World’s Biggest Wealth Fund Faces Wider Ban on Coal Investments
Mikael Holter
May 22, 2016 — 6:00 AM EDT
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund may be forced to step up divestments of coal companies and could face a wider ban on investments in other fossil fuels such as oil sands.
A majority of parties in Norway’s parliament want to tighten guidelines that prevent the $850 billion fund from owning companies that base more than 30 percent of their activities or revenues on thermal coal, according to a group lawmakers including opposition Labor, Norway’s biggest party. Adjustments could come as soon as next year, said Torstein Tvedt Solberg, who represents Labor on the Finance Committee.
“We’re not finished, it’s not ‘job done,’” he said in an interview at his office in Oslo. “We see that there are weaknesses and a potential for improvement. Our ambition is to get the fund out of coal, which means we must close all loopholes.”
Tvedt Solberg’s party, as well as the Greens, the Socialist Left, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats, which together represent a majority, want to include companies whose coal production or consumption is large on a global scale even if it makes up less than 30 percent of their business. They also want to make sure no subsidiaries fall through the cracks, and, possibly, widen the ban to activities such as coal transportation or oil sands production.
The world’s biggest wealth fund has excluded more than 50 companies after the new criteria were implemented in February. It plans to announce more divestments later this year. When the ban was agreed on in 2015, the fund estimated it would need to sell holdings in about 120 companies valued at about 55 billion kroner.
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-22/world-s-biggest-wealth-fund-faces-wider-ban-on-coal-investments
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