Rockefeller fund to shed fossil fuels

NEW YORK — John D. Rockefeller built a vast fortune on oil. Now his heirs are abandoning fossil fuels.

The family whose legendary wealth flowed from oil is planning to announce Monday that its $860 million philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is joining the divestment movement that began a couple of years ago on college campuses.

The announcement , timed to precede Tuesday’s opening of the UN climate change meeting in New York, is part of a broader and accelerating initiative.

In recent years, 180 institutions — including philanthropies, religious organizations, pension funds, and local governments — as well as hundreds of wealthy individual investors have pledged to sell assets tied to fossil fuel companies from their portfolios and to invest in cleaner alternatives.

Ultimately, the activist investors say, their actions, like those of the antiapartheid divestment fights of the 1980s, could help spur international debate, while the shift of funds to energy alternatives could lead to solutions to the carbon puzzle.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has already eliminated investments involved in coal and tar sands while increasing its investment in alternate energy sources, said Stephen Heintz, the fund’s president.

Unwinding other investments in a complex portfolio from the broader realm of fossil fuels will take longer.

Steven Rockefeller, a son of Nelson A. Rockefeller and a trustee of the fund, said he foresees financial problems ahead for companies that have stockpiled more reserves than they can burn without contributing significantly to climate damage.

“We see this as having both a moral and economic dimension,” he said.