Measuring the Global Fossil Fuel Divest/Invest Movement
Since 2013, Arabella Advisors has been tracking the global fossil fuel divestment and clean energy investment (or “divest/invest”) movement and publishing reports analyzing its growth and development. Today, our team published its latest report on the movement, timed in conjunction with the Global Climate Action Summit currently taking place in San Francisco.
(You can download a copy of the report here.)
The divest/invest movement is a global push to convince a wide range of investors to stop investing in fossil fuel companies (“divest”) and invest instead in companies providing solutions to climate change (“invest”). It was launched by college students in 2011 as a moral call to climate action and has rapidly grown into a mainstream financial movement, backed by arguments based on ethics, finances, and fiduciary duty. Arabella Advisors has published three previous reports on the maturing movement, in 2014, 2015, and 2016.
Among the main findings from the latest report:
- “Nearly 1,000 institutional investors with $6.24 trillion in assets have committed to divest from fossil fuels, up from $52 billion four years ago—an increase of 11,900 percent.”
- While mission-driven investors from the health, faith, philanthropic, and university sectors continue to divest in large numbers, “the primary drivers of … recent growth are insurers, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds.”
- “Growing support for divestment and the broader movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground is now having a negative material impact on the fossil fuel industry.”
- “Taken together, the moral and financial cases for divestment have changed the context in which the fossil fuel industry operates and are advancing the transition to clean energy.”
Download the full report here.
To learn more about Arabella Advisors’ work on climate and conservation, click here or send us an email here.