18 August 2022
Your question
- can you tell me what proportion of Lambeth’s pension fund is invested in fossil fuels and what steps are being taken to disinvest from them, especially oil and gas. I am in receipt of a Lambeth pension.
Our response
- our Pensions Committee remains committed to divesting from fossil fuels. As at 31 March 2021 the Fund had approximately £25m invested indirectly in fossil fuels, against a total Fund of approximately £1.8bn, or 1.4% of the overall fund. The Committee continues to work towards reducing this exposure, particularly via investment opportunities with the London Collective Investment Vehicle (LCIV) as and when suitable alternatives to existing investments become available.
- in March we presented a Pension Fund Carbon Metrics Analysis to the Pensions Committee which discloses the carbon emissions of the Fund’s listed equity holdings and we will continue to extend the scope of this analysis and report to Committee.
- the Committee also instructed officers in its March meeting to work towards developing a Pension Fund Climate Strategy to set out formal climate and environmental objectives and increase transparency in how we report performance against those objectives. Work is ongoing on this, which will be aligned with the review of our investment strategy early next year as our latest triennial valuation of the Fund takes place.
- if you’d like to explore the carbon metrics analysis further, the link to the public documents from the meeting can be found at the following link (please see item 6 on the agenda): Agenda for Pensions Committee on Wednesday 24 March 2021, 6.30 pm | Lambeth Council.