University of Guelph avoids calls to fully divest from fossil fuels

TORONTO The University of Guelph has voted to cut the carbon footprint of its endowment fund by 10 per cent over two years in response to a student-led campaign, the latest attempt by an institution to sidestep calls for full fossil fuel divestment.

The commitment is being described by university personal as a “starting point” — one that will eventually lead to further reduction goals being made in the future as part of a longterm plan — but as “minimal” by some student advocates.

Don O’Leary, the university ’s vice-president of finance, administration and risk, said the school’s investments have been ranked by their current carbon footprint and the school will begin either reducing positions in multiple names or eliminating investments entirely. O’Leary, however, acknowledged that these reductions could be made outside the oil and gas sector — noting that utilities and material and manufacturing firms were among the worst offenders.

After the vote, O’Leary rejected the notion that the board’s commitment was mostly symbolic, saying that that would be the case had the school moved for divestment instead.

“The full divestment from fossil fuel would in many ways be a symbolic gesture,” he said. “We’re a small investor and those companies wouldn’t much care whether we were involved or not. By staying in some of those companies, we can become an active investor, engage these companies ... press and push and find change.”

Upon making its decision, the University of Guelph joins a long list of Canadian universities who have spurned the divestment movement in the last five years. The University of Toronto, McGill University, the University of Calgary, Dalhousie University and the University of British Columbia have each rejected divestment and offered alternatives such as the creation of low-carbon funds and unspecified promises to keep environmental risks in mind for future investments. Similar pushes for institutional investors to do the same have gone unheeded.

The University of Ottawa and Simon Fraser University found compromises in the same manner that Guelph did, promising to lower the carbon footprints of their investments by 30 per cent by 2030.