Vanguard quits clean energy group after 13 states complain

One week after 13 Republican state attorneys general asked federal energy officials to consider blocking Vanguard Group from buying utility stocks because of its relationships with anti-coal and anti-natural gas activists, the Malvern, Pennsylvaniabased investment giant has pulled out of an international group committed to reducing net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

Last year, Vanguard joined Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM), which advocates replacing fossil fuels with energy sources less likely to contribute to climate change, amid protests by investors pressing the company to stop investing in fossil fuel stocks and to demand energy companies find alternatives. Vanguard quit the group because joining had caused “confusion” about whether Vanguard would end up dumping energy stocks from its popular stock-index funds, the company said. To be sure, Vanguard had committed only 4% of the $8 trillion it invests for clients to Net Zero’s goal of providing all energy from non-carbon sources by 2030, Jayson O’Neill, a spokesman on behalf of Net Zero, said in a statement. The 4% does not include Vanguard’s large index funds, which include gas-burning utilities such as Exxon and coal-burners such as American Electric Power Co. O’Neill accused Republicans of making “threats” based on political points and “ideological” arguments against

Vanguard and other asset managers, adding that Florida had pulled $2 billion from BlackRock, the nation’s largest investment firm, over similar “sustainability” issues last week.