Even some super funds listed as ‘sustainable’ that advertise themselves as socially responsible have a relatively high investment in fossil fuel companies

With high-profile additions to the divestment movement that include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the international divestment movement seems to be gathering momentum.

In Australia the divestment movement has brought some controversial moments, with Tony Abbott describing Australian National University’s decision to offload shares in fossil fuel companies as “stupid”.



Aside from banks, one of the targets for the divestment movement here are superannuation funds. This is understandable given the scale of the super industry – according to the super fund industry body, superannuation assets totalled $2.05tn in March 2015. That’s a fair chunk of change.



So which superannuation funds are heavily invested in fossil fuel companies?



The divestment campaign group Market Forces maintain a database of superannuation companies called Super Switch that analyses the funds’ equity components for exposure to fossil fuel investments.



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It analyses the disclosed portion of each fund and constructs an index based on “holdings in companies that are part of the fossil fuel industry and providing essential services to the fossil fuel industry”.



It’s important to note that a significant proportion of some super fund investments is undisclosed and thus there’s a certain degree of uncertainty with any comparison between funds. You can read more about the methods here.



When ranked by known fossil fuel free investment, here’s the top 10 out of 70 fund options:



Eight of the 10 are “sustainable” fund types. Sustainable funds are those with investment strategies ostensibly geared towards more “ethical” or “socially responsible” investments, and often screen out companies involved in industries including tobacco and arms dealing.



But while some sustainable funds consider environmental issues, not all funds take climate change into account. Indeed, most of those listed above have some exposure to fossil fuel companies and overall sustainable funds have an average of 4.36% fossil fuel exposure:



Sustainable funds are still generally better than “main” funds from a climate change point of view as they have a greater level of transparency and greater proportion of known fossil fuel-free investments.



But not all sustainable funds have low investment in fossil fuel companies, with at least three sustainable funds scoring over 10%. It’s only relatively recently that some sustainable fund managers, such as AMP, have started taking fossil fuel investments into account.

In terms of the fund category, public sector funds are generally more transparent and have a higher proportion of known fossil fuel-free investments than retail, industry or corporate funds:



Here’s the full list of funds, use the search box to find yours:



It’s also worth pointing out (before someone else does in the comments) that these sort of divestment campaigns are mostly about public pressure rather than financial pressure.