The Alberta Investment Management Corp.’s total financed carbon dioxide emissions fell nine per cent in 2021, according to its annual climate disclosure.
According to figures released by the investment organization, its portfolio financed the release of about 424,300 tonnes of carbon dioxide, down from about 466,300 tonnes the previous year. For each million dollars invested by the AIMCo, it estimates it has released the equivalent of about 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The AIMCo has published similar non-financial disclosures on an annual basis since 2019. The report uses calculations based on recommendations by the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials, a global partnership of financial institutions that work together to develop methods for disclosing greenhouse gas emissions associated with loans and investments.
Read: DB pension plans not taking full advantage of agricultural carbon savings: expert
One area of the portfolio that isn’t covered by the calculations are carbon emissions attributable to sovereign bond investments. Separately, the AIMCo calculated its sovereign bond investments have financed about 3,675,387 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions during the year — or about 309 tonnes per million dollars invested.
The investment organization also acknowledged that the figure isn’t exact. “When reporting emissions associated with sovereign bonds beyond the emissions of the governmental organization only, double counting occurs with Scope 1 and 2 emissions generated by other sectors.”
The report also highlighted the AIMCo’s infrastructure portfolio, in which half of its assets — or $2.5 billion — are invested in low-carbon investments. “Three assets in the infrastructure portfolio — Puget Sound Energy, Porterbrook and London City Airport — have already made net-zero commitments,” said the report. “More recently, AIMCo and its investment partners provided funding for the world’s largest green hydrogen platform, the ACES Delta hub in the western U.S. and acquired a 94 per cent stake in Constantine Energy Storage, a U.K. based grid-scale battery energy storage system developer.”
Despite the AIMCo’s investments in assets with net-zero commitments, it indicated it won’t adopt one for itself. In 2021, Evan Siddall, the organization’s chief executive officer, said: “Divestiture may, indeed, be counterproductive to climate goals, serving only to increase the cost of capital for the companies most in need of transitional funding.”