Fossil fuels investment

Dear Editor,

Greens were delighted when the Scottish Government recently voted to permanently ban fracking and other unconventional gas extraction in Scotland.

This shows that the days of fossil fuels are numbered.

However, investment in fossil fuels from pension funds such as Strathclyde’s encourages fracking and other fossil fuel extraction that is damaging communities worldwide.

Councils have a duty to prevent climate change and work to improve the environment.

Allowing their pension funds to invest in fossil fuels sends completely the wrong signal.

Furthermore, the risks of investing in fossil fuels are increasing as the ‘smart money’ moves into locally useful programmes like social housing and new technologies like renewables and electric vehicles.

Not only is the return on investment in fossil fuels likely to decrease over time as oil companies try to exploit increasingly difficult to get at reserves, but there is a risk that shares in these companies will become ‘stranded assets’ which are no longer worth the price paid for them. Fossil fuels are yesterday’s industries. Council employees need to know that their pension investments are not damaging the environment and deserve to have their funds invested in secure, modern technologies, not in these increasingly obsolete industries.

We encourage all members of the Strathclyde Pension Fund to write to their councillors at https://foe.scot/ council-pensions-fuelling-climate/ and ask them to divest from fossil fuels, joining 800 organisations worldwide that have gone fossil free. Kirsten Robb, Scottish Greens