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- Chicago's City Council on Wednesday voted to ban pension investments in oil, gas and coal companies; the pension oversees ~$9b in assets, according to Bloomberg.
- Earlier Wednesday, Dutch bank ING (ING) announced plans to end financing of fossil fuel projects; the bank currently holds ~$3b in oil and gas assets, according to Reuters.
- The updates come weeks after Blackstone (BX) announced that the company's new private equity fund will not invest in upstream oil and gas production.
- A heavy focus on the environmental mandate has led to some bizarre allocation decisions within ESG funds; "in the most shocking example we have come across to date, the ESG fund universe owned twice as much Russian oil and gas as Canadian oil and gas at the end of the year" wrote CIBC in a recent report (CNQ) (SU).
- The historic lack of investment in fossil fuels has led to surging fuel prices, according to Saudi Aramco (ARMCO):
- Only time will tell if stakeholder attitudes towards fossil fuel investment will change (BLK); however, Wednesday's updates suggest change won't come quickly.
