Robeco to axe fossil fuel investments across all funds

Written by Adam Cadle

24/09/2020

Robeco is extending its exclusion policy for fossil fuel producers and users to its entire range of strategies to help combat global warming.

Companies that derive 25% or more of their revenues from thermal coal or oil sands, or 10% from Arctic drilling, will be barred from Sustainability Inside investment portfolios – the majority of strategies at Robeco – by the end of the fourth quarter of 2020.

This expands the thermal coal exclusion policy that had previously only applied to the more bespoke Sustainability Focused and Impact Investing strategies. It also bars investment in companies actively engaged in oil sands and Arctic drilling for the first time. It means 236 fossil fuel companies in the energy, mining and utilities sectors will join the exclusion list.

Stricter thresholds will be applied to Sustainability Focused and Impact Investing portfolios, excluding companies with just 10% of their activities in thermal coal and oil sands, or 5% in Arctic drilling.

“Although the preferred approach is to engage with companies, we believe it is very difficult to drive significant change at companies whose portfolios are skewed to coal or oil sands,” Carola van Lamoen, head of Robeco’s SI Center of Expertise said.

“Therefore, we prefer to put our efforts into sectors and companies, where we have more confidence that our engagements will be effective.”

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