Over 80% of the world’s coal, oil and gas reserves are unburnable if we want to halt climate change.
The hundreds of billions of pounds invested in energy projects every year need to be moved out of the fossil fuel industry and invested in clean energy instead.
Universities, pension funds, churches and other institutions are increasingly taking their investments out of coal, oil and gas.
We’ve joined this rapidly growing global alliance, and are campaigning to persuade the Greater Manchester Pension Fund (GMPF) to divest its £1.3B investment in fossil fuels.
We call on GMPF to:
Not only will this send a strong signal to the fossil fuel industry, government and other investors, but it will reduce the financial risk of continuing to hold these stranded assets, thus helping the fund in its duty to its members – current and future pensioners.
We are part of this rapidly growing global alliance campaigning for divestment. We’re working with 350.org and others to ask UK local authorities to take their cash and pension funds out of fossil fuels.
You can sign our petition to GMPF here
Today we handed in our petition with more than 5,000 signatures calling on GMPF to divest from fossil fuels. At the end of the Fund’s Annual General Meeting, the Chair, Councillor Kieran Quinn, accepted the petition to which the Fund will respond. We now look forward to an informed discussion on climate risk and responsible…
Read moreThe TUC has voted through a composite motion on climate change transition that includes this clause: vi. investigate the long-term risks for pension funds investing in fossil fuels, promote divestment, and alternative reinvestment in the sustainable economy. It follows on Unison’s motion in favour of campaigning on divestment and was carried unanimously at TUC conference….
Read moreOur new report reviews most of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund’s (GMPF) direct fossil fuel holdings and presents a way of prioritising companies for divestment, based on both their relative climate impacts and the risk of these investments becoming stranded (i.e. losing much of their value in the medium term). We identify nine companies, mostly…
Read moreFossil Free Greater Manchester (FFGM) today hailed UNISON’s decision that local authority pension funds should stop investing in fossil fuels. UNISON members took the decision at their annual conference in Brighton. “UNISON has changed its position in the face of evidence that fossil fuel investments are bad for its members’ pensions and bad for the…
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