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Norway's wealth fund fails on environment aspirations, NGO states

Norway's $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, is falling short on its environment aspirations by stopping working to back numerous investor propositions pressing oil business to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, a nongovernmental organization stated in a report said on Monday.

The fund swimming pools the Nordic nation's state profits from oil and gas production. Considering that 2022 its objective is for the 9,000 business it buys internationally to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, in line with the Paris Contract.

As part of its strategy, the fund's management, Norges Bank Financial Investment Management (NBIM), has set expectations for business boards on environment change and votes at annual basic meetings on this concern.

It states it engages with companies in numerous ways, including via voting on investor propositions, and in severe cases can divest from business if they stop working to react.

The fund is stopping working short, nevertheless, on that aspiration, according to a report by Norwegian NGO Framtiden i vaare hender ( the Future in our Hands) that was shared with ahead of its publication on Monday.

The report analysed the fund's voting record last year on 16 environment resolutions at nine oil majors, consisting of BP, Shell, TotalEnergies, Chevron and ExxonMobil.

It discovered that the fund supported seven such resolutions and backed strategies the group said were climate damaging in the remaining nine of those 16 cases.

NBIM has, sometimes, opposed critical investor resolutions on environment throughout annual general conferences. This misalignment between NBIM's climate engagement strategy and its actual voting behaviour signifies an uncomfortable space in action, the report said.

NBIM likewise voted versus all climate resolutions at the yearly general conferences of 4 oil majors - BP, Shell, TotalEnergies and Marathon - that have actually been flagged by CA100+, an investor-led effort that advocates for the biggest emitters to tackle their emissions, as companies that fall short in their efforts to take on climate modification.

NBIM's failure to back environment resolutions in line with worldwide agreed objectives weakens its function as a steward of sustainable financing, stated the report.

The fund said it assessed all investor proposals based upon a specific structure.

Our structure considers 3 elements: materiality, prescriptiveness and pertinent business- or market-specific situations, the fund said in a statement emailed to .

This implies that we might not support a proposition related to a product topic such as environment modification if it, for instance, looks for to micromanage a company's technique, or if the business currently fulfills our expectations.

It frequently discuss its ballot intent straight with business, ahead of AGMs.

This allows us in some circumstances to communicate that we discover a problem raised in an investor proposition to be important, even if it consists of particular wording that lead us to vote against, the fund said.