1,400 petitioners will call on Brent Council to divest from fossil fuels at tomorrow's Cabinet Meeting

 The start of the long-running patient campaign to persuade Brent Council to divest its pension fund from fossil fuels

 

From Divest Brent

For over 3 years campaign group Divest Brent have been working to persuade the Council to divest its Pension Fund from fossil fuels. In 2019 the Council declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency and specifically agreed to redirect investments to renewal, sustainable and low carbon funds. Indeed some investments have been made in this area but the majority of the Pension Fund is still invested in funds which include fossil fuels. 

 

Extract from the Climate Emergency Strategy

 

Simon Erskine, Co-ordinator of Divest Brent, said:

 

We welcome any moves by the Pension Fund to invest sustainably and to help with the transition to renewable energy – but the fact is that whatever green investments the Fund may have, while it continues to invest in fossil fuels it is part of the problem.

 

Having achieved nearly 1,400 signatures Divest Brent is now ready to submit its petition to the Council. On April 6 Councillor Matt Kelcher will present the petition to the Brent Cabinet on behalf of Divest Brent. Mr Erskine said:

 

We were originally going to present the petition to the full Council meeting in July but the Cabinet will be discussing the Council’s draft Climate Emergency Strategy. Following campaigning by Divest Brent the draft Strategy now includes a section on the Pension Fund’s investments – and we decided that this was the best time to submit the petition, when the Cabinet was anyway looking at the issues involved.

 

Divest Brent has written a joint letter to Councillor Krupa Sheth, Council Environment lead, with Brent Friends of the Earth, calling on the Council to divest the Pension Fund as part of the Climate Emergency Strategy.

 

The presentation of the petition comes hot on the heels of a report entitled “Divesting to protect our pensions and the planet” which gave a comprehensive breakdown of the extent that UK Councils were invested in fossil fuels. 3% of Brent’s Pension Fund is thought to be invested in fossil fuels - £26 million. Compared to the £40 million invested in 2017 this looks like an improvement – until it is realised that much of the reduction is due to a fall in value of fossil fuel investments. 

 

The Council has admitted that, while much of the Stock Market has suffered from Covid 19, they have lost £8 million by failing to divest from fossil fuels before the pandemic. They are not alone in this – with UK Councils having lost £2 billion altogether over the last 4 years – but £8 million is still a serious loss compared to the Pension Fund total of £800 million.

 

With the outlook for fossil fuels never worse as the electric vehicle revolution starts to kick in and governments look to move away from gas as a means of heating our homes, Pension Fund committee members could find themselves in breach of their duties to protect the value of the Fund if they do not start to move seriously towards divestment.

 

Watch the Cabinet meeting and hear the Council's response live at 10am tomorrow LINK

Is Brent getting any closer to fulfilling its fossil fuel divestment pledge?

Cllr Shafique Choudhary, in a highly unusual contribution to the Allowances section of the Full Council agenda last Wednesday, made the case that the complexity, workload and responsibility - with the added issue of climate change, meant that the Chair of the Pensions Sub-Committee deserved a substantial additional allowance. 

Cllr Choudhary spoke about the role in the third person without mentioning that he is the Chair of that sub-committee. LINK

Certainly last night's meeting of the committee had a very heavy, complex and technical agenda and would have required a considerable amount of homework.  The committee had pre-meeting training on a range of subjects including the welcome addition of climate change, which made a very long evening for members and officers.

I was there as a member of Divest Brent, a cross-party and non-party group that want Brent to divest its pension fund from fossil fuels. This is a manifesto commitment of Brent Labour Party supported by more than 1,000 petition signatories and Brent NEU which represents support workers in schools who are members of the Pension Fund, among a range of other civil society groups. Divestment is made all the more relevant and urgent following the Council's declaration of a Climate Emergency.

Despite this, although there were warm words at the meeting about the need to take account of climate change it did not seem to move much closer to outright divestment. Although not included in any specfic recommendation adopted by the committee, there was support for 'engagement' with fossil fuels companies and car manufacturers as exemplified by a presention by LAPFF. LAPFF prioritise climate change and are part of Climate Action 100+

They think that engagement is preferable to divestment and although they would not try and stop clients from divesting would not recommend it.  - a view considered  by Simon Erskine in his presentation (see below). Instead the focus was on investing in low-carbon funds as part of the Fund's portfolio.

The committee agreed the following recommendations:

The Committee should discuss and agree the investment strategy review undertaken by the Fund’s investment advisors, Hymans Robertson, available in Appendix 1.

The following proposals should be taken into consideration:

·That the committee’s current investment beliefs are fit for purpose but expands on its Responsible Investment beliefs in light of the increased focus on, and importance of, this area.

·The current long term strategy is fit for purpose from a returns perspective as it is expected to return in excess of the required return.

·To introduce a global low carbon mandate as part of the Fund’s equity allocation and to delegate authority to the Director of Finance to agree the size and fund in question and to put into effect this investment following discussions at the committee meeting.

·The Fund’s actual investment arrangements will deviate from their target over time and therefore a degree of rebalancing should take place on a regular basis to try and prevent too much deviation from the desired strategic allocation.

Simon Erskine's presentation on behalf of Divest Brent:

Click bottom right for full page:

 

Simon had certainly done his homework but his recommendations were not addressed by the committee. Perhaps they could be on the agenda of the next meeting.

Will Brent Council follow Lambeth in fossil fuel divestment?

Cross-party and non-party campaigners for disinvestment

The Fossil Free Brent campaign will hopefully get a boost from the decision of Lambeth Council to end its pension fund investments in fossil fuel companies. Disinvestment makes sense not just in terms of fighting climate change but also in moving out of shares that will inevitably decline long-term as the climate crisis intensifies and there is a move to alternative energy production.

Brent Labour included disinvestment in its election manifesto and the council is believed to be looking at ways to implement the policy. Implementation is quite complex as investments need to be identified, often inside larger management funds, and Brent's has substantial funds invested via  the London-wide Collective Investment Vehicle, where control involves many boroughs.  Brent Council will need to join other boroughs, such as Lambeth,  in changing CIV investment policy.

THE LAMBETH STATEMENT

In Lambeth Labour’s 2018 manifesto we pledged to work towards divesting from fossil fuels, and invest our pension fund in a socially and financially responsible way. This was particularly thanks the tireless campaigning of my fellow Labour councillors and lobbying from local groups such as the Advocacy Academy.

Today, just a few months after we made that manifesto promise, we have clearly set out how we will implement it.

Firstly, pensions committee has unanimously agreed to sell over £200m of global equities investments and reinvest the money in a low carbon alternative. Several suitable alternatives have been identified – council officers have been asked to research them in more detail and a final decision as to where the money will be reinvested will be made at the next pensions committee meeting.

Secondly, pensions committee has unanimously agreed in principle to sell down its remaining global equities investments and reinvest the proceeds as soon as a suitable alternative becomes available within the London Pension Collective Investment Vehicle framework (the collective pensions body for London councils). Several suitable alternatives have been identified, and we will lobby the London CIV to include them or similar funds within its framework.

Finally, pensions committee has unanimously agreed in principle to sell down its remaining equity investments (these are in emerging markets), and reinvest the proceeds as soon as a suitable alternative becomes available within the London CIV framework. A suitable alternative has been identified, and we will lobby the London CIV to include it or a similar fund within its framework.

We believe this is the first time any UK local government pension fund has set out a clear roadmap, within its existing actuarial framework, that will allow it to fully divest all its shares and reinvest in low carbon alternatives. Crucially we are able to do this while fully protecting Lambeth council pensioners, current and future.

Lambeth is leading the way on the divestment agenda, with a clear plan to achieve our manifesto promise. Many pension funds now have policy in favour of divesting from carbon intensive fossil fuel shares, but we believe we are the first to set out exactly how we will do this. We will now focus on lobbying the London CIV to include at the earliest opportunity the funds that will allow us to complete our divestment process.

When it comes to action on climate change Lambeth walks the walk, we don’t just talk the talk. This is what happens when Labour is delivering in power rather than shouting on the sidelines like our opponents. I’m grateful to my fellow committee members and councillors who have lobbied on this issue for helping to make this a reality.

Councillor Iain Simpson, Chair of Lambeth Pensions Committee

-->The Divest Brent campaign has a Facebook site HERE and urge the public to support their petition HERE.

This is the text of the petition to Brent Council:
Brent Council should divest its pension fund from fossil fuel companies to protect the people of Brent. So we ask Brent Council to make a public divestment statement committing the Brent Pension Fund to:
1.  Immediately freeze any new investment in the top 200 publicly-traded fossil fuel companies with largest known carbon reserves (oil, coal and gas)
2.  Divest from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds in the top 200 list and shift these funds to lower risk, ethical investments before the May 2022 Council elections
3.  Advocate to other pension funds, including the London Pension Fund Authority and Local Government Pension Scheme members to do the same
4.  To do the above in a timely manner - by setting up a working group to report back on a strategy to bring about divestment within three months from the submission of this petition

Why is this important?

We believe divestment from fossil fuels to be not only ethically and environmentally correct, but also financially prudent.

Climate change is the greatest challenge humanity has encountered. The 20 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1981 and 2016 was the hottest ever . Higher average temperatures are directly linked to extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods and storms.

Scientists have unanimously concluded that these changes are a consequence of human activity, arising from the burning of fossil fuels. Moreover, this activity has resulted in unprecedented levels of air pollution, now regarded as a major world killer.

In a speech at Lloyd’s of London in September 2015, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England said that by the time ‘climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late’. Carney warned investors that policies to address climate change ‘would render the vast majority of reserves ‘stranded’ – oil, gas and coal that will be literally unburnable’ .

In order to continue developing fossil fuel reserves – particularly in the difficult areas where the remaining reserves are located (including the Arctic, the mouth of the Amazon and tar sands in sensitive areas) the developing companies need investment – divestment is a way of cutting off the funds needed to carry out these damaging activities. It also sends a powerful signal to the companies and others that it is time to move away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy.

Reminder: 'Keep it in the Ground' meeting urging Brent to divest from fossil fuels - Tuesday 8th May

 

 

Do you want to do something about climate change? Come to this meeting, hosted by Divest Brent and Brent Friends of the Earth, and find out what you can do. We will hear from an experienced campaigner (supplemented by video clips) about the role that divestment (disposing of fossil fuel investments) has to play generally and in particular, locally, look at ways to encourage Brent Council’s wish to divest their Pension Fund which has nearly £40 million invested in fossil fuel companies. We will look at divestment success stories and why it is so effective. We will also look at other ways to transition to clean, renewable energy – and most importantly what you can do to contribute to this transition.

Doors open at 7 pm - come then for an opportunity, before the formal evening starts at 7.30 pm, to talk to people in Brent who are already working to combat climate change - and there will be another chance for informal discussion when the formal evening finishes at 9 pm.

 

Tue 8 May 2018

 

Meeting room
Watling Gardens Estate
97-135 Shoot-Up Hill
London
NW2 3UB
View Map

 

Kilburn (Jubilee) tube

FREE BUT BOOK ON EVENTBRITE HERE

Keep it in the Ground: Divestment and Climate Change May 8th

Meeting to discuss

What we can do about climate change

And how divestment (selling fossil fuel investments) can help

DATE AND TIME Tue 8 May 2018 19:30 – 21:30 Petition: https://tinyurl.com/DivestBrent Facebook: www.facebook.com/DivestBrent

LOCATION Meeting room Watling Gardens Estate 97-135 Shoot-Up Hill London NW2 3UB

Do you want to do something about climate change? Come to this meeting, hosted by Divest Brent and Brent Friends of the Earth, and find out what you can do. We will hear from an experienced campaigner (supplemented by video clips) about the role that divestment (disposing of fossil fuel investments) has to play generally and in particular, locally, look at ways to encourage Brent Council’s wish to divest their Pension Fund which has nearly £40 million invested in fossil fuel companies. We will look at divestment success stories and why it is so effective. We will also look at other ways to transition to clean, renewable energy – and most importantly what you can do to contribute to this transition.

Doors open at 7 pm - come then for an opportunity, before the formal evening starts at 7.30 pm, to talk to people in Brent who are already working to combat climate change - and there will be another chance for informal discussion when the formal evening finishes at 9 pm.

Please note that in order to attend, although the event is free, you must first register for a ticket online at https://tinyurl.com/KeepInGround or by writing to Simon Erskine, 61 Mortimer Road, London, NW10 5QR. The location is very close to Kilburn underground station but not that easy to find from the map – when you register online you will find a link to directions – or ask Simon Erskine as above.

Brent councillors urged to attend fossil fuel divestment event January 27th

This is a welcome initiative taking place on Saturday 27th January 2018 10.30am to 1pm at Brent Civic Centre.

Please urge your councillors to attend. BOOKING

Brent Council & Labour Energy Forum invite Labour Councillors and members to come and discuss how divesting from fossils fuel can shape Labour's role in leading on safer pensions and climate action.

With May 2018 local council elections approaching Labour councils should consider their position on continued investment in the fossil fuel industry.

Over £14 billion of LG Pension Funds holdings are invested in oil, gas and coal - but these investments are no longer financially sustainable. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, has warned that investments into fossil fuels will become stranded assets and contribute to financial instability.

As Labour Groups write their manifestos for the 2018 elections, we invite Labour councillors to come and consider how your local council should move forward in light of the growing consensus of fossil fuels holdings becoming stranded assets. We will interrogate the best approaches to achieving a world unpolluted by the fossil fuel industry, and how to reduce risk while maximising strategic influence over individual companies and the oil/gas/coal extraction sectors.

In September last year, Waltham Forest Council became the UK’s first Local Government Pension Scheme to announce that they will divest their Pension Funds away from fossil fuel companies over the coming 5 years, followed by Southwark Council in December. The place of fossil fuels in the world economy is changing. The Paris Agreement set the UK’s economy on a pathway to taking serious action on climate change that will require significant changes to our economies - changes that are incompatible with the business models of fossil fuel extraction companies. Come and discuss how Labour councils can maximise influence in shaping the transition while minimising the exposure to stranded assets.

The Labour Party can lead in building this new future and laying out how we make this transition just, fast and affordable. Divesting the £14 billion of LG Pension Funds away from fossil fuels would enable reinvestment into local housing and transport, strengthening local economies and supporting job creation.

Engineering to combat climate change - predictions for 2016

I get a lot of press releases sent to me, few of which I use as the basis for articles.  In the context of the Paris talks and the current focus on climate change as a consequence of the floods, I thought this was worth publishing (unedited). Perhaps particularly pertinent in the light of the Quintain developments around Wembley Stadium.
 

A team of experts at leading environmental engineering firm Max Fordham have compiled a list of their predictions for the coming year, with a focus on reducing energy consumption and ensuring that building designers put the health and wellbeing of the people who use that building first.

The full list of Max Fordham’s predictions is as follows:

Infrastructure-scale solutions to climate change

Governments will be forced to tackle the problems caused by climate change by introducing infrastructure-scale solutions. Hopefully these will give way to exciting examples of urban design, such as the $335 million scheme to upgrade Lower Manhattan’s storm defences.

A “Trip Advisor” for buildings

The development of a ‘Trip Advisor’ for buildings and building comfort. Users will be able to rate office, retail and hospitality buildings on a number of criteria such as temperature, daylight, acoustics and ventilation that will then be fed back into the building management systems for efficiency based on big data. Enabling consumer pressure to drive improved performance.

More plants on buildings

The increased use of living roofs on commercial and domestic buildings, and an increased awareness of the role buildings can play in maintaining biodiversity.

Global harm tax on fossil fuels

The introduction of a global harm tax on both the extraction and use of fossil fuels which makes visible the damage caused by these sources of energy and also encourages the development of alternative forms of energy production.

Population control

The need for action on global population growth will be addressed by ensuring universal access to contraception. This will provide positive impacts in terms of both economic growth and public health.

Wider awareness of carbon impact of construction

In design and client teams, we’ll see a wider appreciation and understanding of embodied energy and the total carbon impact of the construction process.

In-building energy storage

The development of In-building energy storage systems or daily heat stores to spread the peak energy demand of a building over a day.

Energy Performance Contracts become the norm

Energy Performance Contracts become expected for more new builds. Better prediction of actual energy consumption and then having to deliver on this in practice. It will put a much better focus on the way we design and the way we build.

Death of “tick box” sustainability

The death of BREEAM and ‘tick-box’ sustainability with a move to a more appropriate choice. We will see an even greater rise in the employment of sustainability matrices such as the one developed by Max Fordham.

Greater recognition of the impact buildings have on health

Comfort, health and well-being will become a much larger part of considerations when designing and building non-residential, commercial lettings.

The predictions were assembled by the team including engineers Thomas Greenhill and John Gunstone, sustainability consultant Elinor Huggett, and Phil Armitage and Guy Nevill, both Senior Partners at the Practice.

The predictions include the development of a kind of “Trip Advisor” for buildings, where users rate how comfortable they are in terms of temperature and acoustics, which is then fed back into the building management system.

Large scale infrastructure projects will become necessary to combat the effects of climate change and to avoid a repeat of the flooding recently seen in the north of the country.

A global “harm tax” should be introduced on both the extraction and use of fossil fuels to make visible the damage caused by these sources of energy and also encourage the development of alternative forms of energy production.

Earlier in December this year, leaders from every country agreed to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2C. Currently, around half of the UK’s energy consumption is used in the heating of buildings and so developing more sophisticated and efficient insulation systems and reducing the amount of energy used in construction could play a key role in ensuring the UK meets its targets.  

Guy Nevill, said: “While the COP21 agreement is a tremendously positive step, we still have lots of work to do in terms of reducing our carbon emissions, as well as building schemes to protect ourselves from the inevitable consequences of climate change. Engineering is crucial to ensuring we are able to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and minimise the effects of the damage we have already done to the planet.”

Other predictions include the use of in-building energy storage systems, wider appreciation and understanding of embodied energy and the total carbon impact of the construction process and the widespread use of Energy Performance Contracts.

Phil Armitage, Senior Partner at Max Fordham said: “Some of our predictions are quite optimistic, but they are intended to highlight the problems we face and some of the ways engineering can be used to help solve them.”

Labour leadership contenders' stance on environmental policies

Environmentally conscious Labour readers of this blog may be interested in the candidates' answers to questions put by Friends of the Earth. Below I republish the original FOE blog that can be found HERE
 

We asked the Labour leadership candidates to tell us where they stand on green issues. Here is what they said (or didn’t say).

Two weeks ago we wrote about the scale of the Government’s destruction of green policies and the urgent need for strong opposition to these changes from the Labour party.

We also set out 10 key environmental policies we think Ed Miliband’s successor must adopt, in order to hold the Government to account on crucial issues like climate change and the depletion of the natural world.

We sent these policies to the four contenders for the Labour Leadership and asked them to get back to us with their responses.

What the Labour leadership contenders think

Despite extending the deadline (twice) and repeated private and public reminders (here and here for instance), we didn’t hear a peep from two of the candidates, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. (But see note at the end of the article)

Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn did get back to us, but with varying degrees of detail.

Andy Burnham's team provided us with this statement and an accompanying email explaining that many of the “quite detailed” policy positions we put to him “will be subject to the policy review that will take place leading up to the 2020 [general] election”.

The statement makes clear that under Mr Burnham’s leadership “environmental issues will be treated with new energy and will be given a prominent place in what will define the Labour Party” but provides little in the way of detail.

The clearest policy position in Mr Burnham’s statement is that “no fracking should go ahead until we have much clearer evidence on the environmental impact”. This is a welcome commitment, although short of the necessary pledge to oppose fracking full stop because of the unacceptable risks it presents to tackling climate change.

Jeremy Corbyn was the only one of the four candidates who replied in full to our specific asks.

The responses include a commitment to “take action now to keep fossil fuels in the ground” and “end dirty energy handouts, ban fracking and set a target date to end new fossil fuel extraction, and begin to phase out high polluting coal power stations with support for workers to re-train”.

Mr Corbyn said he would “call for unabated coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, to be phased out by 2023” and in a welcome move confirmed that “I am opposed to opencast coal mining which scars our landscape, and disrupts local communities with noise and air pollution.”

+++ UPDATE 24 August: Yvette Cooper gave a speech over the weekend outlining her "six point roadmap" on climate change ahead of the Paris summit at the end of the year. Read our take on it here. +++