Oslo becomes first capital city to shun fossil fuel companies
03 December 2015
by Steve Hoare
Norway’s capital city Oslo announced plans to divest its US$9 billion pension fund from coal, oil and gas companies as did 19 French cities and others from around the world.
The divestment bandwagon sprung to life at COP21 as campaign group 350.org announced the divestment plans of the cities and an array of other institutions ranging from Europe’s largest pension fund Allianz to the London School of Economics.
Oslo will become the first capital city to completely divest itself of fossil fuels and joins Münster, Uppsala and Melbourne all of which have committed to go fossil free.
In announcing these measures and more, Kevin de León, California State Senate President, whose seat lies in Los Angeles, outlined how the world’s seventh largest economy has grown while cutting carbon emissions.
“You can decouple and delink carbon from GDP,” said de León. “This is not a white paper or a study. We have created 500,000 jobs–half-a-million–in the renewable energy sector.”
This year, California passed Senate Bill 185, which forced the state pension plans–the largest in the US–to divest from coal companies. De Leon stated that US$0.5 trillion of assets will be coal-free. The Bill is the first measure of its kind in the US.
COP21 host nation France led the divestment charge with 19 cities endorsing the policy including Lille, Bordeaux, Dijon, Saint-Denis, Rennes, Ile-de-France and others.
On 25 November, the French National Assembly adopted a resolution encouraging public investors, companies (especially those in which the state owns shares) and local authorities not to invest in fossil fuels anymore. The resolution is the first step to formalising the policy as law.
Stephen Heintz, President of Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and other panellists emphasised the economic sense of divesting from fossil fuels as well as the moral imperative. He noted that when his business made the decision to divest in 2014, businesses with around US$50 billion in assets had chosen to divest. After 14 months, that figure has shot up to around US$2.4 trillion.
The result, as former French Minister for Development Pascal Canfin (now senior advisor at the World Resources Institute) pointed out, is that fossil fuel companies’ share prices are tanking with, for example, coal companies in Australia down 95 percent.
