Thousands of pension customers will now have greener savings after six pension companies have taken a significant step towards ending investments in drilling companies and platforms that are looking for oil fields.
The change comes after Danwatch revealed last year that pension companies broke their own guidelines and promises to their customers when they continued to invest in companies that are looking for and drilling for new oil and gas fields. Now five of the pension companies are withdrawing investments worth around DKK 164 million. DKK from fossil drilling companies.
These are the Pension Fund for Architects & Designers (PAD), the Pension Fund for Technical and Graduate Engineers (ISP), the Pension Fund for Agricultural Academics and Veterinarians (PJD), the Pension Fund for Social Workers, Social Educators and Office Personnel (PKA) and the Doctors' Pension.
The last pension fund - AP Pension - has not made a final decision, but has entered into dialogue to stop investments of DKK 259 million in fossil drilling companies.
The core of the matter is that the pension funds' ambitious climate goals had not taken into account the drilling companies that supply and operate offshore drilling platforms.
The total was DKK 3.5 billion. DKK of pension members' assets invested in the so-called drilling companies, which the oil and gas industry also uses to find new oil fields - and as Danwatch and Finanswatch were able to report in May 2024, this was in violation of several of the pension funds' own guidelines in the climate area.
Support among members for exclusion
Danwatch has learned that in several companies there has been massive support among the members - for example, with 97 percent of the votes in PAD - to exclude the drilling companies. And in some cases, the proposals have been developed in collaboration between the members and the boards.
“PKA has been in dialogue (...), and the proposal has been revised, so that we on the board now support the proposal,” says, for example, PKA, whose management is now tasked with “developing a comprehensive policy for oil and gas companies and drilling companies for consideration at a board meeting later in 2025.”
Several of the proposals at the general meetings have been developed in collaboration with the NGO Responsible Future. Here, spokesperson Thomas Meinert Larsen believes that the divestment of the fossil fuel companies is crucial if “pension companies are to maintain their credibility regarding their support for the Paris Agreement.”
At AP Pension, a proposal to exclude drilling companies was withdrawn - instead, the proposer, Heidi P. Mann, was invited to a dialogue on the subject with the board of directors at the general meeting on April 9.
- Climate concerns and responsible investments are a process, and sometimes you can move things forward more by agreeing to a dialogue rather than confrontation, says Heidi P. Mann.
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