Category: ARTICLES_REPORTS_ASSET_MANAGERS_2022 ECONOMICS_MN

Reclaim Finance found that collectively 30 asset managers have $82 billion in companies developing new coal projects and $468 billion in 12 major oil and gas companies. In a ranking of the asset managers, six received the worst possible score — zero out of 30. Because of its size and fossil fuel investing records, Vanguard drew particular ire and a collective of 100 organizations wrote an open letter to its CEO calling out the company’s lack of climate action.

We surveyed 30 major asset managers, mostly headquartered in Europe (25) and in the US (5) and among the biggest institutions worldwide in terms of assets under management. We analyzed their investment practices regarding climate change, focusing on the fossil fuel sector as the priority sector to tackle. The first edition15 of this scorecard focused on coal, as one of the easiest asset classes financial institutions can begin to act on and as the sector that requires the most urgent exit. In light of the last findings of the IPCC17 and the latest conclusions of the IEA Net Zero Scenario, this second edition extended its focus to all fossil fuels, with a specific lens on fossil fuel expansion as the IEA scenario concluded that no new fossil fuel supply projects were needed. We have scored the 30 asset managers based on a questionnaire (see details in Annex) that was sent to them in February 2022.

The Biden administration faces an oil crisis the likes of which haven’t been seen since the price shocks of the 1970s.
That troubled decade is burned on the American imagination with its Nixonian price controls to slash petroleum costs, gasoline shortages, trucker strikes and Middle Eastern conflicts.
But could it also serve as a guidebook, or cautionary tale, for today’s energy challenges? Some experts think so.

On April 1st, 2022, we explored what can be learned from finance professionals working to communicate the risks to peoples’ pocketbooks associated with climate change. Ivan Frishberg, Senior Vice President and Chief Accountability Officer of the Amalgamated Bank; Bianca Taylor, head of the Tourmaline Group, and Sadie Frank, Policy Program Manager at CarbonPlan, shared their insights from the field. Our own Dr. Jennifer Marlon, Research Scientist and Lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment, moderated this discussion.

Flood, fire, and drought fueled by climate change could take a massive bite out of the U.S. federal budget per year by the end of the century, the White House said in its first ever such assessment on Sunday.

Countries must make major, rapid shifts away from fossil fuels and to renewable energy to meet the goals in the 2015 Paris agreement, climate experts tapped by the United Nations said in a report…

Around the world, revolutionary changes are under way in transportation. More electric vehicles are on the road, people are taking advantage of sharing mobility services such as Uber and Lyft, and the rise in telework during the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the way people think about commuting.

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions to prevent the worst of climate change would be relatively cheap and technologically feasible, but governments and financial bodies are failing to do so as they continue to prop up the fossil fuel industry. That’s the conclusion of a landmark report published Monday by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

And it’s quickly surpassing more countries, according to the University of Cambridge. Unless its price is decoupled from its energy use, Bitcoin will drive devastating climate impacts.

Ben McKenzie was driving his father’s silver Subaru through Texas farmland, talking in breathless bursts about money: who has it, who needs it, what makes it real or fake. He detailed the perils of cryptocurrency exchanges, the online brokers that sell Bitcoin and Ether to speculators, then delivered a glowing endorsement of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” a 700-page book by the economist Thomas Piketty about income inequality and the power of wealthy capitalists.