Divestment: are there better ways to clean up ‘dirty’ companies?

Divestment: are there better ways to clean up ‘dirty’ companies?

In 2020 Cambridge university announcedthat it would strip its £3.5bn endowment fund of all fossil fuel investments by 2030. Shedding its near-£100mn of exposure to the energy sector was necessary to align its investment strategy with climate science which showed the need to cut carbon emissions to net zero to avoid catastrophe, it explained. By divesting, said vice-chancellor Stephen Toope, Cambridge was “responding comprehensively to a pressing environmental and moral need for action”. 

Activists had campaigned for years for Cambridge to make such a move, even disrupting the Oxford-Cambridge boat race. Only two years previously, however, the university had ruled out divesting from oil and gas stocks.

The university made clear how difficult the decision to divest fossil fuel assets had been when it disclosed its decision in 2020. A lengthy accompanying report which explored the arguments noted that there was agreement over the urgent need to cut emissions. It added, however, that there had been “intense debate” over whether full divestment was the best way or if Cambridge should instead try to change companies’ behaviour as an engaged shareholder.

The university is not alone in puzzling over which strategy will prove more effective. It is a question asked by numerous asset owners,