UNISON staff pension fund has signed up to a shareholder campaign to get Shell and BP to explain their continued exploration of Canada’s ‘oil sands’. This is the first major campaign the fund has taken up.
This year the trustees created a responsible investor committee and signed up to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment - www.unpri.org
A coalition of institutional and individual investors has succeeded in filing a resolution for the forthcoming AGM of Royal Dutch Shell plc, calling on the company to report on the investment risks associated with Canadian oil sands projects and their plans to address them. The resolution comes amid growing questions from investors, analysts and NGOs about the financial, environmental and social implications of these projects. http://www.responsible-investor.com/home/article/institutional_shareholders_to_quiz_shell_board_over_canadian_oil_sands_at_a/
The resolution’s 141 co-filers include fund managers, pension funds, foundations and faith groups. Major backers from the investment world include The Co-operative Asset Management and the UNISON staff pension fund. The initiative is co-ordinated by FairPensions, which UNISON affiliates to, which is urging investors to vote for the resolution and to engage with other energy companies with similar operations to address the financial and other risks involved.
The oil sands are the second largest oil resource in the world comprising some 173Bn barrels in reserves. Converting it into usable form of fuel produces on average 3 times the greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional oil extraction. Even using the oil industry’s favoured measure from oil well to car exhaust oil from this source emits between 15% and 40% more greenhouse gases than the average of conventional sources. Industry claims about the affordability and efficacy of carbon capture and storage as a solution to oil sands’ financial and environmental problems are also increasingly questioned. Canada is already on course to miss its Kyoto protocol targets and the expansion of oil sands will make all but impossible any efforts to cut emissions on 1990 levels.
You can help this process by asking your pension fund to join the campaign and vote in favour of the Shell resolution.
http://www.professionalpensions.com/professional-pensions/news/1587504/investor-coalition-demands-action-shell-oil-sands-project
