging. Justice is a common theme, used often in a broad context rather than towards specific populations or communities impacted by climate change or other social issues. These insights contribute to the understanding of the HE FFD movement as ten years of campus organizing approaches. In particular, this study illustrates how the movement is pushing sustainability and climate action in HE and in broader society towards a greater focus on systemic change and social justice through campaigns’ hardline stance against fossil fuels and climate justice orientation. Full article

Several prominent institutional investors concerned about climate change have announced their intention or have divested from fossil fuel shares, to limit their exposure to the industry. The act of fossil fuel divestment may directly depress share prices or stigmatize the industry’s reputation, resulting in lower share value. While there has been considerable research conducted on the performance of the fossil fuel industry, there is not yet any empirical evidence that divestment announcements influence share prices. Adopting an event study methodology, this study measures abnormal deviations in stock prices of the top 200 global oil, gas, and coal companies by proven reserves, on days of prominent divestment announcements. Events are analyzed independently and in aggregate. The results make several notable contributions. While many events experienced short-term negative abnormal returns around the event day, the effects of events were more pronounced over longer event windows following the New York Climate March, suggesting a shift in investor perception. The results also find that divestment announcements related to campaigns, pledges, and endorsements all have a significant effect over the short-term event window. Finally, the results control for the general underperformance of the industry over the estimation window, attesting that the price change is caused by divestment announcements. Several robustness tests using alternate expected returns models and statistical tests were conducted to ensure the accuracy of the result. Overall, this study finds that divestment announcements decrease the share price of the fossil fuel companies, and thus, we conclude that ‘divestors’ can influence the share price of their target companies. Theoretically, the result adds new knowledge regarding the efficacy of the efficient market hypothesis in relation to divestment. Full article

Focusing on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) as a case study, this paper explores the relationship between philanthrocapitalism, economic history, and global and planetary health. The Wellcome Trust is also briefly discussed, chiefly in the context of planetary health. The paper argues that in the last 45 years there has been an increased preference for market-based approaches, often called neoliberalism, particularly in the U.S. and its allies. This has generated greater inequality in many high-income settings and weakened the norm of taxation. This has provided a setting in which philanthrocapitalism has flourished, including the BMGF. The latter has in turn become an important actor for global health, partially balancing the adverse consequences of neoliberalism. Planetary health is here defined as the interaction between global health and global environmental change, including to the climate and other elements of the Earth System. Although the Wellcome Trust has recently made funds available for ecological health research, it continues to invest in fossil fuels. The Gates Foundation provide no or minimal grants for ecological or planetary health but appear to have recently substantially divested from fossil fuels, for unclear reasons. The paper concludes that these large philanthrocapitalist organizations partly compensate for the decline in attention to global health driven by market-preferring solutions, but remain insufficiently proactive in the face of the great dangers associated with declining planetary health. Full article

The fossil fuel divestment movement campaigns for removing investments from fossil fuel companies as a strategy to combat climate change. It is a bottom-up movement, largely based in university student groups, although it has rapidly spread to other institutions. Divestment has been criticised for its naiveté and hard-line stance and dismissed as having little impact on fossil fuel finance. I analyse the impact of divestment through reviewing academic and grey literature, complemented by interviews with activists and financial actors, using a theoretical framework that draws on social movement theory. While the direct impacts of divestment are small, the indirect impacts, in terms of public discourse shift, are significant. Divestment has put questions of finance and climate change on the agenda and played a part in changing discourse around the legitimacy, reputation and viability of the fossil fuel industry. This cultural impact contributed to changes in the finance industry through new demands by shareholders and investors and to changes in political discourse, such as rethinking the notion of ‘fiduciary duty.’ Finally, divestment had significant impact on its participants in terms of empowerment and played a part in the revitalisation of the environmental movement in the UK and elsewhere. Full article

The U.S. is experiencing unprecedented movement away from coal and, to a lesser degree, oil. Burdened low-income communities and people of color could experience health benefits from reductions in air and water pollution, yet these same groups could suffer harm if transitions lack broad public input or if policies prioritize elite or corporate interests. This paper highlights how U.S. energy transitions build from, and contribute to, environmental injustices. Energy justice requires not only ending disproportionate harm, it also entails involvement in the design of solutions and fair distribution of benefits, such as green jobs and clean air. To what extent does the confluence of state, civic, and market processes assure “just” transitions to clean, low-carbon energy production involving equitable distribution of costs, benefits, and decision-making power? To explore this question we assess trends with (1) fossil fuel divestment; (2) carbon taxes and social cost of carbon measurements; (3) cap-and-trade; (4) renewable energy; and (5) energy efficiency. Current research demonstrates opportunities and pitfalls in each area with mixed or partial energy justice consequences, leading to our call for greater attention to the specifics of distributive justice, procedural justice, and recognition justice in research, policy, and action. Illustrative energy transition case studies suggest the feasibility and benefit of empowering approaches, but also indicate there can be conflict between “green” and “just”, as evident though stark inequities in clean energy initiatives. To identify positive pathways forward, we compile priorities for an energy justice research agenda based on interactive and participatory practices aligning advocacy, activism, and academics. Full article

German electricity giants have recently taken high-level decisions to remove selected fossil fuel operations from their company portfolio. This new corporate strategy could be seen as a direct response to the growing global influence of the fossil fuel divestment campaign. In this paper we ask whether the divestment movement currently exerts significant influence on decision-making at the top four German energy giants—E.On, RWE, Vattenfall and EnBW. We find that this is not yet the case. After describing the trajectory of the global fossil fuel divestment campaign, we outline four alternative influences on corporate strategy that, currently, are having a greater impact than the divestment movement on Germany’s power sector. In time, however, clear political decisions and strong civil support may increase the significance of climate change concerns in the strategic management of the German electricity giants. Full article