Canadian institutional investors with stakes in fossil fuel companies can be held as much accountable for continued and escalating carbon emissions as the producer organizations, according to a report by the Centre for Policy Alternatives.
While widely held Canadian fossil fuel companies aren’t controlled by a single institutional investor, they do own large chunks of equity, the report found. Taken as a group, they could easily hold more than 10 per cent in a given company.
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Ownership by institutional investors, among other owners, makes the investors just as guilty of the problematic emissions as the fossil fuel companies in which they’re invested, noted the report.
Apart from environmental considerations, the report pointed out the rising economic risk of investing in fossil fuel industries, even suggesting they could become stranded resources as the world transitions to lower carbon sources of energy. The eventuality is a key reason supporting the rising discouragement of pension plans and other investors from taking on exposure to fossil fuels, noted the report.